Nope, because people are overestimating themselves. I know a couple of people who can do 2x the speed limit relatively safely, but this is because they were race drivers in a previous life. However, not everyone (incl. me) has that reflexes and situational awareness all the time.
Recently I got into an accident. A car changed into my lane completely unannounced, and I was blinded by a car in my front diagonal. The car "jumped" into my vision, I braked and hit them relatively slowly. Being slow, uphill and on a wet road helped all of us (the car took some of the damage by sliding).
Consider this in a freeway at speed limit. We'd be hurt. Consider this at 1.5x speed limit, because everyone speeds, and we would be dead.
Do not forget, the police found out that I had no wrongdoing and blame. It was impossible to see them, and they neglected to check their mirrors and signal a lane change, plus I had some distance to them and braked as hard as I could the moment I saw them, and I was going 50KM/h to begin with.
> Nope, because people are overestimating themselves. I know a couple of people who can do 2x the speed limit relatively safely, but this is because they were race drivers in a previous life. However, not everyone (incl. me) has that reflexes and situational awareness all the time.
And even then, although the ex-race drivers can drive safely at high speeds, it doesn't mean other people can drive safely while other people are moving a racetrack speeds. The key to safety on the road is predictability. Any form of driving that reduces predictability, even if the unpredictable driver has the necessary skill for that form of driving, creates a dangerous situation because other drivers will react to that unpredictability in unpredictable ways, and likely lacking the skill to pull it off.
What matters isn't the driving skill of the most skilled driver on the road, it's the skill level of the least skilled driver on the road.
Exactly. This is why I used the word "relatively" there. Moreover, a prominent race driver, happened to be a friend of my dad, died because of the same unpredictability of the traffic.
Another race driver, whom I forgot his name, said "A race track is where people who know what they are doing drive at high speeds, and traffic is a race track where people don't know what they are doing, yet still drive at high speeds". I always keep that in mind and cite to other people to urge them to be careful in the traffic.
What caused my accident was that unpredictability. A car changed lanes in front of me, without proper signaling and precautions from a point where it was impossible for me to see them.
> "A race track is where people who know what they are doing drive at high speeds, and traffic is a race track where people don't know what they are doing, yet still drive at high speeds".
Explain how the German autobahn has fewer collisions than US high ways with lower than 85th percentile speed limits if the lower speed limits are such an advantage. Actual data does not support the idea of low speed limits. They are only in place as an attempt to reduce fleet fuel consumption, and hurt safety by causing big differences in vehicle speeds.
- _way_ higher requirements for "safe normal care usage skill" then the US
- way higher care safety requirements (as in what cars are allowed to be on the street)
- a different driving rules especially wrt. how they affect traffic on highways which do allow faster driving at the cost of putting higher requirements on people understanding and keeping with the rules
- also laws and judges will "in general" faster lead to your driver license being lost (most times temporary). If you lose your job because of losing your driver license it's in generally seen as fully your fault
In addition there are quite a lot of studies about speeding limits and safety and they are very clear in the conclusion that speeding is one of the more common sources of deadly car accidents.
Through also in most countries city and country side streets are have way more accidents for similar care usage then highways.
And it's also quite unclear what you mean with "low speeding limit" and "big difference in vehicle speeds", especially given that lower speeding limits in general limit how big the difference in vehicle speed can be (assuming it's reasonably enforced and as such people somewhat kinda keep to the rules, but if not it's an enforcement problem, not a speed limit problem).
Anyway the main point is that comparing US high way safety with German or man other EU state highway safety is like comparing apples with oranges.
You make a number of assertions, but you omit any concrete examples.
> And it's also quite unclear what you mean with "low speeding limit" and "big difference in vehicle speeds", especially given that lower speeding limits in general limit how big the difference in vehicle speed can be (assuming it's reasonably enforced and as such people somewhat kinda keep to the rules, but if not it's an enforcement problem, not a speed limit problem).
Very few people actually drive according to posted speed limits. They instead drive at a natural speed for the road and conditions. Those that do drive according to posted speed limits when the speed limits are set below the 85th percentile will find that driving at the speed limits is hazardous. This is why in countries with sane traffic laws, the speed limits are set to the 85th percentile and you get an illusion that people are obeying it. Differences in speeds tend to be small when the speed limits are set to the 85th percentile.
In the U.S., speed limits were lowered in a misguided attempt to conserve fuel following the 1973 oil crisis. This never conserved fuel since nobody listened to the new limits and it has made driving at posted speed limit hazardous ever since then.
> In addition there are quite a lot of studies about speeding limits and safety and they are very clear in the conclusion that speeding is one of the more common sources of deadly car accidents.
Having the distance between a vehicle and anything else reach 0 is necessary for there to be a collision. Get the cars off the road faster and the distance between vehicles will naturally increase. Larger distances between vehicles inhibits collisions. Thus, while collisions might be worse at higher speeds, you are not going to have as many of them. Germany’s autobahn has no speed limits and while collisions happen, they are relatively rare. Furthermore, 0 collisions is an unattainable goal. I believe the maxim is that if you make something idiot proof, the world will make a better idiot.
> They instead drive at a natural speed for the road and conditions.
except they don't, they reliably frequently drive above what is save
heck what is safe isn't even always obvious
Especially if you look at urban settings where you have pedestrians, bicycles and motorcycles this is quite common.
Similar people, including some otherwise experienced drivers, tend to fail to internalize that the emergency stopping distances increases exponentially (roughly squared).
