15
it is 10 kmh it won't make a difference. I'm sure we'd see no more accidents than we do now if we made all 60 roads 80 instead.
The article cites a 20% reduction in braking distance, but still not going to solve the problem. Fencing and specialised crossings are better solutions since they don't rely on drivers paying attention
The LNP claims to have spoken to experts who said that fences are not a good option here.
Labor claims to have also spoken to experts who disagree with that.
It's really not clear to me who is right in this instance. The LNP idea does have some merit in terms of how fencing would restrict wildlife movement for food/social reasons, as well as trapping them if there's a bushfire.
But yeah, the speed limit reduction, as long as it's actually enforced, is a good one. Stopping distance increases with the square of velocity, and at least with human pedestrians the deadliness of a crash increases approximately exponentially with velocity. So a small decrease in speed can actually have an enormous benefit to safety. At 70 km/h a pedestrian has a roughly 99% chance of dying. At 60 km/h it's down to like 88%. Of course, down at 40 km/h it's more like 25% and 30 km/h is 18%—which is why pedestrian and cycling safety advocates say local streets should be no more than 30 km/h. I don't know quite how applicable that is to wildlife strikes, but the basic concept behind it should still apply.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The speed limit on a road on Brisbane's south side will be permanently reduced from 70 kilometres per hour to 60kph in a bid to protect koalas living in nearby bushland.
Ms Adams said reducing the speed limit from 70kph to 60kph on Boundary Road would cut stopping distances by up to 20 per cent, which would "hopefully mean fewer koala strikes".
"I want to thank everyone who has been involved in what has been a five-year campaign to make this happen and remind residents to drive safely whenever they see signs [warning] that koalas may be in the area."
Queensland Koala Society co-founder Angela Christodoulou said the changes were "a great start", but speed limit needed to be reduced even further.
Transport Minister Mark Bailey said he previously advised the council that an engineer could consider all matters relevant to establishing an "appropriate speed limit" during the review process, even though wildlife was not specifically mentioned in the guidelines until a short time ago.
He said the changes made to the speed limit guidelines came after advocacy from Labor MP for Greenslopes Joe Kelly.
The original article contains 474 words, the summary contains 180 words. Saved 62%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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