The speed of all drivers, not just truckies, will be tracked through average-speed camera zones in a NSW trial.
But don’t expect a fine in the mail if you mess up in the early days.
Australia’s biggest jurisdiction has announced it would cease being a global outlier on point-to-point speed detection and its heavy-vehicles-only policy.
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An all-driver approach will be trialled along two stretches of highway where six people have died in recent years.
Speeding drivers will receive written warnings for the first 60 days before financial and licence penalties kick in.
All other mainland Australian states and countries like the UK, Norway, Italy and the Netherlands had found average speed cameras to be effective, Roads Minister John Graham said.
“We aim to be as rigorous as possible to be sure they will also reduce road trauma in NSW,” he said on Sunday.
Legislation will be required to set up the trial, which will begin along a 15-kilometre stretch of the Pacific Highway between Kew and Lake Innes on the mid-north coast and a similar length of the Hume Highway, north of Gundagai.
Six people died and 33 more were seriously injured in the five years to 2022 at those locations.
In 2023, speeding contributed to 44 per cent of road deaths in NSW, three-quarters of which were in regional NSW.
A comprehensive communications campaign will inform drivers about the trial.
The measure was one of several recommended outcomes from a road safety forum in Sydney in April involving 155 experts.
Any future decision to make the trial permanent, or roll out to NSW’s 35 other average-speed zones, will also require parliament’s approval.
Peter Frazer, who founded Safer Australian Roads and Highways after his daughter Sarah died on her way to university in 2012, said the organisation had long lobbied NSW to change its approach.
“These cameras promote safer driving habits by encouraging drivers and riders to stick to the speed limit,” he said.
Despite Sunday’s change, NSW will remain an outlier on another road speed approach.
Drivers in NSW get multiple warnings on approach to fixed and mobile speed cameras.
The stance backed by the government and motoring groups has been panned for “completely lacking any evidence base” by the head of the Australasian College of Road Safety.