A grate example for why you should never base care speeds on percentiles is a street close by to where I live, it looks like it's safe to drive ~50km/h but even when driving just 30km/h you will find it hardly possible to safely keep with other traffic laws, like e.g. precedence on crossroads. It also has funny parts like subtle getting smaller in some areas (including after turns). And playground, primary school and a retirement home are close by. And in difference to some other countries it not uncommon for children here to travel alone (or in groups of children) to primary school and sometimes playground. Potentially as young as 6 years of age.
And that doesn't even include special situations like idk. roads which are especially unsafe during rain due the kind of dust they get exposed too and similar.
> drive according to posted speed limits
sure, but if you have appropriate enforcement most will at most drive slightly above them limits as they don't want to pay high fines or lose their license. If you raise the limits they will again drive slightly above the limits and due to the roughly squared increase in breaking distance this is more then just slightly bad.
> his is why in countries with sane traffic laws, the speed limits are set to the 85th percentile
except it's kinda the opposite
most (not all) countries with very high levels of road safety do not use a percentile system. Most common is a system with fixed speeds for urban, "country side", and "highway" and then assess safety for given speed based on expected reaction time and maximal road safe emergency breaking distance and if it's not safe reduce it (als in general not gradual reduction but based on a preset of "speeds", e.g. in Germany urban walking speed, 30 or 50 for urban streets. The fixed choice of speeds seems a bit strange, but people are animal of habit so it's a better choice, it also makes it easier for everyone (for drivers to not get confused about the speed limit and for state to manage it).
> Get the cars off the road faster and the distance between vehicles will naturally increase.
But if you drive a lot you might have realize that it doesn't increase as much as it must to be as safe. People vastly miss-estimate distance traveled during reaction time and emergency breaking distance all the time. E.g "traffic jam out of nowhere" are not uncommon on German highways and are most times a consequence of people not keeping the required safe distance between cars leading to a chain reaction of people breaking much more then they should need to leading to a traffic jam (as in most commonly a long blob of cars going much slower then they normally would, like just 80km/h instead of 130km/h).
> Germany’s autobahn has no speed limits and while collisions happen, they are relatively rare.
This is not quite right 40% of German highway road has speed limits, because it not being safe to drive faster in that areas.
In addition the recommended maximal safe driving speed is 130km/h, if you drive faster it can lead to reduced insurance coverage and in case of a crash the amount of fault attributed to you might increase, too (depending on you actual speed above 130km/h).
Then there is the thing that the highways are (in the areas without speed limits) designed to allow very fast driving. For one there is the rule that you need to keep on the right most lane as long as you aren't overtaking someone/it's viable. The rule that you aren't allowed to take over on the right side (except in traffic jams). The fact that all highways entrances and exits are strictly only on the right side. And some other smaller stuff which are essential parts of why no speed limit kann be safe. So you really can't easily compare it to other highways.
Lastly in Germany safe driving trump any "rights" speed limits give you and similar. E.g. lets say there is no speed limit but it's relatively crowded and you still insist on driving 200km/h. You might then still get pulled over for non safe driving. Through to be fair ignoring idiots this normally works itself out just fine without such rule on highway. Through the general idea of "looking out for others on the road" being a indoctrinated during driving lessens still does matter.
> maxim is that if you make something idiot proof
Which brings us back why you would want speed limits based on what is actually safe not what feels safe/what people feel like driving. Or why you would only want to have a few categories of speed limits. Or why there are studies which show that building road to wide and safe looking isn't the best idea.
As others have pointed out, the inspection standards are wildly different. Here’s [0] an amusing and eye-opening look at what is needed to restore an older vehicle to pass inspection. For example, removing surface rust on a spare tire mount.
Even then, he still failed inspection [1], and goes into much more detail on the rigorous checks performed.
In contrast, there are U.S. states with zero inspections of any kind. No emissions, no safety, nothing.
The problem is complicated, but IMO it boils down to lack of widespread public transit, and low salaries. Unless you live in a metro that has reliable and inexpensive public transit, you generally need a car to get to work. You also need to pay for fuel and insurance, so things like preventative maintenance are often put off for lack of funds. When repairs are finally needed, chances are you’ll opt for the cheapest part available, even if it won’t last nearly as long. Same with tires: good tires are far more expensive than bad ones. My wife’s Mazda CX-9 has Michelin CrossClimate2 tires. They’re $307/ea right now on TireRack. There are also off-brands available for literally half that. I (and probably most people on this site) am lucky enough to have a job that allows me to buy the best tires, but that is definitely not true for most Americans. $1200 (plus mounting and balancing costs) for a set of tires is completely out of the realm of possibility. So now you have a car with parts of dubious reliability on tires that don’t grip as well, and remember, in some states there are no checks that your tires even have tread depth left, let alone their stopping ability.
If every U.S. state (or the federal government, but that’ll never happen) were to require the level of safety checks that Germany does, I guarantee you that a solid 1/4 – 1/2 of cars I see on the road would fail. It would be a devastating blow to the U.S. economy, purely from the sudden drop in worker availability.
Finally, re: speed limits, it’s unclear to me how you think Newton’s 2nd Law doesn’t apply.
If there is anything missing that is needed for road safety, I am sure that the NYS legislature would be happy to add it. You can write to them with your findings.
In any case, there is an inspection program that keeps vehicles to a minimum standard in NYS. Other states could easily adopt it. If a significant percentage of vehicles are deemed unsafe to drive because of this, then removing them from the road would be a good thing.
> Finally, re: speed limits, it’s unclear to me how you think Newton’s 2nd Law doesn’t apply.
It is unclear to me how you think I think that. This sounds like a strawman to me.
That’s great, good for New York.
