Area of Opportunity 10: Management of Travel Speeds

5.10Area of Opportunity 10: Management of Travel Speeds

Recommendation 10: Define safer speed limits, road engineering, comprehensive aggressive enforcement, and strong media and communications campaigns to combat the misperceptions that speeding is not a safety issue and speed cameras are for revenue raising, and to promote the risk of detection and its consequences.

Recommendation 10.1: Employ inexpensive road engineering interventions to manage speeds, including:

Extensive use of speed humps (with advance warnings via signs and transverse raised lines) including on rural roads on approaches to risky curves.⁶⁶ Consideration of “modernizing” by replacing speed humps with speed cameras should be dismissed. Speed humps are permanently effective whereas cameras require maintenance and may not work 24 hours per day. Speed cameras have a critical but different role;

Lines painted onto urban roads so that the lanes appear narrower, which slows travel speeds;

Strong gateway treatments at the entry to urban areas, including narrowing the lane and speed humps;

Well-designed roundabouts;

Raised platform pedestrian crossings.

Roads features are a key mechanism by which speeds can be managed. Driving the roads of Brazil inevitably shows the value of speed humps which slow drivers at urban entry points more effectively than speed limit signs.

Recommendation 10.2: Strongly promote speed cameras for roads safety, commit spending all revenue raised on Road Safety, and make the public commitment to and subsequently implement a substantial increase in effective speed enforcement, including:

Recommendation 10.3: Revise speed zoning policy to address the variability of speed limits for similar conditions by reducing inappropriate limits and the seriously excessive speed limits on some roads. Policy changes should include:

Recommendation 10.4: Begin implementation of a program of reduced speed limits and increased enforcement in high crash risk locations. It is important that locations be selected on the basis of two separate criteria- the extent of casualty crashes, and the extent of speeding. However, the identification of speed-related crashes should not be a criterion because these are consistently under-estimated.

Recommendation 10.5: Revise penalties for speeding, including:

Carry out a full review of penalties for speeding. Speeding penalties are often not sufficient to deter drivers. A review of penalties for speeding should determine what level of increase is required to redress this problem, and the increases should be accompanied by advance publicity;

Escalating penalties for each repeat offence;

A scheme of penalties which allows more sensitivity to the level of the speeding, in 10km/h increments of increasing consequence;

Introducing stronger penalties for speeding by young drivers. This should for part of the GLS recommended above. Young drivers are largely over-represented in serious (fatal and serious injury) crashes in Brazil. Tougher penalties for young driver speeding are likely to be effective. International research shows that speeding (rather than ‘inexperience’) is a key contributor to the excessive crash risk of young drivers and riders.

Recommendation 10.6: Introduce speed cameras which are effective for motorcycles, to address the growing motorcycle safety problem (see next section). Many existing speed camera programs does not work for motorcycles because the cameras are either front facing or do not record motorcycles. Speed cameras which infringe motorcycles must be introduced, along with a communications campaign noting that motorcycles will be caught by cameras.

Recommendation 10.7: Enforce truck and buses speed limit compliance with on-board tachographs. There is currently no enforcement of buses and trucks based on tachographs.

Recommendation 10.8: Scale-up major communications and paid advertising campaigns in support of extra speed enforcement to strongly publicize the changes recommended herein well in advance of the changes so that motorists are given reasonable warning of the changes. The campaigns will explain the need and gain public and media support (though the latter is difficult) for the program through understanding of the benefits. However, for effective behavior change the campaign must emphasize the cameras and being fined, not on the possibility of having a crash (more drivers can relate to being fined than the possibility of a serious crash).

Recommendation 10.2 on increased enforcement is suggested for early action due to its strong potential as an early win, though the completion of all the actions of this recommendation will take more time. Communication s associated with increased speed enforcement should start in advance of the changed enforcement (part of recommendation 10.8). All other recommendations are medium term though in some cases completion with take a longer period.