By Luke Voogt
A 40km/h speed limit in central Geelong would be ineffective in improving safety, according to the RACV.
City Hall’s plan to cut the limit from 50 was a “blunt method” of preventing crashes and had little justification, said RACV roads and traffic manager Dave Jones.
“It (council) needs more work to identify the road safety issues and actually find solutions to them,” Mr Jones told the Geelong Indi.
City Hall has cited 156 crashes with 52 “serious injuries” in the city over the past five years as justification for the cut but Mr Jones said the figures would be “expected” of any busy central business district.
“We’d like to see a breakdown of that data to show how many were actually speed related.
“I’m guessing that many of those crashes were at low speed.”
Mr Jones said the council should instead concentrate on redesigning streets to influence driver behaviour and separate pedestrians and traffic.
“For speed limits to be credible drivers have to understand the reason why they have to slow.”
Speed limits would only be useful in accident-prone areas or at certain times of the day, Mr Jones said.
“It shouldn’t apply to the whole CBD. Down on the waterfront would make more sense.”
“There are roads in central Geelong that have very little night activity. When drivers get a wide open road, closed shops and no traffic, that’s when they … end up speeding.”
Mr Jones said the RACV had opposed other “blanket” speed limit reductions, such as on Bell Street in Melbourne’s inner-north.
A study of the crashes on the street prior to the reductions found that most were unrelated to speed, he said.
“Lowering the speed limit in Geelong will make no difference to the crashes if it’s similar to what we found.”
Mr Jones also questioned the City’s justification that the speed cut would cause minimal inconvenience because the city’s average daytime speed was already less than 40km/h.
“If that’s the case, how can there be any road safety benefits from reducing the speed limit?” Mr Jones said.
City Hall wants public feedback on the proposal between 25 August and 22 September.
