Hamish Bidwell: The faster we slow down, the better

Hamish Bidwell is happy with the speed reduction on the Napier-Taupo road and thinks more should follow. Photo / Warren Buckland

OPINION

I see the Napier-Taupo road might not be the last stretch of highway to be reduced to an 80km/h speed limit.

Bravo.

My attitude to every car journey is that it would be a shame not to get there.

That's at odds with many of my friends and more than a few fellow motorists, given some of those who've roared past me over the years.

I follow the speed limit and I drive to conditions.

If it's wet and visibility is bad, I won't do 100. Most of the time, on a good stretch of road, I'll drive at 100-110km/h. If that's not quick enough for you and you need to hug my bumper, before pulling out and giving me the finger on the way round, then I'd wager you perhaps have other issues in your life.

I never got the resistance to lowering the speed limit between Napier and Taupo.

Frankly, I always thought 100km/h was more than most people could manage on that road.

Roads aren't racetracks, after all. There's no need to include an element of risk.

Any trip that has you and your passengers arrive safely at your destination is a good one in my book.

Nothing infuriates drivers more than others doing 80km/h in a 100km/h zone. It makes them do silly things and attempt to overtake at inappropriate times.

I get like that myself sometimes.

Ultimately, though, that person is often going 80 because that's as fast as they feel they can safely go.

Hamish Bidwell. Photo/ Warren Buckland

That's why I would gladly accept the lowering of speed limits, because I genuinely believe it'll reduce road fatalities.

I recognise that people will always die in motor vehicle accidents, but I would support any initiative that reduced that.

Look, I absolutely understand that being made to do it and having bureaucrats and politicians dictate a reduction in speed will anger a lot of the "good" drivers out there.
The ones who've always driven at 20 or more km/h over the limit and have a vehicle that's "designed'" to go fast.

Only, it's not so long ago that we used to smoke at restaurant tables and while leaning on bars.

I'm too young to have had smoke blown on me in the office, but I've worked at desks that still had cigarette burns on them from back in the day when colleagues did.

I've known a lot of smokers - sadly many of them dead now - who took being made to smoke outside as an affront. Who railed against the nanny state and the reduction in their civil rights.

But things change. The world evolves, we move on.

Decisions are made for the greater good and we all adapt.

We need to slow down in our cars and not just on the highway, either. Too many people speed past schools and down suburban streets and for what? To save 10 seconds? A minute?

I'd prefer to save a life, myself.

I've seen first hand the damage that cars can do to pedestrians and other vehicles and I'm not in a hurry to do that again.