Ministers accept 100km/h default speed as OK for rural road pedestrians – no questions asked
“The hardest things to change are the mindsets that create the systems that need to be changed” –Donella Meadows
By Patrick Francis
It would be difficult to find a more blatant example of road safety policy failure than the November 2025 decision by state and territory Transport ministers to ignore the proposal to remove the default 100km/h speed limit on rural roads and replace it with lower speed limits.
The communique for infrastructure and transport ministers’ meeting on 21 November 2025 about the National Road Safety Strategy – Default Speed Limits, “Ministers noted the Commonwealth does not set speed limits in any jurisdiction, and that states and territories are responsible for these decisions. No further work is being undertaken on open road default speed limits”.
A spokesperson for federal Transport Minister Catherine King said “At the infrastructure and transport ministers’ meeting on Friday, states and territories raised concerns to a blanket approach to speed limits and reiterated their responsibility for setting speed limits in their jurisdictions.”
Given the default speed limit for unposted rural roads in all states and territories has been an accepted “blanket” 100km/h (110km/h in WA and NT) for decades alongside state determined posted speed limits for all other rural roads, how can the ministers suddenly conclude that their own state responsibility for setting speed limits would be threatened if the 100km/h default speed limit was reduced?
The background data for “no further work” provided to the ministers and their advisors by the Federal Department of Transport’s Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) for reducing the 100km/h default speed limit outside built up areas includes:
* 10% increase in road fatalities per 100,000 population between 2020 and 2024.
* 65% of Australia’s road fatalities over the last 10 years occurred on rural roads.
* 85% of these road fatalities occurred on roads with speed limits at or above 80km/h
* Increasing road trauma is happening despite improvements in vehicle safety technology and government funded road safety campaigns.
* Speed is the single most significant contributor to road trauma.
* Speed management is a proven, cost-effective intervention.
* Without action on default speed limits Australia will not meet its national and state road trauma reduction targets of halving road deaths by 2030 and net zero road deaths by 2050.
* 100km/h (110km/h) default speed limit roads are used for 5 – 10% of personal vehicle kilometres travelled, and for 3 – 10% of freight kilometres travelled on unsealed and sealed roads respectively (RIA estimates table 21). Data from state and territory transport departments for amount of travel on default rural roads is “scarce to non-existent as most traffic counts and speed data are collected from roads where speed limit signs are collected”.
It is significant the RIA did not mention that many default 100km/h roads outside town boundaries are shared with pedestrian and cyclists. This is a road safety policy failure in itself as it reinforces a widely held omission by state and territory Transport departments which ignore the safety of this rural road sharing cohort in their road safety strategies and speed setting technical guidelines.
Figure 1: Unprotected people share default 100km/h rural roads with vehicles as demonstrated on Moffats lane Romsey Vic. But their safety is currently being ignored by all state and territory transport ministers and the road safety engineers who advise them and write each state’s road speed policy and guidelines. Photos: Patrick Francis.
The pedestrian fatality trend for Australia was also omitted from the RIA. The Australian Automobile Association data show pedestrian fatality rate is increasing in spite of each state having a Road Safety Strategy based on the Safe System principles and a policy for Vision Zero road fatalities by 2050.
Figure 2: Pedestrian deaths are continuing to increase despite state and territory road safety strategies to reduce them. Source: Australian Automobile Association January 2026.
While around 65% of these pedestrian fatalities happen on urban streets, the risk is just as great for each event where an individual walking along a default 100km/h road outside a town boundary is overtaken or passed by a vehicle. This point is emphasised by Austroads the peak organisation of Australasian road transport and traffic agencies (March 2021), “More than half of serious casualty crashes are associated with human error. The Safe System approach emphasises that such errors should not result in fatal and serious injuries, and therefore the road environment should be forgiving of human error. There is also a need to reduce the occurrence of human error in the first place”. And in Austroads (October 2025) “Elected officials and senior government executives must understand the Safe System approach and Vision Zero, including required milestones, resources, and the importance of avoiding the blame on road users”.
The contribution of human error to fatalities on rural roads is demonstrated by the Australian Road Safety Foundation’s 2024- 24 research. It found 44% of drivers admit to breaking road rules when travelling on rural roads including default speed limit roads because they believe it is safe to do so. It recorded 71 pedestrians and 15 cyclists killed on rural roads in the 12 months to September 2025. The three most common driver human errors were speeding, fatigue, and using a mobile phone.
Figure 3: Human error is a greater contributing factor behind pedestrian and cyclist fatalities on rural roads as some drivers relax their safety standards and break road rules because they believe it is safe to do so. Source: Australian Road Safety Foundation.
