Last weekend we went on our first real road trip here in Australia, driving the Great Ocean Road and back via the surrounding countryside. The trip was great and a few photos will follow later, but the topic of this post is some traffic-related thoughts stemming from the trip.
Australian roads unique how?
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All cars built locally here in Australia are advertised as being “Developed for Australia’s unique road conditions” or something along similar lines. So it’s only natural to ask what’s so unique about Australian roads?
The answer is not much, at least in Victoria. We drove on roads ranging from as big as they get to as small as they get – and I mean half-a-lane-wide-and-in-the-middle-of-the-forest-according-to-the-GPS-small. As a rule, big highways were in excellent condition and most of the smaller roads were in decent shape also. The smaller the roads were, the worse their condition. If the area was flat, the roads were straight. If it was hilly, the roads were windy. This, by the way, is exactly how roads tend to work in all other parts of the world also.
Maybe the ads are referring to the 100km-stretches of straight roads in the middle of nowhere, the heat in the summer (both of which you can get in, say, Arizona) or something, but as of yet I’m unconvinced that there’s anything particularly unique about the roads here.
Guess the speed limit
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See this road here? What do you think the speed limit is here?
The correct answer is 100km/h and the correct reaction to that is: oh come on! I mean the highway (or freeway as they like to call highways here) is in perfect condition with great visibility, plenty of lanes to choose from and very mellow turns. Is there really a case for not having the limit at, say, 120km/h or 130km/h?
Judging with the same criteria that set the highway speed limit at 100km/h, this road – which is generally in a good shape, but with hairpin curves and shoulders the width of 1cm – should have a speed limit of 40km/h or max 60km/h. But no. It’s 100km/h. What the hell?! You drive this at 100km/h and your car can soon be found at the bottom of some gorge.
Tiny roads having a relatively high speed limit also has the weird consequence that our TomTom GPS unit, always on the lookout for the quickest route, seems to prefer to direct us through some hay-fields on single-lane country roads (which, to their credit, were in pretty good condition) as opposed to the above-pictured freeway to shave 2mins off our travel time over 200km.
I guess that our satnav knew I prefer the beautiful country roads.
ref: Unique roads – have you been off road yet?! Because those are definitely unique. Not all of them are paved you know! A lot of Western Australia we still have dirt country roads and there is nothing like them in the world. I can say this with confirmed Anorakism as tyre experts from around the world would come and take samples of the gravel.
In addition we have wombats and kangaroos which are unique – wait till you first hit one and you will want your car to be designed for this.
Plus we have 90 mile straight – 146km long without any bend, kink or deviation. I think the Saudis have a new longer one but they drive bigger cars!
Do you need more?!