Now go get Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Washington to do the same. Also, remember that licensing reciprocity means that if I have a vehicle titled in South Carolina, nothing stops me from driving it into North Carolina.
I think you missed the entire part of my post where I discussed how a significant portion of the population is unable to properly maintain their vehicles, and also lack access to reliable public transit.
Re: Newton, you said that “Actual data does not support the idea of low speed limits.” You did not cite your source, and without that, I am defaulting to the basic physics principle that an object moving faster will impart more force on another if they collide.
> That’s great, good for New York. Now go get Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Washington to do the same. Also, remember that licensing reciprocity means that if I have a vehicle titled in South Carolina, nothing stops me from driving it into North Carolina.
Germany is no different. There is licensing reciprocity with the rest of the EU and even other countries beyond the EU. I could drive in Germany with my NY license:
The only restrictions occur when you wish to do it for longer than 6 months.
> I think you missed the entire part of my post where I discussed how a significant portion of the population is unable to properly maintain their vehicles, and also lack access to reliable public transit.
This does not pose a problem in NY. Other states could easily follow suit. I think you missed that.
> Re: Newton, you said that “Actual data does not support the idea of low speed limits.” You did not cite your source, and without that, I am defaulting to the basic physics principle that an object moving faster will impart more force on another if they collide.
The German autobahn is the most obvious source. There is also a huge body of work around the 85th percentile principle. Do I really need to say more?
> If a significant percentage of vehicles are deemed unsafe to drive because of this, then removing them from the road would be a good thing.
“Good” is not a binary state, and it’s also wildly subjective. If by removing 100,000 unsafe cars from the road, you prevented 10,000 vehicle collisions, but 20,000 people became impoverished, is that good? It depends on your point of view. New York State, being largely dominated by NYC, I assume has an above-average social safety net. Perhaps they really are able to have these stricter requirements, while also ensuring that the negative impact felt on their citizens is minimized. Mississippi neither has that nor wants it. Were they to implement strict vehicle safety standards, the ripple effects would be much larger than those felt by a state with a stronger desire (and the budget) to care for their citizens.
Re: sources, can you post some? I’m not trying to Sealion you here, but I have no idea what specific studies you’re thinking of, and I would prefer to be on equal footing.
They also could introduce standards gradually by grandfathering older vehicles into the previous lack of standards, which is what NY did. Newer vehicles subject to the standards can be repaired to stay up to the minimum standard. This largely avoids the issue of impoverishment.
You can read about the 85th percentile principle here:
I actually cannot check the second since Google is blocking queries from the iCloud Private relay, but I assume it will give you a list of scholarly work on the subject. As for the autobahn, Wikipedia has some numbers from 2012:
1.74 fatalities per billion vehicle km on the autobahn versus 3.38 for US highways. There is evidence that introducing speed limits of around 80mph (130km/h, well above the speeds used drivers drive on most U.S. roads) on the autobahn would further lower it. The paradoxical situation where high speeds on the autobahn are safe and low speed limits on US highways are unsafe would be explained by the 85th percentile principle.
The GScholar link had many studies, yes. I found some conflicting opinions.
Institute of Transportation Studies, UC California [0]:
“There is, however, no empirical study that demonstrates that the 85th percentile rule optimizes safety.”
Hilda Ofori-Addo, University of Louisiana [1]:
“85th percentile speeds of vehicles are greatly affected by roadway characteristics. Therefore, roadway characteristics should be considered as equally important…”
I’ll note that this also had the lowest rate of crashes when vehicle speeds were <= 1 MPH from the 85th percentile, but there was also a confusing (to me) multi-modal distribution after that, with a 7 MPH delta having strikingly higher rate than anything else. I suspect, as the author admits, this may be due to other factors such as area type, road traffic volume, etc.
The german driving culture is largely responsible for the lack of spectacular fatalities on the autobahn.
In general, German culture has more respect for the “correct” way to do things, cars tend to be better maintained, and there is a much higher level of driver education going on.
Comparatively, American drivers are a bunch of filthy savages. (I say that as an American driver, currently driving in a country where the locals, in comparison with American drivers, are a bunch of filthy savages)
Then instead of doing all of these increasingly draconian measures, perhaps we should try to copy the Germans. The interstate highway system itself was a copy of the German autobahn system. We should have copied it in all of its aspects. It is never too late to do this.
The US is too car dependent and as such it's practically non-viable to
- put high (skill/knowledge) requirements on drivers (especially given that this normally entails increased monetary requirements)
- put high car maintenance/road safety requirements on cars
and in generally fundamentally changing driving rules is hard in general and also a safety hazard during transition. I.e. it is very much too late to do this.
Like one of the many benefits of not having a hyper car dependent society is you can say "no more driving for you" to people who can't show to safely drive a car (or have repeatedly shown to not keep with the laws (at lest the safety related ones)). Or say "no more driving" to not well enough maintained cars (until fixed).
1. There are annual mandatory vehicle inspections. Driving an uninspected vehicle is illegal and you cannot get the inspection certificate for your windshield unless your vehicle passes.
2. The state requires a driving test to get a license (in addition to prelicensing education requirements) and effectively forces everyone to take driver education courses every 3 years by raising insurance rates if they do not.
3. There is a points system for violations. Reach 11 points, and you lose your license. Reaching 11 points is fairly easy to do.
You are saying that improved driver education and vehicle maintenance cannot be done in the U.S., yet NYS does it. You say that people’s licenses cannot be taken away for unsafe driving in the U.S., yet NYS does it. NYS is part of the U.S.
> You are saying that improved driver education and vehicle maintenance cannot be done in the U.S., yet NYS does it.