At least one state Transport minister, Victoria’s Gabrielle Williams should have opposed the “no further work” conclusion as applied to local roads outside town boundaries as the Department’s own Speed Zoning Policy 2021 clearly states ‘The default speed limit for outside built-up areas is 100 km/h. A default speed limit should only be applied to a road where it is considered safe and appropriate’. This means the default 100km/h speed limit should not apply on roads where unprotected road users are not separated from traffic because collision research demonstrates that at this speed a vehicle pedestrian collision is fatal 100% of the time.
The NSW transport minister John Graham should also have objected to the “no further work” conclusion because his NSW Speed Zoning Standard September 2025 states on page 46 “for roads that accommodate both vulnerable road users, such as pedestrians and people cycling, and the vehicular movement of people and goods, priority shall be given to setting speed limits that protect vulnerable road users. Speed limits can vary depending on the level of vulnerable road user activity on a road and the level of infrastructure that is provided”.
Both ministers already have the policy guidelines settings to reduce the default 100km/h speed limit where safety of unprotected road users is under threat but have opted not to do so.
The policy failure around road safety for pedestrians/cyclists sharing 100km/h default speed limit roads with vehicles is acknowledged by road safety experts. One stated, “Lowering the limit to 40 km/h (or even 60 km/h with supporting traffic-calming) is entirely consistent with Victorian policy, Safe System principles and the evidence base. Where councils have combined modest infrastructure changes with area-wide low limits, they’ve achieved large safety gains without impeding local farm or commercial traffic”.
Figure 4: The road safety policy failure around the application of the 100km/h default speed limit outside town boundaries is clearly evident by Transport Victoria where it adopts the Safe System principles for its Road Safety Strategy 2021 – 2030 and its Speed Zoning Policy 2021 which states the default speed is inappropriate when people safety is at risk, yet pedestrians and cyclists sharing local access roads outside town boundaries are under constant threat of fatality and serious injury from trucks and other vehicles. Photos: 100km/h Moffats lane originating just 400km outside the Romsey town boundary.
Figure 5: The speed limit on roads shared with vulnerable road users is acknowledged in all state and territory road safety strategies and the National Road Safety Strategy 2021 – 2030 signed off by all state and territory Transport Department ministers to be less than 50km/h to minimise collision fatalities. Yet all the ministers ignored these vulnerable road users when they decided in November 2025 that ‘no further work’ was necessary around lowering the default rural road 100km/h speed limit.
The omission of this pedestrian/cyclist cohort by the state and territory ministers is contributed to by the Transport departments own road safety research and technical guidelines organisation, Austroads. Its purpose is to “…undertake leading-edge road and transport research which underpins our input to policy development” for its member transport departments. Its research has been responsible for the introduction of widely implemented 30 – 40km/h maximum speed limits on urban roads which are shared with pedestrians and cyclists.
Austroads has published at least five important speed setting guidelines since 2014 (see references) all promoting the importance of adopting a 30km/h speed limit on roads shared with pedestrians and cyclists, but none refer to sharing happening on rural roads outside town boundaries. This was clearly highlighted in an April 2025 Austroads safe speeds webinar when one road safety engineer posted a diagram showing how different street movement and place factors require different maximum speed limits. In urban setting there are five street situations requiring adoption of 30km/h speed limits, in rural settings there are none, figure 1.
Figure 6: In an Austroads webinar one road safety expert pointed out that on urban streets there are at least five movement and place situations where 30km/h speed limit is necessary to keep people safe when walking, but outside rural town boundaries there are none despite people sharing roads with vehicles that can be travelling at a default speed of 100km/h.
The speaker Dr Hafez Alvari pointed out that five key components for introducing 30km/h zones are missing in state Transport departments to keep people safe when walking, they are:
* Lack of clear policy and legislative frameworks
* Lack of strong leadership, governance and coordination
* Lack of stakeholder engagement and public communication
* Lack of funding and resource allocation, and
* Lack of effective enforcement, compliance and incentives.
Figure 7: Austroads has been highlighting the impact of speed on pedestrian fatality rate on shared roads for years but the message is ignored by all state and territory transport ministers when it comes to lowering the default 100km/h speed limit on local roads outside town boundaries shared with pedestrians and cyclists. Source: Austroads October 2025.
Ignoring the RIS facts plus the omission of pedestrians and cyclists sharing default 100km/h roads outside town boundaries means the ministers and their road safety engineer advisors are content to allow this cohort to risk death and serious injury. This is in stark contrast with shared urban roads where default speed limits as low as 30km/h are being introduced.
These ministers are ignoring their own state Road Safety Acts, Road Safety Strategies to 2030, the Safe System principles on which the policies are based, and the Vision Zero 2050 objective behind the policies. They are also ignoring key advice from their own road safety advice source Austroads.
