In the last five years alone, more than 320 people have been killed or seriously injured in crashes where speed was a contributing factor.
Speed continues to be the single biggest cause of serious casualty crashes in Tasmania with almost one-third of crashes involving speed.
Our goal is to eliminate road trauma in Tasmania and cutting the number of people speeding is a sure way to reduce the number of lives lost or people seriously injured on our roads.
It doesn’t matter if you’re speeding by 15 km/h or 4km/h because driving even a few kilometres over the speed limit is dangerous to yourself and other motorists. Over is over.
An enhanced Automated Traffic Enforcement Program is a key initiative to achieve the Government’s target of reducing serious casualties under the ‘Encouraging Safer Road Use’ theme of the Towards Zero Action Plan 2020-2024 (Action Plan).
In every crash, the severity of the injuries is determined by the speed of the vehicle. In addition, the faster you go, the further you travel before you can react to a change in road conditions or stop altogether, increasing the likelihood of crashing.
This is why speeding is the leading factor in fatal and serious injuries on our roads. Just look at the statistics: right now, almost one in three serious casualty crashes on Tasmanian roads involve speed.
International research has shown that speed is directly linked to road trauma. Just a 1 km/h increase in average speeds across the road network is expected to result in an additional 2 fatalities and 11 serious injuries each year.
Despite the severe consequences and extensive public education campaigns, speeding still occurs frequently on our roads with approximately one in five drivers at any given time speeding.
The risks are well known, but our mindsets haven’t shifted. There simply hasn’t been the change in attitudes to speeding that we’ve seen in other dangerous driving behaviours, such as not wearing seatbelts or drink driving.
It’s simple physics: the faster you go, the harder you hit, the more damage you do.
