What's the fastest speed limit down there?
In Australia, the highest speed-limit on a non-freeway road is now 100km/h, I think. Freeway (in the UK you would say motorway) speed-limits vary by state. In NSW it is 110km/h. Trucks are fitted with speed-regulators which
theoretically limit them to 100km/h on all roads.
Most highways in Australia are *not* freeways, but fairly narrow single-carriageway roads, with soft shoulders often 100mm or more lower than the "bitumen", as the tarmac metalled surface is known here, so 100km/h is plenty. It is questionably safe to overtake on many sections of such roads, because the closing speed of a vehicle coming the other way is 200km/h or 56m/s. If you pull out to overtake a 30m-long "B-double" truck on the
Newell Highway, for example, and spend ten seconds on the wrong side of the road, an oncoming vehicle will have to have been something like 600m away when you started to overtake. Can you look at a white blob through the heat-haze, and be sure it is not, say, only 400m away? And that assumes there are no bends, bumps or dips to hide oncoming traffic.
Uhm, yes, it is. "Kilo" is not any unit of measure, it is an order of magnitude.
Kilo is a very common abbreviation for kilogramme. In Australia, we have an all-purpose word: "kay".
"How far is it to Tiree, mate?"
"Oh.. About 300 kays. (kilometres)"
"How fast were ya goin' when the cop pulled you over?"
"The mongrel booked me at 130 kays! (km/h)"
"How much d'ya weigh?"
"'Round 80 kays (kilograms).
"My boss is a useless bludging bastard; he just sits in his office all day 'n pulls down 120 kay! (Thousand dollars a year).