The problem is, it's only NYS. Not the entirety of the US. And the federal government can't go and mandate it without a constitutional amendment - and the last one has been passed over 30 years ago, so there is no practical chance something as controversial as that could ever become law.
The only way around this would be a repeat of the Minimum Drinking age, similar to what's being discussed for the "SAVE Act" - the federal government effectively forcing states to abide by tying federal highway or other funding to that condition. And that tactic is, let's be real, outright disgusting and trampling on states rights.
It does seem reasonable to find out what works in other countries and pursue the most effective and freedom-preserving approaches.
However, in the interim I'd support draconian measures (e.g. cameras, speed limiters, more effective consequences) until Americans demonstrate empirically that they are capable of operating dangerous equipment with some degree of competence.
What interim? These are mutually exclusive approaches. Either you mimic what is known to work elsewhere, or you institute backward measures under the misguided claim that it helps. There is no embarking on both paths at once, since they involve doing largely opposite things.
The grand-parent suggested that the source of low German fatalities despite higher speeds is a driving culture that has respect for the "correct" way to do things.
Can you explain how you think encouraging such a culture would be at odds with measures like cameras or speed limiters? I'm also unsure why you think it's "misguided" to expect those technologies to help reduce behaviors like illegal speeding.
I don't see them at odds myself, but if you are correct then I would just support the draconian measures alone. I have low confidence that such a broken driving culture can be fixed and that American drivers can be trusted to follow the rules and stop killing so many people.
When I said that draconian measures were often opposite of what is needed to make roads safer, I was mainly referring to attempts to get people to drive slower on highways. Any attempt to force people to drive slower than the 85th percentile speed poses a danger to others on the road. If you do not believe me, try driving in the left lane at the 55mph speed limit in NYS in areas around NYC. You will undoubtably have many near collisions in just a 5 minute time frame from people cutting you off. Now, imagine a number of people being coerced to drive like that all the time while the rest do not. It is easy to see that there will be more collisions.
Doing draconian things that are ineffective has an opportunity cost that requires diverting time and effort from doing things that actually make a difference. Data on traffic cameras improving safety is mixed (mainly because of people flooring their brakes to avoid fines only to cause themselves to be rear ended). It also does not help that a number of places actually try to cause motorists to run red lights when traffic cameras are put into place by decreasing the amount of time used for yellow lights so that they can increase revenue. Interestingly, increasing the time spent with the light yellow decreases collisions at intersections and unlike traffic cameras, always has a positive improvement on collisions. Another option would be to eliminate intersections by adopting cloverleaf and/or diamond interchanges, which not only make traffic flows more efficient, but also improve safety (since you cannot run a red light, or have a collision caused by someone suddenly stopping upon seeing a yellow light). As for speed limiters, they are outright dangerous when they restrict people to speeds well below the 85th percentile.
That said, NYS has done a number of things to improve driver safety. They probably do not do as much as they would in less densely populated areas, but it is not hard to imagine other U.S. states adopting them. The real problem is that there are so many cars on the road that the average distances between them are very small. As long as the distance between vehicles remains non-zero, collisions are avoided. Efforts really should be focused on maximizing the distance between vehicles, rather than on minimizing the speed at which they travel. Raising the speed limits to the 85th percentile would help there. Car pooling lanes would also help. Modernizing public transport so that people do not need as many cars would also help.
> try driving in the left lane at the 55mph speed limit in NYS in areas around NYC
Why the left lane? I used to live in NYC and when traffic was light enough to actually drive the speed limit I generally stuck to the right lane to avoid inconveniencing other people who wanted to drive faster. Wouldn't people with court-mandated speed limiters simply stick to the right lane?
> Any attempt to force people to drive slower than the 85th percentile speed poses a danger to others on the road.
Perhaps they'd need the "ATTENTION: This vehicle's speed is monitored by GPS" stickers that I occasionally see on fleet trucks in the city.
Regardless, this seems to be an objection to selective enforcement methods, right? For example, if all drivers are subject to the same constraints (whether speed cameras, universal speed limiters, road diet, etc) then not only would this not increase discrepancies in speed, but it would likely decrease them. Does this mean you would support such measures?
> Doing draconian things that are ineffective has an opportunity cost
Agreed. But that applies to ineffective things whether or not they are draconian.
I do agree that stoplight cameras have mixed results -- typically reducing serious T-bone collisions while increasing rear-end collisions -- but to be clear, when I said "cameras" I was referring to speed cameras, not red-light cameras. On the topic of NYS, their school zone speed cameras seem to have been effective at reducing injuries caused by drivers in school zones.
> As long as the distance between vehicles remains non-zero, collisions are avoided. Efforts really should be focused on maximizing the distance between vehicles, rather than on minimizing the speed at which they travel.
Due to human reaction times and the physical limitations of braking, maintaining a time between vehicles is more relevant than distance. That's why defensive driving courses teach you to keep about three seconds between your car and the car in front of you, more if you're hauling a trailer. If you're driving at 8mph that's only about 10ft, but at 80mph that's 100ft. So while I agree that increasing distance is useful, the distance necessary to ensure safe operation is a direct function of speed.
I heard of a few cases in which so many drivers were already breaking the speed limit on an overengineered highway that raising the speed limit did not increase collisions e.g. in Michigan, Texas, British Columbia. But otherwise the data is pretty clear that making people drive more slowly improves safety.
An example of a system that works well is usually the target of low-fidelity attempts to copy without understanding the fundamental principles that make it possible, I.e. copying the obvious form, but ignoring the cultural underpinnings. Also, muh freedoms. And I don’t need no edumacation, I ken drive jest fine.
