Road safety

All Renault cars will be speed-limited to 180km/h from next year, the French manufacturer has confirmed. The cap will also reportedly apply to cars built by Renault’s budget Romanian subsidiary Dacia (although this is unlikely to inconvenience many people as, even in flagship 2.0-litre guise, the top-selling Duster SUV maxes out at just 181km/h).

Tesla’s autonomous driving technology has been blamed for yet another deadly crash in the US, with authorities claiming two people died after a Tesla crashed when no-one was in the driver’s seat. The 2019 Tesla Model S sedan reportedly left the road and struck a tree on a road north of Houston, Texas, on Saturday night US time. “There was no one in the driver’s seat,” Sergeant Cinthya Umanzor told news agency Reuters.

A Tesla Model 3 driver keen to explore the performance of his electric car will instead be walking, hitching a ride or catching public transport after losing his licence for six months after being caught allegedly driving at 147km/h in a 60km/h residential area – almost two-and-half-times faster than the posted speed limit.

Here’s further proof speed cameras are more about revenue raising rather than saving lives. A fixed speed camera in Sydney’s CBD has stopped issuing fines – sending warning letters instead – after more than 36,000 drivers were snapped in three months, which was more than seven times the rate of the state’s next busiest speed camera.

Revenue from speeding fines in NSW has more than tripled since the state government removed warning signs from mobile speed detection cameras late last year. A report by 9News revealed in December 2020 the state’s coffers were topped up by almost $2.5 million in speeding fines, which have tripled since the phase-out of warning signs for mobile speed camera cars.