Speed limits change very quickly. Motorists looking away just for a moment, or a truck obscures vision just at the wrong moment, and you miss the speed limit sign altogether.In Adelaide, where we are based, it is possible to be driving in 6 different speed limit-zones, if you include the 25 km/h, when school-zone limits apply.
Without realizing, you could be breaking the speed limit. There has to be an easier way! We may have found one.
WHY NOT ..paint every tenth centre-line a different color to white, if the speed limit is not 60* km/h?
*Please note: Suburban Streets are now 50 km/h. This complicates this issue even more. A simpler system to the current one (the speed limit is 50 km/h, unless signs say otherwise) is urgently required!
A change of speed limit could not easily be missed. Plus there would be a constant reminder, what the speed limit is on a particular stretch of road, where the speed is not 60 km/h.
Our idea only requires 3 colours (red, green and yellow) to be used. Six colours would be confusing.
Only every 10th line or so needs to be colour-coded.
A road with a solid white centre-line would be over-painted every thirty meters to indicate what the speed limit is on this suburban stretch of road.
Everyone knows the colours already:
Red 90
Amber 80
Green 70
Streets where the speed limit is 60 km/h or under, or above 90 km/h, would not be colour-coded under this system.
There is another aspect to this radical proposal: This system would allow for authorities to paint green lines for a short distance within a 60 km/h zone, simply to indicate that for this short stretch of road 70 km/h is allowed, e.g when there are no driveways or side roads etc.
I am not suggesting to do away with traditional speed signs. This colour-coding idea is meant to be an additional help to motorists, who are less likely caught speeding, because they were unaware of the speed restriction.