Unfortunately, the USA has a weird version of the noble savage mythos that enshrines ignorance.
The Germans avoided speed limits on the autobahn specifically because they viewed it as a form of freedom. Your remarks about ignoring cultural underpinnings seem misplaced.
That said, I am not convinced that any of what you said is necessarily true. The annual vehicle inspection that NYS mandates generally ensures a minimum level of quality. In NYS, you need to pass a test that shows a minimum level of competency before you receive a license. You also need to take a driver education course every 3 years or face higher insurance rates. I assume other states do the same (and if they do not, they should start). Germany is unlikely to be very far ahead in either vehicle maintenance or driver education. If they do not have recurring education requirements, they might even be behind.
It sounds like NYS is very progressive. My exposure is anecdotal, but I don’t think that level of vigilance is the norm across the expanse of the interstate system.
I’m with you on freedom and how it ideally translates into responsibility.. but I think that there is a substantial block of US drivers that fail to grasp the intersection of those tightly entangled concepts.
In short, Freedom != freedom from consequences.
Hopefully, my view on the prospect of improving the situation is overly pessimistic. I like your version better, but my faith in cultural progress during what seems to me a significant retrograde slide over the last half century is pretty low.
> Explain how the German autobahn has fewer collisions than US high ways with lower than 85th percentile speed limits if the lower speed limits are such an advantage.
There is no reason in the world to assume that US drivers have the same level of driving skill as German drivers.
> the notion of Germans being intrinsically superior
By "German drivers" I mean drivers who are trained, licensed and insured in Germany. There is nothing "intrinsic" about it, and it has nothing to do with genetics or national origin.
Those are the minimum standards. After meeting them, you can receive a learner’s permit at age 16, that allows you to drive under the supervision of a licensed driver. Parents will sometimes make things even more rigorous. My mother for example required me to drive her under supervision nearly every day for an entire year before she let me proceed to the next step for my license. This was in addition to study at a driving school that was already beyond the state’s minimum standard.
Then you must pass both written and practical exams. Interestingly, the minimum age for this varies. If you have gone through much more rigorous training (e.g. by studying at a driving school), you may receive your license at age 17. If you have not, you must wait until age 18. This encourages people to exceed the minimum standard for training.
After you have your license, if you do not take driver education courses every 3 years, you face higher insurance rates, so nearly everyone does. Finally, if you commit a few driving infractions within an 18 month span (which causes 11 points to be placed on your license), your license is suspended. Insurance rates rise if even a single point is added, so there is pressure to avoid even a single infraction. As for insurance, it is mandatory and the requirements are among the highest in the U.S.
It is unclear to me how German drivers would be more skilled than drivers trained/licensed/insured in NY per your phrasing. You have not given a single concrete example of anything that would make them better drivers.
That’s a straw man. Nobody is saying Germans have some “safe driving” gene, but rather that German culture has higher standards for driver training and enforcement. I’m sure that if the United States would see incident rates decline significantly if we made drivers licenses harder to get and easier to lose before a fatality, or simply ended our effective trillion-dollar annual subsidy of driving and required people to carry insurance coverage sufficient to actually compensate the other parties.
The way he worded his reply suggested some sort of intrinsic superiority that by definition could not be replicated anywhere else.
That said, if we can replicate Germany’s success in vehicle safety in the U.S., we should, yet discussion on vehicle safety seems to justify increasingly draconian bandaids on the status quo rather than just mimicking what the Germans do. It is also easy to say that they have higher standards, yet no one has stated precisely what these standards are.
In NYS, we have annual mandatory vehicle inspections. Driving an uninspected vehicle is illegal and you cannot get the inspection certificate for your windshield unless your vehicle passes. The state requires a driving test to get a license and effectively forces everyone to take driver education courses every 3 years by raising insurance rates if they do not. It is unclear to me what is done in Germany that is not already done in NYS as far as driver education and vehicle road worthiness are concerned. NYS might even be ahead of Germany if Germany does not have any incentive for regular driver education.
> I’m sure that if the United States would see incident rates decline significantly if we made drivers licenses harder to get and easier to lose before a fatality, or simply ended our effective trillion-dollar annual subsidy of driving and required people to carry insurance coverage sufficient to actually compensate the other parties.
You just described NYS. It has some of the highest insurance coverage requirements in the U.S.:
Losing your license is fairly easy to do here. There is a points system. Reach 11 points, and you lose your license. Reaching 11 points is fairly easy to do. Having any points on your license increases insurance rates, so there is a strong incentive to avoid it.
> The way he worded his reply suggested some sort of intrinsic superiority that by definition could not be replicated anywhere else.
This is something you read into the comment. Given how Germany is tied with Japan for the assumption that they place a higher priority on attention to detail and safety culturally, I would suggest the more parsimonious explanation thar they were simply echoing a stereotype Americans have observed for at least a century.
While you’re apparently very proud of NYS you’re simply drawing a false equivalence. Perhaps NY is above average for the United States but having driven there many times I had to laugh at the idea that the bar is very high having seen people grossly speeding, running red lights, using the highway should or parking lanes to pass illegally, driving around with illegally tinted dark windows, double parking, or parking on the sidewalk. Even if I ignore upstate and only compare NYC to Munich, it’s not even in the same league – especially since some of the biggest scofflaws around NYC are the cops who park their personal vehicles blocking the sidewalks and are clearly more interested in hassling pedestrians and bicyclists.
