With a new government pushing a greater emphasis on road safety, attention is increasing on the role that speed plays in our safety record. For both urban and rural settings, there has been a growing clamour by some elected officials, safety advocates, and the general public for greater use of lower speed limits. Yet, at the same time such changes remain polarising, with other people sceptical of their effect on safety and wary about their impact on network efficiency. The relatively cumbersome process of changing existing speed limits has also been cited as a hurdle to implementing fast change.
This paper was runner-up to the best research paper at the 2019 NZ Transportation Conference.