Speeding is not always the reason for a crash

This weekend was not a happy one for the friends and family of a Canberra motorcyclist. He is dead, following an accident on Tharwa Road in rural Canberra.

Canberra Times photo of Police at the scene of the Tharwa Road accident

From the Canberra Times report (my bolding):

"Before 3.30pm, the Evatt man was riding south, when he swerved around a plastic road barrier that closed off the section of Tharwa Road south of the Lanyon Homestead.


The motorcycle then ploughed through a wire fence behind the road barrier, and the man was flung about 4m from his bike.


Emergency services arrived at the scene shortly after, and paramedics attempted to resuscitate and stabilise the man, but he was soon pronounced dead.


Police believe that the motorcyclist was speeding, and said there was adequate signage warning of the road closure."

So the sequence of events leading to this event are:

• He was traveling along Lanyon Road, 
• He rode around a 'road closed' sign,
• He rode around plastic barriers across the road,
• He collided with the fence across the closed off part of the road, 
• He was ejected from his motorcycle and died as a result of the injuries sustained upon impact. 

Tragic. I feel very sad for the family and friends of this man.

On the ABC television news last night I watched the report of the accident, and then the Australian Federal Policeman interviewed by the media who attended the accident. The ABC News presenter, goes on to say  that police believe speeding was a factor in the accident. This is also reported in the Canberra Times.

This jump to immediately isolate speed as the cause is a knee jerk response. Its the sort of response given to the media without thought, intended to scare all drivers into driving slower. Does this mean I should travel at 60 km/h on the 80 km/h sections of the Parkway from now on ? I'm not sure.

I am not the coroner, but the information publicly available indicates that the accident was caused by careless driving and inattention. Speed may have been a factor, but not the major, primary or most relevant factor.

One factor which needs to be assessed is the proximity of the 'road closed' signage to the fence across the road, and the location of the signage. Was it easily visible or on a blind corner ? The following stills are from the ABC news report.

 Plastic barriers on corner

 The gate that the deceased rider collided with

Looking back from the gate are, you can see the corner.

The speed limit on that road is 80 100 km/h. If the motorcycle was traveling at the posted limit, and collided with the fence across the road, then the motorcyclist would still have been flung through the air and landed on the ground sustaining injuries.

The same result would have occurred at 60 km/h. I am not a physics expert, but I suspect there may be a speed at which one could ride a motorcycle head on into a fence and NOT be thrown from it, but I suspect its pretty low, perhaps lower than 20 km/h.

To often, speed is blamed as a cause of an accident, when it is merely one of a range of factors responsible - the primary factor being poor decision making by the rider/driver, or inadequate road engineering. I will try and keep track of this case, and see what the coroner concludes.

Update: Google Street View of the accident location.
Update 2: The speed limit is 100 km/h on Tharwa Rd
Update 3: The ABC News report is available online.

Canberra ranked 7th out of 8 in 'motorist unfriendly' capital cities

A recent article in the Age newspaper ranked Canberra as 7th out of 8 Australian capital cities that are motorist unfriendly. This must be wonderful news for the people who claim that Canberra was a city designed for car use.

The Age article is based on a report issued by Virgin Car Insurance and is typically motorist focussed using variables such as tolls and parking fees etc to compile its rankings. It concluded Sydney was the most 'motorist unfriendly' capital city.

Disappointingly for Canberra motorists, the report concluded that Canberra was the most expensive capital city to buy petrol in, has the most expensive car registration and, the highest rate of car theft.

Virgin concluded in its report that livability is based on how easy it is to drive your car around saying:

• "Sydney may be well regarded as one of the world's most liveable cities, but that's certainly not the case for those who own a car."
• "Skyrocketing costs when it comes to tolls, parking and fines means more pain for Sydney drivers.
• "The cost of running a car in Sydney is undoubtedly putting pressure on the family budget and may well be starting to push people off the road" 

If the cost of running a car is causing people to investigate public transport, that can be viewed as a good thing. I don't think that punishing motorists is the right way to encourage public transport use, but in Sydney and Canberra we see the bizarre case where motorists are punished financially, yet there is no real increase in public transport use.

The only proven way to reduce road congestion is to offer proper mass transit public transport linking employment and population centres. If there is no alternative, people will drive.