On to insurance, it is simultaneously possible for NYS to have higher insurance requirements and still be lower than what’s needed. American healthcare is significantly more expensive than our peer countries so we need much higher insurance to compensate the people hit by drivers, especially because private insurance means a massive cost problem if the victim is unable to work. Studies have estimated that Americans subsidize driving by roughly a trillion dollars a year by not requiring drivers to pay for their choices, so even the most expensive states aren’t high enough.
I was comparing NYS’ standards for vehicles and drivers to Germany’s alleged standards. So far, no one has given a single example of German driver education being better than NY driver education.
If you paid attention the remarks about the 85th percentile, you would know that speeding on NY high ways is actually safer than following the speed limits. That is because the speed limits were lowered in the 1970s in a misguided attempt to save fuel that never worked since nobody listened to the speed limits after they stopped reflecting the 85th percentile. Many of the things you cite have nothing to do with highways where the discussion of speed limits is centered either.
As for insurance, the minimum standards are still the highest in the country. Many (myself included) go higher for insurance policies. You can write to the state legislature if you believe the minimum should be higher.
Then it is possible to replicate German success in vehicle safety in the U.S. without increasingly draconian speed limit restrictions. As for laws/culture/training, look at NYS:
1. There are annual mandatory vehicle inspections. Driving an uninspected vehicle is illegal and you cannot get the inspection certificate for your windshield unless your vehicle passes.
2. The state requires a driving test to get a license (in addition to prelicensing education requirements) and effectively forces everyone to take driver education courses every 3 years by raising insurance rates if they do not.
3. There is a points system for violations. Reach 11 points, and you lose your license. Reaching 11 points is fairly easy to do.
It is unclear how driving skill in Germany would be much different than driving skill in NYS. If you believe it should be, then you should have reasons for it that would give concrete things that can be changed.
I cannot speak for other states, but NY requires a driving test and has police regularly enforce traffic violations too. None of this supports the idea of setting highway speed limits below the 85th percentile or even having high way speed limits. It instead suggests that we should copy the Germans.
As for gruesome accidents, there will always be Darwin Award recipients. Trying to prevent them from earning their rewards is a foolhardy task. I believe the maxim is that the moment you make something idiot proof, the world makes a better idiot.
KE = ½mv² shows that kinetic energy is directly proportional to the mass of an object and proportional to the square of its velocity. This means that doubling the mass doubles the kinetic energy, but doubling the velocity quadruples the kinetic energy.
The kinetic energy of an 1800 kg car traveling at 30 km/h is about 62.5 kJ
The kinetic energy of an 1800 kg car traveling at 50 km/h is about 173.6 kJ
The kinetic energy of an 1800 kg car traveling at 70 km/h is about 340.1 kJ...
If your only consideration is getting to your destination very few minutes sooner with complete disregard for other peoples health it makes perfect sense, but cars are dangerous and at anything but completely isolated roads it makes sense to lower speed limits since the average speed wouldn't drop significantly while improving safety for everyone.
This is the most annoying thing, they risk the lives of themselves and everyone around them and gain at most 1-2 minutes on 30 minute drive.
It ridiculous how often someone speeds by, breaking the speed limit and often various other traffic laws and 30 seconds later we're side by side in traffic because their wreckless driving didn't actually but them any time.
My favorite pastime in traffic is to pull next to the person who was speeding and doing aggressive lane changes at the next red light by driving completely calm and under speed limit, and even without changing lanes.
> KE = ½mv² shows that kinetic energy is directly proportional to the mass of an object and proportional to the square of its velocity. This means that doubling the mass doubles the kinetic energy, but doubling the velocity quadruples the kinetic energy.
You're wrong there, that assumption fundamentally only makes sense on a full-on hard crash to 0 km/h - and about the only cases where that happens on a German road are suicides or someone not recognizing a traffic jam. Most crashes on highways are at relatively close speeds so the energy delta is way, way smaller.
I don't think anyone was looking at the kJ numbers and going "ah that makes sense". I put 3 examples to show the relativity, it's still squared to the relative crash speed.
What matters is keeping speeds especially low where humans without cars/trucks can be involved.
But people are also scrolling their phones and might miss a panic brake, and while that's an issue in itself it would also be safer at lower speeds.
Considering the time gained is going to be relatively low unless you're traveling extremely far at consistent speed it makes little sense to increase speeds, it also makes for more brake dust and emissions both being at speed and getting up to speed.
Funnily enough the air resistance also increases by the square, so think about that if you think that petrol is expensive.
Consider how none of this matters if the vehicle never touches another object. If motorists reach their destinations sooner, then there are fewer cars on the road. This naturally increases the average distance between vehicles. Bad things only happen when those distances reach 0, so higher average distances inhibit collisions.
The number of people I see on the highway driving 20mph over and weaving through traffic or driving like 30ft behind the car in front of them is alarming. These behaviors are just simply less safe.
This is correct. Laws should reflect the values of the democratic consensus, speed limits included. If almost everybody is traveling at a speed other than the posted speed limit, whether that's faster or slower, that is a strong signal that the speed limit needs to be adjusted. Speed limits should be set such that most people naturally think the limit is a sensible speed to drive anyway.
As it is, speed limits are rarely set to the individual roads specific circumstance according to some sort of scientific or engineering method, instead most speed limits are set to a default speed used for that class of road across the state. As such, it is silly to act like extant speed limits are all correct even when nearly everybody is ignoring the limit on a specific road, evaluating that road's condition for themselves and choosing to drive at another speed.
> Laws should reflect the values of the democratic consensus, speed limits included. If almost everybody is traveling at a speed other than the posted speed limit, whether that's faster or slower, that is a strong signal that the speed limit needs to be adjusted.
