What is the Mornington Peninsula Shire Safer Speeds Trial?
The Mornington Peninsula Shire Safer Speeds Trial is a two-year safer speed limit trial undertaken by Mornington Peninsula Shire. Since late 2019, 33 council-managed high-speed sealed roads that were previously zoned as either 100 km/h or 90 km/h speed limits were changed to 80 km/h.
Which roads are included in the trial?
A map and list of the roads included in the trial can be downloaded.
Download: List of roads part of the Safer Speeds Trial(PDF, 67KB)
Download: Safer Speeds Trial map(PDF, 581KB)
The trial is only for Shire-managed high risk sealed rural roads and does not affect any Peninsula arterial roads, such as: Peninsula Link, Moorooduc Highway and Westernport Highway.
Who is conducting the trial?
Mornington Peninsula Shire implemented the Safer Speeds Trial. The Victorian Department of Transport has coordinated an independent evaluation of the trial.
Will these speed changes be made permanent after the trial period?
Council formally considered the Safer Speeds Trial evaluation outcomes at the 22 November 2022 Council Meeting. Council resolved to apply to the Victorian Department of Transport to make the 80 km/h speed limits permanent on all of the 33 roads. The Shire is currently preparing an application to the Department of Transport.
Is it mainly visitors to the Mornington Peninsula that crash?
Based on information supplied by the TAC, from 2014 to 2019 Mornington Peninsula residents made up 59% of those who lost their lives and 77% of those who suffered serious injuries on Mornington Peninsula roads.
Why are other roads in the area not being included in the trial?
This trial focuses on improving safety along high-speed, high-risk Council-managed sealed rural roads as a priority as they are unsafe at high speed which is represented by a large proportion of the fatal and serious injury crashes on the local road network.
While we know from traffic count data the average travel speeds on unsealed roads are generally much lower than sealed roads, the Shire is currently investigating the safety of unsealed roads.
Safety on State-managed roads will also continue to be monitored by the Department of Transport.
The trial does not preclude future investment in Mornington Peninsula Shire or Department of Transport road safety improvement projects.
Why has the Shire trialled safer speeds on these roads?
The Shire is determined to eliminate severe road trauma, as demonstrated by the Shire formally committing to becoming Victoria’s first ‘Towards Zero’ municipality in 2016 and adoption of our Mornington Peninsula Towards Zero 2020-2025 Road Safety Strategy. This trial is an important step towards making our roads safer.
Many of the roads included in the trial have a significant history of road deaths and injuries, and high crash risk, including: narrow lanes, large trees close to the road and table drains.
Over five years to 2019, there were 165 casualty crashes on our local rural sealed roads. Over the past 20 years, 32 people have been killed and over 280 people severely injured on the 33 Safer Speeds roads. A further 487 people sustained less severe injuries.
In 2019 alone, we sadly had 12 deaths and over 100 serious injuries within the Shire – six of these deaths were on these high-risk sealed rural roads.
While speed is not always the cause of a crash, travel speed determines whether a crash can be avoided and the speed of a vehicle at impact will always determine how severely people are hurt as a result of crashing.
Even with high standard roads, drivers will make mistakes. Extensive research shows reducing the speed limit will reduce both the frequency and severity of crashes and, ultimately, contribute to saving lives and preventing severe injuries. We also know that many crashes involve compliant drivers and that a simple error by a competent driver can result in death or severe injury.
Why does reducing the speed limit improve safety?
A relatively small reduction in average travel speed leads to a disproportionally large decrease in the risk of people being killed or seriously injured. Crashes, even at legal speeds, can result in death or severe injury where the speed limit is not matched to the road environment.
The reasons why 80 km/h is safer and more appropriate for rural roads with no safety barriers include:
- There is a direct correlation between speed limit and average vehicle speeds.
- The relationship between speed and road crashes has been studied extensively and is very clear: the higher the speed, the greater the probability of a crash and the higher severity of crashes that occur.
- High speed roads with speed limits of 90 km/h and 100 km/h without adequate safety features are over-represented in road trauma across Victoria relative to comparable roads with 80 km/h speed limits.
- By reducing the average speeds on these roads by 10 km/h, the risks of serious injuries or death can be reduced by an estimated 35% and 40% respectively.
- A head-on collision at 100 km/h will very likely result in a fatality (90%+ probability), whereas at 80 km/h it is approx. 30 – 40% chance and at 70 km/h it is approx. 10% chance.
- Kinetic energy increases disproportionately with vehicle speed. The kinetic energy of a vehicle travelling at 100 km/h is 56% more than a vehicle travelling at 80 km/h. In the event of a crash, this additional kinetic energy must be absorbed by the vehicle and vehicle occupants, resulting in much more severe injuries and much higher probability of death.
