For us older folk here (I'm 52), it would be fair to assume that we have a good deal of experience with driving....probably good and bad.
For me, it is 40 years or so on various types of machines, and as a licensed driver for 34 of them.
I actually lost my license for .05 - went out, got drunk, slept in the car at the venue (friends party at a house) and thought I was ok the next morning to drive home. Was pulled over and tested - .07. License gone for 6 months. So, there you go. I was about 25 then.
I have fallen asleep at the wheel twice while driving on a long trip. Both times woke up in time - one time the slowing down of the car as my foot relaxed woke me - on the other side of the road. The other time was when the car went into the gravel on the left, and the noise woke me. Lucky.
I have had 4 accidents - collisions. One as a passenger when I was about 6 years old, in the days before seatbelts. Got hurt in that one, but not too bad.
Two times were my driving, and all 3 were at slow speeds - pulling out of a side street/carpark into a main road. Both of mine were my fault technically, but the other drivers were also not paying attention in my opinion. No injuries thankfully.
The 4th one was doing 100km's an hour in the dark up in QLD - absolute middle-stump head-on with a big roo. It bounded out of the dark at full speed, totally unseen until it was fair and square in the middle of my bonnet. It died, and the car had to be towed. My fault for driving after dark in outback areas...I knew there were roos around.
There have also been 3 occasions where a sleeping driver coming towards me caused me to have to hit the horn and swerve left to miss them had they continued. Fortunately the horn blast woke them and they corrected back to their side.
So, in all that time, there have been a number of times where I may have had a serious or fatal accident, but none involving high speed, or excessive speed in a designated zone.
Obviously, excessive speed and the ability to react due to that is increasing your chances of having a prang.
But not the actual cause.
A brainless idiot doing 100kms in a 60km zone will have no time to react to a pedestrian who steps in front of him/her. We are not talking about those drivers, and you could make the speed limit 10kms and they would still drive like that.
Speed increases the problem here, but the cause is the idiot.
From my experiences and observation, most crashes are not caused by speed alone, or even speed at all.
They are caused by the decisions, the concentration and habits of the driver/s.
Will the increase of an open road speed limit from 110 to 130km's increase the road toll?
I doubt it.
Why?
Those folk who fall alseep at the wheel doing 100km's or 130km's are going to die no matter what.
You could argue that if two opposite direction cars are heading for a head-on due to a driver asleep, and both doing 130km's, then there is less time to react.
But, again it is the asleep driver, and the other driver should be aware enough to see a problem occurring up ahead; or don't drive at that 130km speed. It is arguable that if they are both doing 110km's, then the accident will still occur.
People rarely lose control of a car in normal conditions because they are fully awake, concentrating and doing 130 as opposed to 110. I have never seen or heard of that scenario.
In certain conditions, such as narrower roads in rain and fog doing the same thing might/will. Again; the driver is the problem.
Maybe a tyre blow-out would do it, but that's again the driver's influence - neglecting to maintain the car.
So, let's all stop saying "speed kills" because it - on it's own...doesn't.
On a suitably designated section of open road it will have no impact to increase the limit by 20kmh, in my opinion.
