Speed is one of the major factors contributing to road trauma. The vast majority of crashes in New South Wales (NSW) occur on 60 km/h roads and the groups most at risk are pedestrians, in particular children and the elderly, and cyclists. The NSW Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) has developed a major speed management strategy to reduce road trauma in NSW. The key objectives of the strategy are: To ensure the community drives consistently at safe speeds; To implement an effective system for managing the speeding problem; and To make speeding socially unacceptable. Key integrated elements of the strategy include communication and public education, speed limits and speed zoning, enforcement, regulation and legislation. A major initiative of the speed management strategy was the introduction of a 50 km/h urban speed limit, implemented as a joint partnership between councils, their communities and the RTA. This paper discusses the rationale for a lowered limit on local streets, the implementation of the 50 km/h speed limit, and evaluation findings to date. (a) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E202275.
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