By Melissa Cunningham and Patrick Hatch
Victoria Police’s chief commissioner has dismissed as “ridiculous” a Melbourne council’s plan to cap speed limits at 30km/h across two inner-city suburbs in a bid to reduce serious crashes.
Shane Patton said that despite Victoria’s concerning road toll, fatalities were not happening on inner-city streets, but in the country and on rural roads, and lowering the speed limit in the City of Yarra was not the answer.
“I just think that’s ridiculous ... 30 kilometres,” Patton said on ABC radio on Thursday morning. “Thirty kilometres isn’t the answer, in my point of view. I think no one’s going to obey it ... it’s ridiculous.”
Yarra City Council voted on Tuesday to expand a trial of reduced speed zones in Fitzroy and Collingwood to all suburban streets, excluding the busier thoroughfares of Johnston, Nicholson and Hoddle streets and Victoria Parade, which are managed by the Department of Transport and Planning.
The councillors’ unanimous vote means a 30km/h speed limit could be rolled out across the suburbs as early as February next year. The motion still requires Victorian government approval.
However, Patton said he was not aware of any robust evidence which indicated dropping the speed limit by a further 10 kilometres in the City of Yarra would be effective in reducing road trauma.
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton.Credit: Chris Hopkins
“Society has to accept to a degree that something is going to achieve an outcome, and I’m not aware of any evidence ... that by dropping it [the speed limit] another 10 kilometres — so people can’t get out of third gear, if they’re in a manual car — is going to make any difference to road trauma,” he said.
But a joint submission by the Victorian Government Road Safety Partnership to a state parliament inquiry into road trauma earlier this year referenced research supporting the benefits of lower speed limits.
The group includes Victoria Police, the Transport Accident Commission, the Department of Justice and Community Safety, and the transport, justice and health departments.
“A pedestrian or cyclist struck at 50km/h experiences a 90 per cent chance of being killed in the impact compared to a 10 per cent chance of being killed if struck at 30km/h,” the submission said.
“Successive studies have shown that 30km/h is the maximum impact speed for a healthy adult before death or very serious injury becomes increasingly likely.”
The submission references government data showing that every year before the COVID-19 pandemic, on average, two pedestrians were killed in crashes in 40km/h zones, six died in 50km/h zones and 15 died in 60km/h zones.
A spokeswoman for City of Yarra Council said Patton’s comments were disappointing and at odds with a joint submission earlier this year to a parliamentary inquiry into road trauma.
“Fitzroy and Collingwood are some of the busiest areas for vulnerable road users, with lots of schools and shopping strips, along with public transport and cycling routes,” she said.
“All of the robust data and research we have available indicates that reducing the speed limit... will see a significant decrease in the likelihood of death or serious injury when people are hit by cars.”
TAC head of road safety Samantha Cockfield also told the inquiry during a public hearing in August that 30km/h zones had been adopted in other parts of the world “with some really quite great success”.
“Speed really is the underlying issue that we have … with our vulnerable road users and what we need to really start addressing,” Cockfield said.
Yarra has maintained its decision was made after a growing global body of evidence showed lowering the speed limit to 30km/h could save lives and prevent serious injury.
The trial could exclude tram routes, including Brunswick, Gertrude and Smith streets, if traffic signal or timetable modifications were required. However, these streets would be added to the trial as early as possible.
Victoria Walks chief executive Ben Rossiter strongly backed the council’s decision and pointed to international research which suggested if a walker was hit by a car travelling at 30km/h, they had a 90 per cent chance of survival. This plummeted to just 10 per cent if a car was travelling at 50km/h, he said.
“We have to follow the evidence, not people’s perceptions,” he said, adding similar trials in the UK had led to notable reductions in road trauma when 30km/h zones were enforced.
There have been 193 crashes on the suburban streets of Collingwood and Fitzroy over the past five years.Credit: Jesse Marlow
The City of Yarra also published a review of Victorian road crash data for the five years leading up to the implementation of its existing 30km/h trial in October 2018, and the five years since, which showed a 51 per cent reduction in all crashes and 70 per cent reduction in serious crashes.
The data showed there had been 193 crashes on Collingwood and Fitzroy’s suburban streets in the past five years.
While most of Victoria’s road deaths occur on rural roads, 106 people were killed within the Greater Melbourne area last year and another 3392 were hospitalised, according to the TAC.
As of Wednesday night, there had been 105 road fatalities across Melbourne this year, almost surpassing last year’s total.
Since the start of 2018, 13 people have been killed in crashes within the City of Yarra: six pedestrians, five motorbike riders and two vehicle occupants.
Police were set to hold an emergency meeting this week to discuss this year’s road toll, which, at 258, is at a 15-year high.
The council has been contacted for further comment.
With Alex Crowe
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