Speeding is widely accepted, because it seems such a low level offense. 50km/h instead of 30, it’s only 20 more. But the physics are against you - the energy of the vehicle grows quadratic with the speed. At 30, you need about 18 meters to come to a stop. So you can prevent an accident if a person appears about 20 meters from your hood. At 50, you’ll run them over with a remaining speed of more than 30km/h. Speeding kills.
Road conditions change. Sometimes it’s the middle of the night and nobody is on the county road, so you can run your brights. Sometimes a particular section of road has high visibility that makes a higher speed safer, while other sections are best taken under the limit. Some vehicles have better headlights than others, different stopping distances. Your logic only says “lower is safer,” it provides no means by which to draw the line on what level of risk is acceptable and, make no mistake, any amount of driving always implies risk. We balance the risk against its reward, that’s the function of traffic law.
For speed limits, the conditions are so variable that we compromise and set a number that’s reasonable-ish, most likely calibrated to the least safe conditions the road regularly experiences, and leave it at that. It’s still entirely possible, however, that a particular driver can have a much greater understanding of the risks implicit in going 10 over given their conditions, and thus increase the risk only a slight bit to save a large amount of time. This isn’t intrinsically some horrific moral crime; if you think it is then it sounds like law for the law’s sake type shit.
You’re trying to apply the “I am a good driver and my judgment is better than other people’s” argument - but the majority of people believe they’re an above average driver. That’s a dangerous fallacy. Now, you might truly be, but your argument paves the way for everyone else to say the same. After all, nothing happened so far. And that other driver might be the one that misjudges and crashes into you.
On country roads and highways, physics work even worse against you. Most People have good feeling for how long stopping distances are and how fast they increase at higher speeds. Increasing you speed from 100km/h to 110 increases your stopping distance by about 25 meters from 130 to 155. That puts it well above the outer limits for your brights - meaning by the time you could see any potential obstacle, you can’t stop any more. At highway speeds, in daylight conditions, high speeds can put an obstacle beyond the arc of a bend. At the same time, time savings are diminishing. Running 110 saves you 5.5 minutes on the hour compared to 100 with diminishing returns the faster you go.
Yet the German autobahn suggests that the fallacy is the reasoning that highways even need speed limits. The autobahn is safer without speed limits than every single innovation we have had in setting speed limits. Perhaps it is time to stop blaming drivers and blame highway speed limits for causing safety issues.
The german autobahn demonstrates exactly the opposite. Everywhere that speed limits are introduced, the number of accidents drop. Less injured people, less fatalities. One example is the A24 https://www.geo.de/wissen/vergleich-auf-a24-weniger-verletzt... where the number of fatal accidents dropped by 50%.
This is a relative matter. The autobahn, without speed limits, is safer than US high ways with speed limits. The speed limit being suggested there is also a higher speed than the speeds reached on most US highways, which were a clone of the autobahn. Research into this matter has long suggested that there is an optimal limit at the 85th percentile and setting a speed limit above or below it harms safety. The autobahn demonstrates the optimal limit is well above the limits that are used in the U.S., which coincidentally are well below the 85th percentile.
The autobahn with speed limits is demonstated to be safer than the autobahn without - there's no need to compare to US highways. You could compare the autobahn with germanies european neighbors, but the better comparison is the article that I posted in my previous comment. The same 62km long segment of autobahn, no infrastructure changes, compared with and without speed limit. The posted speed limit of 130km/h is also largely in line with US speed limits.
This all seems like a moot point to me until there is actual consequences for people who ACTUALLY cause accidents. We all know someone (maybe ourselves) who had their car totaled, seriously damaged, or been harmed by people that hit and run, had no financially responsibility for their damage, intoxicated, etc. And jack shit happened to them.
When an illegal hit my car and totalled my car (and then ran off), the police told me to fuck off and would not even write a report.
I don't give a single shit about speeding limit enforcement because the yield seems just so incredibly low compared to the yield of the same effort actually going after people who generate real victims rather than hypothetical ones.
My car was damaged by a guy who drove into my rear quarter panel in bumper to bumper traffic and convinced the officer and insurance that it was my fault by fabricating a story that I cut him off. He was trying to merge into my lane after I had been fully merged. He had stopped inches from the center of my car, and the moment he saw me move forward, he pressed the accelerator, going into my car. I suggested we move to the side of the road so that we would not block two lanes of traffic, which had worked against me because it made things look consistent with his story versus having stayed in place and blocking traffic. When I called 911 to have an officer come, the guy started yelling in my ear so much that I was deeply shaken and could not even speak to the officer well to describe what had happened.
Getting consequences for people who cause accidents sounds great, but we need actual ways of achieving it. In my case, I believe retrofitting my car with a traffic camera would achieve this. I also am not going to ever move my car following an accident in such conditions until police arrive either again.
No, he's not. But that's never stopped anyone from lobbing a strawman. He's saying that limits are set based on a low-ish common denominator and wind up being way below the typical common denominator and then they get ignored a bunch of the time hence why nobody takes ignoring them as a serious violation.
You strawmanned the shit out of the headlight example because it was a foot in the door (he should have known better). The point was that vehicles and equipment vary so safe speeds vary. 90s headlights vs the best you can get today. Work van handling vs sports car handling. Etc. etc.
If a person appears 20 meters from my hood while I'm on the interstate, they're toast, whether I'm going 100 km/h or 150. Surely the unpredictable can happen at any moment with other cars, but I find follow distance more important than speed. If you're bumper to bumper at 100 km/h, you're going to have a worse time than if you give 10 cars space at 150 km/h.