- At 80 km/h, events evolve slower with more time to observe what is happening and react to avoid a crash.
- Travel speed is critical to how rapidly speed can be reduced under braking to avoid a collision or collide at a lower speed that is less likely to cause harm. For example, it takes 115m to stop from 80 km/h and 165m to stop from 100 km/h (a 43% increase in braking distance for a 25% increase in speed).
- Roads that don’t have roadside and centre barriers are at particularly high risk at speeds above 80 km/h. High traffic volume State-managed arterial roads with 100 km/h speed limits are increasingly having roadside and median barriers installed, reducing fatalities and serious injuries by up to 85%, thereby making these roads more suitable for their 100 km/h speed limits. It is not feasible or practical to upgrade all roads with the required safety features, such as roadside and centre barriers to be safe for a 100 km/h speed limit.
Woolley et al (2018) summarise some of the reasons why even a small reduction in travel speed results in a significant reduction in the probability of death and serious injury:
I’m a good driver, why should I have to drive slower?
Distraction and momentary inattention happens to all drivers. At 100 km/h, a vehicle travels more than 50 metres in the couple of seconds it takes to adjust the stereo or check mirrors. Even if this is not you, it could be a driver coming towards you who causes a head-on collision.
Lower speeds can help to avoid a crash. As vehicles travel more slowly, there is more opportunity for drivers to react and avoid a crash. In addition, lower speeds reduce the severity if a crash occurs, which can be the difference between death or survival.
Why are speed limits being reduced when vehicles are now safer than ever?
Speed limits were historically set based upon sampling the speeds at which the fastest 15% of drivers felt comfortable travelling. Default speed limits were originally set over 50 years ago. We now understand much more about crash risks and the physical tolerances of human bodies to the forces experienced in crashes.
The risk of being killed in a run-off-road or head-on collision, even in the best, modern 5-star vehicles, increases sharply at impact speeds above 70-80 km/h. This critical impact speed is lower still in older vehicles or when one of the vehicles involved in a head-on collision is a truck or other heavy vehicle.
What effect do the safer speeds have on travel time?
In practice, the effect on travel times is minimal. The longest stretch of road in the trial is Browns Road (12 km), where the new speed limit of 80 km/h adds less than a minute to a journey (based on field tests).
The majority of the roads included in the trial are less than a quarter of the length of Browns Road, therefore the effect on travel times along these roads is negligible.
Why can’t the Shire upgrade the roads instead?
The Shire will continue to repair roads and complete safety upgrades. The trial does not preclude future investment in Mornington Peninsula Shire or Department of Transport road safety improvement projects.
Even with high quality roads, drivers will make mistakes. Reducing the speed limit will reduce the frequency and severity of crashes, and ultimately contribute to saving lives and preventing severe injuries.
State managed arterial roads with 100 km/h speed limits are increasingly having roadside and median barriers installed, reducing fatalities and serious injuries by up to 85%, thereby making these roads more suitable for their 100 km/h speed limits.
Upgrading Shire managed roads to achieve the same road safety benefit as 80 km/h speed limits would require the removal of thousands of trees along rural roads to install crash barriers and would cost ratepayers many millions of dollars.
The Victorian Government and the Shire invest millions of dollars in road safety infrastructure on the Mornington Peninsula annually, however, safer road infrastructure is not sufficient on its own. One of the fundamental aspects of improving road safety is to implement appropriate speed limits that match the characteristics and use of each road. This is also the most cost-effective proven way to significantly reduce road trauma.
Is this just a revenue-raising exercise?
The Safer Speeds Trial is a Mornington Peninsula Shire project. The Shire receives no revenue from traffic fines.
Will speed limits on other roads within the Mornington Peninsula also be changed?
Review and implementation of appropriate speed limits is an important part of improving road safety. Safe Speed is one of the four pillars of a Safe System approach to road safety. As such, the Shire’s Traffic and Transport team regularly reviews speed limits on Shire-managed roads in response to road safety risks and community concerns. The Shire also implements initiatives across the other three pillars (Safe Roads, Safe Road Use and Safe vehicles) to reduce serious road trauma.
Potential speed limit changes are assessed against Department of Transport’s Speed Zone Guidelines which take into account a number of factors when determining an appropriate speed limit for a road, such as the road environment, abutting land uses, the presence of vulnerable road users (pedestrians and cyclists), crash risk, volume of traffic, number of property accesses, intersecting roads and any crashes that have occurred.
When roads warrant speed limit changes, the changes are prioritised, and applications developed for submission to Department of Transport.
The suitable type and extent of community engagement for speed limit changes is considered on a case-by-case basis in line with Department of Transport’s Speed Zone Guidelines.