The road speed limits nationally need to be reviewed as 100 or 110 is simply not relevant in this age of technology and motor vehicle design.

These limits were set when cars were primitive (by today’s standards) - over 40 years ago.  Cars and the engineering and safety devices in them these days are much different to when the 100/10 km/h limit was imposed on our southern states.  These days, vehicles are better engineered and safer than ever before. This needs to be reviewed, but the NT Road Safety Taskforce report seems to be authored by people who cannot move beyond this old line thinking.  Imposing these new speed limits will place the NT behind every other state in Australia.

To set a speed limit for the lowest denominator means you would need to set it at 40kmh – to suit tractors and farm machinery that is not intended to travel fast.  Set a limit too fast, and some will try to drive at that limit and not think about what they are doing.  A better road safety strategy would be to leave it open and encourage (and promote through advertising) for drivers to make a judgement every time they drive, and drive to a speed that is safe and practical – and to suit their particular vehicle, their abilities, and the road conditions at the time.  Just setting ‘dumb’ limits that suit a person in an office a long way away, who cannot read the vehicle, the driver or the conditions at that time is plain nonsense. Conditions vary, and so should a driver’s speed to suit.

110km/h – or indeed 130km/h is completely impractical click here what SA say– particularly when passing road trains etc.  If we are going to allow people to exceed the limit when passing – then why set the limit.  So if there is a limit and people travel above it, then what is the point of having a limit – unless of course it is to raise revenue by ‘pinging’ drivers exceeding this limit.