For a while the forces of woke stopped me from running over schoolchildren in my vehicle. But thanks to the government, I’m back in business.
Not everyone rejoiced when prime minister Chris Luxon and transport minister Chris Bishop stood on a section of State Highway 2 near Featherston to announce they’re going to get rid of speed limit reductions across the country. Some questioned whether it might be in bad taste to celebrate speed increases near where several people have died in high-speed crashes. Others pointed out the supposed productivity gains used to justify the new speed laws were minor to illusory, given most drivers will save seconds at best, while others will crash their cars and be burdened with long-term conditions notorious for dampening productivity, such as being dead.
For me though, the announcement was cause for jubilation. After several years of being held down by the woke anti-child death lobby, I’m finally able to go back to my favourite pastime of hooning at dangerous speeds on roads near primary, intermediate, or occasionally high schools.
On Friday, Auckland Transport revealed the map of the streets where it’s being forced to raise the speed limit from 30km/h to 50km/h, and it’s a veritable smorgasbord of possibilities. Take Caram Place near my home in Birkenhead. For too long it’s been a sleepy cul-de-sac a short walk from a primary school. But thanks to the government’s wisdom, soon I’ll be able to career down its curving 100m length at speeds high enough to kill a pedestrian in 80% of collisions.
But as per usual, the North Shore is only getting a small slice of Auckland’s fun. If you really want to waft the smell of burning rubber up a school child’s nostrils, it’s best to head to the historic central suburbs, where dozens of narrow roads are having their speed limits increased to what I hope will be desperately unsafe levels. Thanks to this great victory over the forces of physics and evidence, you can catch me doing burnouts on Putiki Street by Newton Central School.
Some people might think these are outliers, and the speed limit increases will predominantly apply to four-lane urban highways. Those people would be wrong. Nearly every speed limit reduction Auckland Transport put in place over the last few years was near a school. With those changes gone, I’ll be able to put the pedal to the metal on Douglas Road by Maungawhau Primary.
Once I’m done there, it’s just a 20-minute jaunt down to McVilly Road outside the Blind and Low Vision Education Network in Manurewa. Blind people have simply had it too good for too long.
Of course, there will be some limitations. The immediate area around schools will still be 30km/h at pickup and drop-off times, which will ensure children are safe provided they don’t do any before or after-school activities, or indeed exist in areas more than 200m from their campus. Taking those simple precautions will help them avoid becoming unwitting participants in my soon-to-be daily 3.15pm drag race down Hepburn Street and into Sheridan Lane in Freemans Bay.
As always, there will be naysayers. I’m anticipating a few quibbles from parents who want their children to be able to walk or bike to school without being mowed down by a distracted driver in a Ford Ranger. I get it. As a dad, even I sometimes want my children to survive. But what’s more important: kids getting a small section of public space where they’re able to feel safe and learn independence, or drivers getting to the next set of traffic lights 0.6 seconds faster? I think if they truly search the recesses of their heart, even the most protective parent knows the answer.
There may also be those who say that at $8.8m, the cost of raising speed limits on a host of narrow roads outside primary schools does seem a little steep. But those stick-in-the-muds will soon change their tune once they experience the unparalleled adrenaline rush of barely swerving around a group of terrified eight-year-olds as they’re trying to cross a suburban culvert.
If even that’s not enough to win over the sceptics, I’d simply copy former transport minister Simeon Brown and say the words “Labour’s blanket speed limit reductions” 764 times per day. If history is anything to go by, the media will uncritically adopt that framing despite even a cursory glance at the map of the roads involved proving it’s demonstrably false. After a while, people will start saying things like “blanket speed limit reductions? That’s not right, they should be targeted to places like schools”. Then I’ll harness that misplaced anger to get rid of targeted speed limit reductions around places like schools, which will happily take us back to where we are today.
