A program for monitoring vehicle speeds in South Australia

Abstract

A program designed to monitor the speed behaviour of motorists commenced at 132 sites in South Australia in 2007. The sites selected included sites with historical measurements supplemented by new sites to give a broad range of road types. Individual speed and vehicle classification data was collected for one week on local, collector and arterial roads in metropolitan and rural areas. Surveys on a subset of 52 roads in built up areas conducted to evaluate the impact of the 50 km/h Default Urban Speed Limit were used to monitor trends dating back to 2002. The 132 sites measured in 2007 established a benchmark more representative of the road network as a whole. The paper discusses some initial comparisons with previous datasets and general points of interest in mass speed datasets from a road safety research perspective.