Slower than a cat – outrage and delight at speed limits

All over Waiheke they have sprouted, like lollipops in time for Christmas. They were unwrapped on Thursday – sweet, new speed limits, as low as 30 and 40kph on nearly all the island’s roads.

Cyclists are ecstatic. ‘‘Can hardly contain myself! So exciting!’’ wrote Pauline Newell on a Waiheke Facebook page. ‘‘We’ll be able to wave to each other, have time to pass cyclists and pedestrians safely, look out for kids and move around the island slowly.’’

Moving ‘‘around the island slowly’’, as a call to action, is a hard sell – a paradigm shift, like earning less to keep down carbon emissions. You’ll have to excuse us: we are rearranging our mental furniture here. For plenty of motorists, including courier drivers, habitual ferry-missers, road ragers and ‘‘boy racers’’, being ordered to drive at cat running speed (google it) – by the widely loathed Auckland Transport (AT) – is exquisite torture.

There used to be a sign at Pūtiki Bay on Waiheke, which greeted visitors driving off the car ferry with ‘‘Slow Down, You’re Here’’. It was aimed at the weekenders in ‘‘Remuera tractors’’, who swept regally around Waiheke’s narrow roads squishing ducklings and sending pūkeko squawking into drains. Now AT’s ivory tower technocrats are telling us we are the ones who need to slow down?

If Waiheke could pull up anchor and set sail indignantly for anywhere but here, it would, propelled on the outrage of thousands of motorists.

Dark talk about the subject fills local Facebook pages. People say the new speeds are so slow drivers will fall asleep at the wheel, or crash while admiring the scenery, or crash while being overtaken or tail-gated. Others say it will murder their diesel engines. Taxi drivers worry they will need to charge so much they will go out of business.

AT has saved the fastest speeds for the winding, unsealed roads at the rural end of the island, which makes people wonder if any of its staff have ever been there. Follow the money, say islanders – who see it as yet more council revenuegathering. AT responds by saying neither it nor the council receives money from fines, which are collected by police and go into the government’s Consolidated Fund.

One incredulous person asked if these were recommendations or laws. Laws, he was told – but only if you are caught. A wag suggested bringing back the old laws requiring self-propelled vehicles to be led by a pedestrian waving a red flag, to warn the supposed new page tract provoked another experienced bus driver, Allen Davies, into writing a letter supporting the limits.

Mahoney called the new limits, on an island which hasn’t seen a road death for years, ‘‘ridiculous’’. While he accepted that Waiheke’s narrow, winding roads posed a danger to cyclists, he pointed out that what they needed was a cycle network worthy of the name.

Davies’ letter said the new limits were needed to fight ‘‘horrific attitudes to driving’’. He mentioned masters of our roads – horse riders, several accidents caused by walkers and cyclists. speeding vehicles. His wife, he

In recent Gulf News letters to the wrote, no longer walks along the editor, the new speed limits have road on which they live, for fear of pushed other crises (cancelled being hit by a car. ‘‘I say to everyferries, housing, the Pūtiki marina one on this island, slow down ... and helicopters) from the page. what is your hurry?’’

Jim Mahoney, the former editor As a habitual pedestrian, I have of NZ Truth, armed with his to agree. Motorists don’t have a experience as a bus and taxi driver, human right to drive fast, unless led the charge, excoriating AT’s lives are at stake. Cyclists, walkers, Safe Speeds Programme. His two- and other drivers have a right to safe roads – and everyone wants children to be able to walk or cycle to school. The road I live on is so narrow that cars need to swerve around walkers, cyclists and horses; there are no footpaths or cycle paths.

Both letter writers are right – Mahoney in his call for a life-saving cycle network, and Davies in supporting what AT calls ‘‘survivable speed limits’’. On its website, AT refers to a study from Austroads, a collective of Australian and New Zealand transport agencies. This suggests that, if a pedestrian is hit by a car travelling at 30kph, the risk of dying is 10%. If a person is hit by a car travelling at 50kph, the risk of dying is 80%.

Vibeke Brethouwer, a cycle advocate supporting the new speed limits, reminds us that cyclists are drivers too. And that ‘‘waiting for accidents to happen’’, as she said on Facebook, ‘‘is a very very bad way to design our streets’’.