Speeding

Speeding

Enforcement cameras

Speed Adviser app displayed on mobile phone

Speed Adviser

40 Speed Zone

Speed zones

Get the facts

Driving too fast is the single biggest contributor to death and injury on NSW roads. Each year, speeding contributes to about 41% of road fatalities and 24% of serious injuries. Almost 135 lives are lost and 1141 people are seriously injured.

Your speed decides the outcome

Speeding is never safe. Speed increases the risk of having a crash, as well as the severity of the crash.

Road users caught driving too fast will also face speeding penalties. 

 

The faster you go the more: 

  • time you need to react and avoid a crash 
  • stopping distance is needed  
  • severe the impact of a crash 
  • chance of death or serious injury. 

Stopping distances

The faster you go, the longer it takes to stop. A typical stopping distance when travelling at 30km/h on a reasonable road surface is 19 metres. At 40km/h, the stopping distance increases to 27 metres. 

Even a small difference in your speed can greatly affect the likelihood of death or serious injury. 

If you’re driving at 50km/h, it will take you about 37 metres to stop. At 60km/h, that distance jumps to 56 metres.

Stopping Distances

If a car hits a pedestrian at 50km/h

The impact is twice as likely to cause death than if the car had been travelling at 40km/h.

 

Other factors that affect stopping distances include: 

  • distraction, fatigue or dim lighting, as drivers take longer to react 
  • wet roads or worn tyres, which can lengthen braking distances. 
  • poorly maintained brakes.

To reduce the risk of a crash, you should stay under the speed limit and drive to the conditions. Slow down in wet weather or when road conditions or visibility are poor. 

Speeding and fatalities

  • In a crash between a car and a pedestrian, there's a 90% chance a pedestrian will survive if the car was travelling at 30km/h. There's a 60% chance if the car was travelling at 40km/h, and a 10% chance at 50km/h. 
  • In a side-impact crash with another vehicle, there's a 90% chance that a driver or passenger will survive at 50km/h. There's a 60% chance at 60km/h, and a 20% chance at 70km/h. 
  • In a head-on crash between two vehicles, there's a 95% chance that a driver or passenger will survive at 60km/h. There's a 90% chance at 70km/h, and a 20% chance at 90km/h. 

Crash Survivability
(Based on Wramborg, P 2005, ‘A new approach to a safe and sustainable road structure and street design for urban areas’, Road safety on four continents conference, 2005, Warsaw, Poland, Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute (VTI), Linkoeping, Sweden.)

More information

Speeding penalties

Find out more about the penalties for speeding on the NSW Government website.

Published 14 Apr 2023
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