The reason why ministers are not addressing the safety of unprotected road users sharing default 100km/h roads by reducing their speed limit even though speed zoning policy states they should, must be immensely important to take precedence over human safety. This is problematic given the Safe System which all states Road Safety Strategies are based on highlights “An important cornerstone of the Safe System philosophy is that the care of human life and health is considered more important than anything else”, and “Pedestrians and cyclists should not be exposed to vehicle travel speeds of over 30 km/h” (Austroads March 2019)
Austroads may have the answer to why. It’s March 2019 research report ‘Road Risk Assessment, Case Studies and Engagement Guidance for Speed Management’ identified a number of societal, political and institutional challenges confronting speed management including:
• strong public or stakeholder resistance to speed limit reductions often cause problems at a political level,
• getting approval at a state level can sometimes be challenging for local authorities as there may be political sensitivity issues at that level.
* a general perception that the public dislike speed limits being reduced, despite surveys indicating that many people think some speed limits are too high in some areas, particularly where there is a high concentration of vulnerable road users,
• that members of the public often have predetermined views of what a speed limit should be with a disproportionate concern for increased travel times compared to safer speeds, and
• that members of the public have a perception that speed limit reductions are intended to increase revenue through enforcement.
In other words, if ministers agreed to lower the default 100km/h speed limit it is likely to have negative political consequences so it’s better keep the status quo and decide “No further work” be undertaken on rural road default speed limits.
The trucking industry was happy with this result despite the fact that the commercial use of default 100km/h roads is minimal. The RIS estimated that commercial use of default 100km/h roads is around 5% of total truck travel.
Australian Trucking Association chair Mark Parry thanked transport ministers, including federal transport minister Catherine King, for listening to the industry’s views.
“Working together with our member associations, we made a strong, evidence-based case for leaving rural speed limits alone,” Parry said.
In its submission to the RIS, the Australian Trucking Association made no mention of the safety of pedestrians and cyclists sharing 100km/h default roads with trucks outside town boundaries, it simply ignored this cohort of unprotected road users.
WAFarmers (Western Australia farmer advocacy organisation) noted on its web site that the ministers communique stating “no further work” was a win for common sense – and was critical of the Department of Transport for its “…apparent lack of foresight that led to the proposal even being considered”. Safety of pedestrians sharing default speed limit roads is evidently not an issue for WAFarmers members and was not raised in the organisation’s submission to the RIA.
Figure 8: It seems that all the state and territory transport ministers who voted that no further work is necessary to lower the default 100km/h speed limit on rural roads believe unprotected road users sharing such roads with trucks and vehicles don’t exist or are not at risk of fatality or serious injury. Photos: Unprotected road users sharing the default 100km/h Moffats lane, originating 400m from the Romsey, Victoria town boundary; Patrick Francis.
Just how unpopular reducing rural roads speeds is with a significant percentage of drivers was documented by Victoria’s TAC in its Road Safety Monitor 2023 Report. Drivers were asked their support or opposition for reducing narrow country road speed limit from the existing Transport Victoria Speed Zoning Technical Guidelines default 100km/h to 80km/h. For drivers who regularly travel 10km/h over the speed limit on such roads 53% were opposed and 32% supported the change.
The majority of drivers who do not travel above the speed limit supported the lower speed limit, with 54% supporting and 26% opposed. The key consideration with this data is that the cohort of drivers who do not travel above the speed limit is a far greater proportion of the driving population than those who speed and are accepting of change compared to those drivers who speed. Yet it’s the vocal minority of drivers who want to speed who capture local and state government politicians attention to retain the status quo 100km/h default speed limit even when it is unsafe to do so
References
Australian Government September 2025, ‘Consultation Regulatory Impact Analysis Reducing default speed limits outside of built-up areas’
Austroads 2019 Research Report ‘Road Risk Assessment, Case Studies and Engagement Guidance for Speed Management’
Austroads July 2021 “Guide to Road Safety Part 1: Introduction and The Safe System
Austroads July 2024 ‘Guide to Road Safety Part 3: Safe Speed’
Austroads October 2025 Review of Speed Management Evidence and Guidance
Austroads 2025 Research Report ‘Facilitating Speed Management Change: Example Case Studies from Australia and New Zealand’
Austroads November 2025 Guide to Road Safety Part 3: Safe Speed Management
Commonwealth of Australia 2023 ‘Infrastructure and Transport Ministers National Road Safety Action Plan 2023 – 2025’
Commonwealth of Australia 2021 ‘Infrastructure and Transport Ministers National Road Safety Strategy 2021 – 2030’
TAC Road Safety Monitor Report 2023
