Well, who’d have thought so many people would have so many impassioned opinions on a government doing what it said it would? When PM Chris Luxon and the new Transport Minister Chris Bishop announced their speed limit reduction reversals at the beginning of the week, it didn’t take long for many voices to sound their opinions.

So, allow me to add mine.

Though it probably shouldn’t have, the amount of commentary surprised me. The reduction of speed limits by the previous Labour government in the name of safety and emissions reductions was panned by the opposition as ‘slowing down’ the country and impacting productivity. National promised to reverse the reductions, and now it has. We’d expected it.

These ‘blanket’ speed limit reductions applied, in fact, to only certain sections of road around the country – ergo, so too the ‘blanket’ reversals, with 38 sections of the state highway network to be reversed back to their previous higher speed limits by NZTA over the next five months. Consultation is underway for a further 49 sections of the network.

We also know that the government wants new highways to be designed for 110km/h and has already set about implementing this limit on some existing motorway sections such as the Kāpiti Expressway. This should probably be subject to its own discussion, but I see no issue with these increased speeds on smooth, flowing motorways of multiple lanes and featuring barriers and controlled access.

Some in-town limits have been tinkered with, too, and local streets outside schools will be required to have variable speed limits by 1 July 2026.

The overwhelmingly critical response to all this seems to be that the risk of road crashes will rise, as will the cost to the economy and our emissions. School children will be at increased risk, and the government is riding roughshod over local communities. There’s an element of truth to all of this.

The claim of productivity increase is just talk – from a road transport perspective, any speed limit over 90km/h means nothing when you’re driving a truck, and when traffic is moving at an average of 30km/h, it doesn’t matter what the speed limit is. The benefit will be to the happy motorist who doesn’t feel they’re forced to drive unnecessarily slowly when the road is clear.

No, let’s not see all this for anything other than what it is: politicians doing politics. The campaign promise was to reverse speed limits, and that’s what the government’s done. I’ll bet my bottom dollar that when Labour returns to the hot seat one day, it will return to ‘slowing down the country’. And, likewise, if it is in the name of safety, it’ll again be just talk.

The pieces missing in the safety puzzle are education, enforcement and repercussion – 130km/h is speeding whether you’re on a highway marked 100km/h or 110km/h, and people with a death wish will still overtake on double yellows around a left-hand bend over a blind rise when they lose patience with the slower vehicle ahead. And as for school zones, when I moved to New Zealand, I was told, “They’re really strict on speed, and god help you if you’re caught speeding past a school!” Five years later, my response to that is, “Yeah, right…”

Any political party can fiddle with the speed limits all it wants, and we can continue to bemoan its actions either way. But it all means little if there are motorists who ignore it anyway without fear of consequence.

Take care out there,

Gavin Myers
Editor