I don't see anything about interstates in your comment. But even roads reserved for motor vehicles have noise and pollution effects on people who don't use them. Plus, passengers exist.
Sure, but the parent comment didn't leave any room for nuance or considerations, instead broadly stating:
> Laws should reflect the values of the democratic consensus, speed limits included.
Maybe they considered the nuance to be something obvious, but their statement is still flawed. The funny thing about nuance is that most nuance isn't visible to the naked eye and requires some degree of familiarity or expertise to observe. And that degree is why we shouldn't be assigning speed limits based on what the average driver thinks is appropriate for a given road, as more likely than not (much more likely than not) they don't have the necessary context to make an appropriate judgement.
Most people don't drive past schools at excessive speeds. The speed limit should be set such that most people are naturally inclined to drive at that speed anyway, given the context of that stretch of road, not set to the fastest speed which outlier maniacs drive at.
The speed limit should be set given the context of what should be safe for the area with the road, and the road design should encourage drivers to drive at that speed.
If its a stretch of road where we don't want cars going more than 30mph, we should set the speed limit at 30mph and design the road, so people tend to go about that speed. Not have a stretch of road where we want people to go 30, build a road people feel comfortable driving 55 in, and then decide "welp, nothing we can do, just change the speed limit I guess."
If almost everyone is going a speed other than the speed limit I'd agree something should be done. But it's quite a leap to suggest the thing that should always be done is to change the speed limit. Maybe the roads should be restructured and add traffic calming. Maybe through traffic should be encouraged to use an alternate route. It's not like speed limits are the only lever one can use.
That's just drivers normalising the breaking of the speed limits. If you raise the limits just because drivers are going faster, then the drivers will just increase their speeds until again, a majority of drivers are breaking the limit.
Speed limits should be defined to reduce the harm from the inevitable crashes e.g. we have a lot of 20mph limits here in the UK in cities such as Bristol which are designed to reduce pedestrian deaths.
Personally, I think roads are poorly designed - they often prioritise speed which then encourages drivers to go faster (e.g. long sight lines, sweeping corners etc) and then a speed limit is applied. I think the better alternative s to design roads so that drivers naturally travel slower, or at least the careful ones do.
> If you raise the limits just because drivers are going faster, then the drivers will just increase their speeds until again
No. Most people who drive significantly faster than the limit are disregarding the limit and are driving at the speed they feel to be safe. They aren't considering the limit and blindly choosing to drive X over it, such that they'd drive X even faster even if the posted limit were raised by X.
If a long flat and straight country road in good condition has a posted limit of 30 and most people instead do 60 (this is common in many parts of the country), they wouldn't start doing 120 if the limit were raised to 60 because "do double the posted limit" was not their objective in the first place. Their objective was "drive at the speed which is safe for this road" and the condition of the road didn't change, so that speed doesn't change.
(The reason I know this to be true is because the proportion of drivers who speed on any given road varies wildly with the road. On some roads, 95% do substantially faster than the limit while on other roads that ratio is flipped around the other way. This demonstrates that speeds are being chosen by the condition and nature of the road, not derived in some way from the posted limits.)
> The reason I know this to be true is because the proportion of drivers who speed on any given road varies wildly with the road.
Another way to arrive at this conclusion is that if the speed limit is both 65 for trucks and cars its trivially not the limit of how fast one can safely drive. And as expected, you see trucks going 65 while cars speed around them at 70+.
And also the inability for people to use the pedal and the steering wheel at the same time resulting in large 15+ mph speed drops around a highly visible curve.
> I think the better alternative s to design roads so that drivers naturally travel slower, or at least the careful ones do.
We're talking about long distance roads. The purpose of these should be to accommodate travel, not prohibit it.
Here in Germany, the Autobahnen do a surprisingly well job, although I agree that a speed limit of around 200 km/h makes sense because those with cars capable of going above that are so much faster than others on the road that even someone with perfect reflexes and racing-grade brake systems will have a hard time avoiding an accident.
Driving 10 mph above the speed limit on a highway at every opportunity will only lead to a very limited reduction in travel time, because you spend a lot of time breaking (i.e. to avoid crashing into law-abiding drivers, reacting to speed controls, etc.).
At the same time it drastically increases both the risk of accidents, as well as the severity of accidents when they happen. You also endanger not only yourself but also everyone else on the road with you.
Sensible road design takes this into account and constructs roads in a way that disincentivizes speeding and is safer for everyone. One example would be "lazily" meandering highways instead of perfectly straight ones. The broken sightline is a great incentive to keep your foot off the gas, most people do it instinctively.
"Ongoing driver training" on the other hand is burdensome and expensive for the individual drivers and will probably lead to little noticeable effect, as speeding is not related to "not knowing better", but to "feeling entitled to break the rules" (for whatever reason).
Failure to drive 70 mph on a highway posted at 60 will (very often, road depending) result in far more cars overpassing you. Each instance of passing carries a small but definite amount of risk; it is safer to match the speed of the other cars on the road than to obstinately stick to the limit and get passed hundreds of times in a single trip.
(As for ripping up roads and relaying them so drivers intuitively find the safe speed to match the posted speed limit, it would be much cheaper to simply adjust the speed limit than establishing entirely new right of ways through existing neighborhoods, farms and industrial zones. That would be bonkers.)
It's a rare stretch of American interstate highway where the majority are sticking to the speed limit. On different roads the ratio of speeders to "speed limit doers" varies, but interstates have fairly consistent driving conditions and the safe speed for those conditions is consistently higher than the posted limit.
