New speed limit mooted

Minister of Transport Sibusiso Ndebele says he will ask the cabinet to consider reducing the speed limit from 120km/h to 100km/h in a drastic effort to "eradicate road carnage".

He made the announcement yesterday while visiting the scene of an accident, involving a minibus taxi towing a trailer, in which 10 people were killed in KwaZulu-Natal.

Ndebele said that studies in Australia, in areas where the speed limit had been reduced to 110km/h, had shown that a reduction could save lives.

"Traffic law enforcers cannot be everywhere at any given time, hence our call to the public to take responsibility and work with the government in our efforts to eradicate the road carnage in our country," said Ndebele.

The department said that 76 people had been killed in eight separate accidents involving public transport last month, while a further 50 have died using public transport this month.

Gary Ronald, spokesman for the Automobile Association, said he wasn't "convinced" a reduction in the speed limit was the correct solution to South Africa's road deaths problems.

Ronald said public transport such as buses and taxis were already limited to 100km/h in terms of law.

He said that while the severity of injuries would probably be reduced, "there's not a lot of difference physiologically between the damage a human body can sustain at 100km/h as apposed to 120km/h".

Ronald said a reduction in the speed limit would likely mean that more speeding fines would be issued with higher revenues going to authorities and more people ending up in court.

"The average speed on our motorways exceeds 120km/h, people slow down when they approach a fixed camera position, then speed up again," he said.

Ronald said that the only way to reduce the speed the majority of South Africans travelled at was to introduce "average speed monitoring".

In terms of this system, a car's average speed is monitored over a given stretch of road and fines are imposed if the average is above the speed limit.

In May, Energy Minister Dipuo Peters also said the department was considering a general reduction in speed limits as a possible way to save fuel.

Ronald said that a reduction in speed limits would decrease the amount of fuel sold, resulting in less tax money for the state to pay for road repairs.