Speed limits should be reduced to "survivable limits" of 30 to 40km/h as a default on residential streets with children and pedestrians, and a default of 80km/h on highways and rural roads without life-saving barriers, said Australian road safety expert Emeritus Professor Raphael Grzebieta.

After receiving a prestigious international award, Professsor Grzebieta said NSW was lagging behind Victoria on road safety, even though there had been improvements in 2018. NSW motorists drove too fast - often 5-10km/h over the limit. And there were too few roadside barriers to reduce the chance of injury or death if something went wrong or they had a lapse in attention.

At the crash lab. UNSW Sydney Emeritus Professor Raphael Grzebieta, a road safety expert, who was just awarded a prestigious international award for his work on road safety.

NSW's refusal to turn on point to point speed averaging cameras (now used only to monitor heavy vehicle speeds) for cars had also encouraged motorists to drive faster than on similar roads in Victoria, he said.

After accepting the 2019 Kenneth A Stone award from the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s Transportation Research Board’s (TRB’s), Professor Grzebieta from the University of NSW's Transport and Road Safety Centre urged NSW to follow Victoria's lead by installing more wire rope median and roadside barriers.