Melbourne’s inner city suburbs would have a blanket 40kmh speed limit under a plan being pushed by three councils and health groups.

VicRoads and the Transport Accident Commission will today attend a forum aimed at slashing speeds in the City of Yarra, Port Phillip, parts of Stonnington and Melbourne.

Report excert from The Age.

This plan to slow speed down will cause greater traffic congestion in Melbourne’s inner-city streets. The reason for the plan: reduce pedestrian deaths. While nobody likes to see a person become a statistic, perhaps the plan should redirect its energy from penalising motorists to penalising pedestrians for jay walking. Use the lights and you won’t get injured or killed.

If only people use their brains and took some responsibility for their actions, there would be no need for such far-fetched and ill-thought ideas. The combined mentality of “it’s not my fault” and “it’s somebody else’s problem” needs to stop. I can see it already, the 40km/h limit will not be enough and will be reduced to 30km/h then 20km/h and so on. Soon it’ll be quicker to get out of the car and walk!

The solution is rather simple, look right, look left, look right, and then cross when safe to do so! It’s seems the majority of the population needs to go back to the primary school classroom to learn the basics of crossing the road safely.