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Ministry of Transport

Speed

Overview

Speeding is defined as driving too fast for the conditions.

The faster you go, the more likely you are to crash and the greater your risk of serious injury or death. No matter what causes a crash, vehicle speed directly affects the force of impact.

Speed and crash risk

As speed increases, there is an increase in the following factors and, in turn, an associated increase in the risk of crash involvement (Patterson, Frith and Small, 2000):

  • Stopping distance — both the distance travelled during reaction time and the distance travelled after the brakes are applied
  • The probability of exceeding the critical speed on a curve
  • The chance of other road users misjudging how fast the speeding driver is travelling
  • The probability of a rear-end crash if the driver has not accounted for the increased speed by increasing the following distance.

Summary

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Speeding crashes and casualties

Note: The Police Traffic Crash Report form was modified in 2001. The speeding ('too fast for conditions') data since this change are not strictly comparable to earlier data.

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Contribution of speeding to crashes

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Who dies

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Drivers involved in crashes involving speeding

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Driver licence status and speeding

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When speeding crashes occur

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RD060 Road deaths with speed as a contributing factor by region

The faster you go, the more likely you are to crash and the greater your risk of serious injury or death.

Please note the following section of content is possibly being delivered from an external source (IFRAME in HTML terms), and may present unusual experiences for screen readers.