SMH: Speed doesn’t kill, says Benz
Paul Rands
Speed doesn’t kill, says Benz
RICHARD BLACKBURN
March 5, 2010
Speeding laws don't save lives, says expert.
Safety expert for Mercedes says strict speeding laws are not the answer to lowering road tolls.
A leading safety expert says a crackdown on speeding is not the answer to reducing the road toll.
The vice president of safety development for Mercedes-Benz, Ulrich
Mellinghoff, says crash avoidance systems, better roads and more
roundabouts would do more to cut the road toll than tougher speeding
laws.
The approach is in direct contrast to state governments in NSW and Victoria, who have been preaching the "speed kills" mantra as the number one panacea for the road toll.
Mr Mellinghoff says motorists often fell into the trap of thinking
they were driving safely because they were doing less than the speed
limit.
He says the German road toll had reduced significantly in the past 20 years, despite much higher speeds on the roads.
" In Germany you can drive as fast as you want. I don't think that speed alone is the problem. It's the wrong speed in a special situation. With speed limits you will not stop those situations. If you have fog and drive at 100km/h, which is allowed, you are really in high danger of having an accident. On the other hand, if you drive 250km/h on the German autobahn in clear weather conditions with no traffic, it's not really a risk and no accidents happen in those situations," he says.
His claims are borne out by German road statistics. In 1972, there
were 20,000 deaths on West German roads. In 2009, there were 4100,
despite 20 million more people on the road (including the old East
Germany).
"That was with much worse traffic and significantly more vehicles on the road," says Mellinghoff.
"What we have seen is there are a lot of very different reasons for
accidents. Sometimes it is not the high speed, it is the wrong speed.
If you limit the speed, the driver often thinks all they have to do is
drive the speed limit and they don't have to think," he says.
It was better to put the responsibility for driving at the right speed on the shoulders of the individual driver.
Accident avoidance technology, including pedestrian avoidance systems, also had the potential to drastically reduce the road toll.
When stability control was introduced on all cars in Germany, there was a 30 per cent reduction in accidents where a single car leaves the road.
He says Australia's New Car Assessment Program, which crash tests cars and awards safety ratings, should reward vehicles more for crash avoidance, rather than the protection they offered in a crash.
"They should focus more on these assistance systems. It makes more sense to avoid an accident than to reduce the severity of it," he says.
Mercedes was working on a variety of advanced systems designed to
cut the road toll, including infra-red systems that detect pedestrians
at the side of the road in the dark and spotlight them to alert the
driver.
The company also had brake assistance technology that intervened to provide maximum braking force in an emergency situation.
He says the assistance, which occurs in the last 100 milliseconds before a crash, can reduce impact speeds by 5 to 6km/h.
He says Germany has seen good results from increasing the number of roundabouts, as they reduce the number of severe accidents at intersections, while better separating vehicles from cyclists and pedestrians also helps to keep the toll down.
He believes car to car communication can also play a big role in reducing the toll, with cars able to warn drivers behind them about hazardous road conditions including ice on the road or accidents ahead.
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Paul Rands
paul...@gmail.com
andrew clarke
> " In Germany you can drive as fast as you want. I don't think that speed
> alone is the problem. It's the wrong speed in a special situation. With
AFAIK "you can drive as fast as you want" is only true for some of the
Autobahns, and you can still be pinged for driving beyond the road
conditions.
Otherwise the guy says some mostly common sense things. Although, the
faster you drive the worse your fuel efficiency as I've mentioned
previously, so even if you can drive at a million miles an hour
doesn't mean you should...
I'm not convinced doing 150+ km/h in an ordinary road car is a great
idea outside of a motor racing circuit. It's unlikely everyone else
is doing the same speed as you, so you're likely to encounter other
traffic at a high frequency, with a dangerous closing speed. Plus
tyres tend to overheat at extreme speeds, among other things.
> He says Germany has seen good results from increasing the number of
> roundabouts, as they reduce the number of severe accidents at
> intersections, while better separating vehicles from cyclists and
> pedestrians also helps to keep the toll down.
Roundabouts are good in some situations but are often notoriously
unfriendly for pedestrians in particular and also cyclists. A cyclist
can't make a hook turn at a busy roundabout, for example.
As for roundabouts in local streets, in my experience drivers tend to
just treat them as an inconvenience and make the least amount of
effort slowing to a safe speed to negotiate them.
And don't get me started on the number of times I've been on a bike,
overtaken on the right then cut off by a car driver while I'm literally
only a few seconds away from enterting a single lane roundabout.
Either they are incredibly impatient or have no ability to judge my
speed!
End rant ;)
Stuart Fox
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