Hi Guys
Can you guys refresh me on rule of thumb for speed limits in Australia?
NZ is
100km rural
50km urban
Motorways 100km
Expressways 100 - 80km
then exceptions
30 Urban Wellington (very small amount of roads)
40 Urban Wellington (very small amount of roads)
60 Urban feeder roads
70 Urban feeder roads
80 Urban feeder roads
I know this is crude but is Australia similar?
Once upon a time, Australia’s speed limits were nice and simple.
Not any more.
The major highways/freeways/motorways are usually 100 or 110 km/h, but will occasionally have slower sections (90 or 80). A few highways in the Northern Territory have no speed limit. Some will have variable speed limits (with a signposted default) on some sections. There are a couple of places where the speed limit drops during rain but these are quite rare.
Other major roads (that Waze would consider minor highways) can have limits of 100, 90, 80, 70 or 60 km/h. Primary streets could have speed limits of 80, 70, 60 or 50 km/h. In either case, there can be sections near schools that drop to 40 km/h during defined hours.
Suburban streets used to pretty much all be 60 km/h, but many council areas have switched to having most roads with a limit of 50 km/h. There are some pockets of streets that are 40 or 30km/h - the relative frequency of these varies across states I think.
I’d be surprised if we could generate any heuristic rule that was better than about 60% accurate - and errors could be in either direction.
Thanks
What makes it worse in Victoria is they were in the middle of “simplifying it” (by making everything a multiple of 20) but it was abandoned half-way through. So now some roads that were 70km/h the whole way are split 80/60.
Generally speaking, each state has different road rules.
In Victoria for example, U-Turns are allowed by default unless stated (Waze doesn’t support this without adding U-Turn nodes everywhere), whereas in the other states they’re prohibited unless explicitly stated (much easier to waze).
In Victoria, the highest speed limit is 110km/h and is only allowed on Freeways, with 113km/h being a speeding ticket, the lowest speed on normal thoroughfares is 40km/h (Full time in the Melbourne CBD and a few town centres, as well as school times around schools), you can get lower than 40km/h but thats usually only for parking lots.
The law in Victoria stipulates that any unsigned road in a built-up area (unless rural) has a speed limit of 50km/h, however many roads are signposted 60km/h (this was the default for decades).