From the New Zealand Herald: “More than a third of motorists drive over the 50km/h speed limit.” (emphasis mine).
Hold on a minute.
From the Wikipedia article on speed limits: “Traffic engineers may rely on the 85th percentile rule to establish speed limits. The speed limit should be set to the speed that separates the bottom 85% of vehicle speeds from the top 15%. … The theory is that traffic laws that reflect the behavior of the majority of motorists may have better compliance than laws that arbitrarily criminalize the majority of motorists…”
Well that makes sense, doesn’t it. But sense doesn’t always apply when you’re a nanny-state bent on protecting people from themselves. No, wait, hold on a minute… back to the Herald: “Police collect about $50 million a year from speeding fines, figures released to the Weekend Herald under the Official Information Act show.”
Ah, that’s the reason. Maybe if NZ had a well-funded traffic police as in olden times, they could focus on dangerous driving rather than pure speed (it’s possible to drive dangerously within the speed limit), and then the police could go back to spending most of their time stopping people from being stabbed, beaten and shot in South Auckland…
