Mr Revhead wrote:S T E A L T H wrote:My opinion:
1) Horsepower restirctions will NOT reduce the road toll
2) Speed restrictors on cars will most definately INCREASE it.
i am keen to hear your reasoning behind those two
1) Was already tried elsewhere and ended up being a dysmal failure with no reduction in the road toll (on the contrary - an increase).
To be expected when you ban people from driving modern, safe cars in favour of old sh#tbuckets with no safety equipment and 1-star crash safety rating.
These pointless government excercises tend to be a nightmare to implement with thousands of staff hours and millions of taxpayer dollars wasted to no benefit at all.
Here's the example closest to home:
http://www.caradvice.com.au/6587/p-plater-vehicle-restrictions-under-fire/
2) If you've ever driven a speed-resticted truck (I've driven a few) you would know that pretty much none of them are set the same as the other. Just like there are minor variances in the speedometers of all cars vs actual speed, all restrictors have a variance of +/- 1-3 km/h. Now imagine this being applied in a practical sense to every vehicle on the road. Every driver would be driving with their foot to the floor, letting the restrictor cut in, except invariably some will be slower than others resulting in bunching, frustration, shambolic overtaking, massive traffic congestion and accidents at every corner.
Also as mentioned above head on crashes will ncrease due to people spending longer time on the wrong side of the road.
If this were to be introduced you can also bet your bottom dollar that there will be hundreds of people (myself being one of them) who will refuse to participate in this social experiment and de-activate the restrictor at the earliest opportunity.
The flipside of this is the thousands of other drivers will be naturally assuming that the car coming towards them on SH1 is doing 100km/h. When it's me (or someone else) doing 140km/h. So when thy pull out to pass the car doing 98.3 km/h, even though they thought they had plenty of room to complete their maneuvre its all gonna turn to sh!t mighty quick.
However, although roads have less grip in the wet, I would consider crap tyres to be more of a problem. If you buy cheap / average tyres they are rubbish in the rain 
. Not sure how to improve roads for the rain though as really that comes down to slowing down. Don't hit a corner @ 100km/h in the wet just because the speed limit says 100 etc. I barely hit 100km/h today while out driving as surface flooding is near on invisible on some roads. Could blame that on the roads, or could blame any accidents that happen on the flooded areas are due to drivers to paying attention.
