CO-SPONSORED BY THE ROAD ACCIDENT FUND

The three facts you should know

GENERAL SPEED LIMITS in terms of the National Road Traffic Act, 1989 and its Regulations are:

1. The severity of a crash increases with speed. If you speed you might not be able to stop. With a reaction time of one second, it will take the average driver driving at 110km/h about 90m to come to a stop on a dry surface.
   
   If the driver encounters a hazard such as a pedestrian at a distance, of say, 60m ahead, the car will hit the pedestrian at an impact speed of 80km/h.
   
   At that speed there is a 100 percent chance that the pedestrian will be killed. If the driver were driving at 100km/h instead of 110, the collision speed would be 60km/h and the chances of the pedestrian being killed would be reduced to 70 percent.
   
   Had this driver been driving at 90km/h, the collision speed would have been 30km/h and the chance of death for the pedestrian would be educed further still, to approximately 7%.

And the driver?

The implications are just as dire for the occupants of the car. Their likelihood of death at a collision speed of 80km/h is 20 times higher than at an impact speed of 32 km/h.

Put this into an urban context. If a child steps off a pavement 35 metres ahead of you, at the recommended speed of 50km/h you would stop with nine metres to spare. At the speed limit of 60km/h you would have only two metres to spare. At 70 km/h, the child would be dead.

This is why SPEED KILLS, and why speed is one of the major focuses in the ARRIVE ALIVE campaign this year.

2. The effectiveness of safety devices such as air bags and safety belts is severely compromised at high speed. The poor quality of many vehicles on our roads and the problem of overloading of vehicles further increase the risk of crashes.

3. Accident avoidance is more difficult at high speed because of the longer distance travelled during reaction time, the longer distance required to stop and the greater difficulty of controlling a vehicle at high speed.

4. Increased accident risk as high speed places greater strain on tyres and brakes which increases the risk of failure.

5. Human factors: High speeds reduce the visual field of the driver, restrict his/her peripheral vision and place greater demand on the task of driving.

SLOW DOWN for POOR VISIBILITY when there is insufficient street lighting at night, when the sun is low on the horizon, in mist, in rain, or during veld fires or storms. Reduce your speed to below the speed limit as these conditions reduce vision and prevent a driver from reacting in time to hazardous situations.

SLOW DOWN when ROAD CONDITIONS are not good. Driving at high speed on a wet road surface, on gravel or through roadworks will cause a vehicle to skid if you have to brake or change direction suddenly. You have then lost control as the vehicle will continue skidding at the same speed and in the same direction as it was travelling.

The Truvelo® MPC Speed Measuring Instrument is lightweight and portable and accommodates three or four sensor cable configurations to give two independent time measurements resulting in two independent speed results. It has an automatic difference detector, which will reject both readings if the difference is greater than 2 kilometres per hour.

The Truvelo® Combi Speed / Red Light Camera System, comprising the Truvelo MPC speed measuring instrument and a 35mm camera, combines unique features only available from Truvelo into one powerful unit. One system will photograph speeding vehicles, vehicles violating the red light at a traffic intersection, pedestrian or railroad crossing or both types of violations. A single front photograph, taken just after the vehicle has crossed the piezo sensors used for speed measurement, includes all the secondary check information needed.

Truvelo® Moving Violation Recorder (MVR) is a patrol mounted on-board speed-measuring instrument. During the course of normal traffic patrol duties, the traffic officer can now also measure vehicle speeds and enforce speed limits. The MVR gives the officer unique features not possessed by any other similar equipment on the market.

The ProLaser II makes use of light detection and the ranging (LIDAR) principle to measure the speed of vehicles. The light beam is focused and narrow.

The unique feature of the ProLaser is that it enables positive target identification through the application of laser technology. The officer points the aiming reticile at one particular vehicle in a group of vehicles and the speed and distance of that vehicle is obtained by pulling the trigger. The reticile, speed, as well as the targeted vehicle are visible in the heads-up display, so that constant attention is forced and one would not be able to make a vehicle identification mistake even in dense traffic conditions.

VASCAR® (Visual Average Speed Computer and Recorder) is a system designed to record the distance travelled by a vehicle and the time taken to cover that distance. It then computes the average speed of that vehicle over the measured distance. The VASCAR® is the most accurate and versatile system for checking speeding offences and enforcing speed limits under varying conditions. It increases the efficiency of traffic police as it does not interfere with their normal duties. It also provides precise measurement of distances up to 70 kilometres and calculates time to 0.01 seconds for vehicle gap measurement. It can measure speed in various ways.

VASCAR V PLUS® (Visual Average Speed Computer and Recorder Video Plus) utilises a CCD camera allowing the operator to video any moving violation onto VHS, with the VCR mounted in the boot of the vehicle. With this system the officer’s ability to record offences is greatly advanced as everything is recorded and the evidence is irrevocable.