Is 50km/h speed limit in urban areas unreasonable?
The Sunday Nation
Nairobi,
19 October 2014
My friend recently closed down his Public Service Vehicle (PSV) business after one of his drivers was fined Sh80,000 for driving at 80.6km/h on a highway instead of 80km/h! This was the last straw that broke his back after numerous other frustrations from various government agencies.
Now the smallest division on the scale of a speedometer in a regular motor vehicle is 5km/h. That is it starts from zero to 5km/h, then 10km/h, 15km/h etc. In the science of measurements, it is known that the level of uncertainty for any measuring scale is one half of the smallest division.
Therefore, there is an uncertainty of plus-or-minus 2.5km/h in all measurements read from the regular speedometer. I must emphasize that this is NOT the accuracy of the speedo: it is just an indication of the best measurement any human being can maker with the gadget.
The science of measurements also recognizes that the uncertainty of a measurement taken from a digital display is plus-or-minus the least significant integer. In English: this means the smallest quantity measurable by the gadget. Thus, if the police speed gun can show a readout with one decimal place of a kilometre per hour, there is an uncertainty of plus-or-minus 0.1km/h.
Pulling everything together, it is easy to see that when a driver maintains a speed of 80km/h on his speedometer, the true speed of the car can be anything from 77.5km/h to 82.5km/h. Also, when the police speed gun displays 80.6km/h, the correct measurement can be anything from 80.5km/h to 80.7km/h.
So the question then is this: is it fair to punish a driver for being only a few decimal points above the limit while his measuring equipment can only display speeds within a range of 5km/h?
That is where human judgment comes in. I don’t think that the driver was judged fairly. This is probably one of the reasons why many people have come out to oppose the enforcement of the 50km/h limit in built-up areas. It is not the limit they oppose but the manner of application.
But what does the law say? Section 42(3) of the Traffic Act, Chapter 403 [Revised Edition 2013], reads:
“No person shall drive, or, being the owner or person in charge of a vehicle, cause or permit any other person to drive, any vehicle at a speed exceeding fifty kilometres per hour or any road within the boundaries of any trading centre, township, municipality or city:
“Provided that the highway authority shall erect and maintain traffic signs as prescribed so as plainly to indicate to drivers entering or leaving such roads or areas where the fifty kilometre per hour speed limit restriction begins and ends.”
I am not a lawyer but it appears to me that the authorities are zealously applying the first part of the law while completely ignoring the second part. And that is where the unfairness arises from.
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