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Self-employed Stanmore Bay resident Geoff Upson spends a lot of his time driving, with work taking him between here and Helensville or the North Shore.
His odometer shows he racked up 39,000km in 12 months, much of it on open roads where speeds are currently set at 100kph.
He says the proposal by Auckland Transport (AT) to lower that to 60kph or 80kph on some roads is behind his recent series of blogs, coupled with a Keep it 100 awareness campaign.
Geoff considers speed reduction appropriate in places such as Orewa Boulevard, but not on the open road, where other factors are more important for safety.
He frequently calls AT about road maintenance and other safety issues, such as the need to prevent sheep wandering onto the road. His previous successful attempts to get action included drawing penises on Kahikatea Flat Road last year, where a giant pothole needed to be fixed.
His blogs ran during AT’s consultation on its Speed Limit Bylaw proposals (HM March 1), which concluded on March 31.
The blogs offered ways to make roads safer, other than reducing the speed, which included better education for young drivers (such as compulsory safe driving courses and including motorway driving in the driving test), signs focused on safety, spending more on park and rides, requiring developers to fund wider safer roads, registration for cyclists and more passing bays on open roads.
Geoff says that a major cause of frustration is being stuck behind a slower driver – he says when this happens, he sits on the horn to try and get them to pull over – providing there is somewhere safe to do so.
The requirement for drivers to pull to the left, if their speed is impeding traffic flow, is already enshrined in Land Transport’s Road User Rules (section 2.1) but Geoff says not enough drivers are aware of this and there are also not enough passing bays.
Geoff’s blogs can be found on his Facebook page.
AT’s road safety campaign, which includes the Speed Limit Bylaw review, has a budget of $700 million and a target of reducing deaths and serious injuries on Auckland roads by 60 percent over a 10-year period – the target is 18 percent in the first three years (HM September 5, 2018). The focus locally will be on safety on roads and at intersections, speed management, vulnerable road user safety, sober driving and distracted driving behaviours.
Local safety engineering projects to be delivered (2018-19) include zebra crossings in Centreway Road in Orewa and Waiora Road, Stanmore Bay – as well as the speed cushions that were recently put onto Laurence Street in Manly at a cost of $70,000.
