So the traffic cops are extending their 4km-only tolerance limit until the end of the month and are looking at making it permanent. This has a feeling of pre-concieved inevitability about it. Although Acting Superintendent Rob Morgan assures us that the permanent adoption “will really be an evidence-based decision”, we all know that this is complete [...]

The Herald reports on a new study that suggests a link between premature births and proximity to motorways. At first glance this seems like it is intuitively right – all that pollution and carbon monoxide could be expected to produce low birth-weight, premature babies. Unfortunately, this study, which can be accessed in full here (PDF), [...]

Yesterday Steven Joyce finally announced he was raising the driving age. Unfortunately, he is only raising it to a timid 16 years. Still, at least we won’t have the lowest driving age in the developed world and one of the highest youth fatality rates. I find it hard to believe that there is so much [...]

Freakonomics cites a recent paper on road fatalities: According to a recent paper by Lee S. Friedman, Donald Hedeker, and Elihu D. Richter, the lifting of the federal 55 mph speed limit in 1995 was responsible for 12,545 deaths between 1995 and 2005. That’s about 45 percent more American fatalities than we have suffered in 9/11, Iraq [...]

I spend an hour to an hour and a half on Auckland freeways every working day of my life. This gives me plenty of time to listen to music and think about blog posts (if I could write them in traffic, I would be a happy man!) It also gives me plenty of time to [...]

The serious accident over the weekend involving a car ploughing into four cyclists has brought out the usual knee-jerk response from the cycling associations. This from Cycle Action Auckland: She hoped Auckland Mayor John Banks would be prepared to discuss options such as narrowing the traffic lanes to provide more space for cyclists, and lowering [...]