Editorial: No risk if limit raised by 10km

Raise the speed limit of the Tauranga Eastern Link, says Amy Wiggins.

A higher speed limit on the Tauranga Eastern Link seems to me a sensible move.

There would be few roads in the country better suited to it. It's new, flat, wide and has a median barrier.

Surely increasing the speed limit to 110km/h, as suggested by associate Transport Minister Craig Foss last week, is not going to cause more crashes.

Crashes happen at all speeds. Often it is not speed but driver error that is the problem. Crashes are going to happen whether the limit is 100km/h or 110km/h.

Perhaps going that little bit faster will force people to focus more on the road. It should encourage responsible drivers to take even more care and cause them to think again about checking a phone or playing with the stereo while driving.

Yes, the extra speed would mean it would take longer to stop but the road is so straight and flat in most parts you can see so far ahead there would be few instances where you were forced to stop that quickly.

At the moment there are few cars that use the road but it should not be a problem even as it gets busier. If drivers stick to the three-second rule they will automatically adjust their following distance to be far enough back to allow them to stop suddenly.

By no means am I suggesting all areas with a 100km/h speed limit should have it increased.

The speed limit of every road should be weighed up on its own merits - how wide, how straight and how much traffic uses the road. It would be ludicrous to increase the speed on many of the country's winding state highways.

To a responsible driver on a good road there should be no more danger in having a slightly higher speed limit.

There will always be those who decide to drive at reckless speeds and in a dangerous manner. A speed limit won't stop them.

In the same way, drivers will always succumb to distractions and lose focus.

The consequences of crashing at high speeds are undoubtedly devastating but I can't see that the injuries will be any worse at 110km/h than at 100km/h.

At either speed the chances of walking away from a crash alive are pretty slim.