Usually traffic on American interstates is staying at the speed limit if: there is a fair amount of congestion, everybody is stuck behind somebody doing the limit, or there is rain/fog/snow/etc.
>and the safe speed for those conditions is consistently higher than the posted limit.
A cursory look at traffic safety statistics would seem to dispute this statement. The US consistently ranks quite high in traffic fatalities, which seems to indicate that you couldn't safely drive faster than the current speed limit in most circumstances. Of course you'd have to control for a lot of other factors for a definite conclusion, but conversely, I'd like to see an actual source for your theory.
Enforcing a speed limit is actually not that hard if you want to. You can of course put stationary or mobile speed cameras in place. But even better may be systems I've seen in some places in southern Europe: Cameras at the beginning and end of a stretch of highway that compare time stamps of your passing and calculate the average speed of your car in that stretch. If you've passed the stretch quicker than should be possible according to the speed limit you'll be fined. It's quite low tech, cameras are prevalent on the highway systems of many countries, anyway, and it solves the problem of people adhering only to the speed limit if they know they are being observed by law enforcement.
There are a number of interstates (and interstate like US highways) near me that have posted speed limits of 70MPH but any normal day you'll find traffic going 55mph or even less.
When everyone is driving beyond the speed limit, the ones actually obeying the speed limit are the dangerous drivers. It is unfortunate that speed limits in the US have not corresponded to how people actually drive since 1973.
How does this make sense? If I'm driving the speed limit and someone else is crashing into me from behind while speeding, they are the dangerous driver. No matter how many other people also ignore the speed limit.
Also, increasing the speed limit does nothing to make traffic safer. That doesn't make any sense at all, as increased speed is correlated very well with increased accident rates and severity of traffic-related injuries:
It should be obvious that driving substantially slower than everyone else would make you a danger to others. Try driving at the speed limit on a high way in southern NY, especially in the left lane. You will have many near accidents and the reality is that you would be the dangerous driver for not keeping pace with everyone else.
Increasing the speed limit to the 85th percentile so that you do not have the few people who actually obey it posing a hazard to others does make things safer.
Getting cars off the road sooner by reducing travel time, decreases the number of cars on the road. This increases the distance between cars and accidents only when the distance betweeen a vehicle and something else reaches 0. Forcing people to drive slower therefore causes collisions by bringing cars closer to one another.
The severity is a separate matter from whether there is a collision. As for severity, people drive much faster in Germany where there is no high way speed limit for much of the autobahn yet their autobahn network has half the fatalities that U.S. highways have. The safety data from 2012 shows this:
As for your link, it talks about pedestrian safety. As per the data there, pedestrians are unsafe on highways no matter what the speed limits are. There are also no pedestrians on highways. There is no point to setting highway speed limits based on studies showing the danger to non-existent pedestrians.
Did you post the first link that seemed to agree with your position as part of some fallacious appeal to authority because logic failed to agree with your preconceived notions that you were never equipped to defend? I suspect that is exactly what you just did.
>Increasing the speed limit to the 85th percentile so that you do not have the few people who actually obey it posing a hazard to others does make things safer.
[citation needed]
Seriously. That is a pretty bold claim that you should be able support with actual studies, if true. You have several things working against your hypothesis:
- While it may be true that driving at the legal speed limit might slightly increase the risk of accidents when many other drivers drive faster than the speed limit, a general increase of the speed limit might severly increase risk for everyone.
- Many people do not drive above the speed limit, because they have a "higher normal", but because they feel entitled to "drive faster". I.e. they claim that they are "better drivers", they have a superior need to arrive faster, etc. Those people will just adapt their behavior to the new, higher speed limit and again drive above that, making the entire exercise pointless and dangerous.
- A potential and less risky alternative would be improved enforcement of the current speed limit.
There are probably plenty of other arguments that actual experts in this field would bring up.
>Getting cars off the road sooner by reducing travel time, decreases the number of cars on the road. This increases the distance between cars and accidents only when the distance betweeen a vehicle and something else reaches 0.
That makes no sense at all. It has been proven in both theoretical and practical tests that driving "all out" does not decrease travel time drastically in almost all circumstances. But it substantially increase the risk of accidents. So any minuscule decrease in car density will be far outweighed by increased accident risk per kilometer driven.
>Forcing people to drive slower therefore causes collisions by bringing cars closer to one another.
It's actually the other way around: Forcing people to drive slower drastically reduced the risk of collisions because people are slower and have more time to react. It also reduces the incidence of traffic jams (because sharp braking prevalent with speeding drivers is a main contributor to traffic jams), which are in turn a major factor in collisions.
>As for severity, people drive much faster in Germany where there is no high way speed limit for much of the autobahn yet their autobahn network has half the fatalities that U.S. highways have.
You'll have to control for other factors, of course. Cars in the US are much larger and heavier than in Germany, for example. In statistics, you want to compare apples to apples, so you control for vehicle weight when trying to make observations about the impact of speed on accident severity.
>As for your link, it talks about pedestrian safety.
True. But the same holds true for vehicle collisions. It's really basic physics. All other things being equal, faster cars have more energy. More energy = more severe accident outcomes.
>Did you post the first link that seemed to agree with your position as part of some fallacious appeal to authority because logic failed to agree with your preconceived notions that you were never equipped to defend?
No. There are plenty of other sources that support my views, i.e.
> Seriously. That is a pretty bold claim that you should be able support with actual studies, if true
The 85th percentile rule/principle has been understood for decades. Just search for information on it. You will find tons of results. Calling it a bold claim is like claiming asymptotic complexity is a bold claim. It is something that is well known, just not to you.
> It has been proven in both theoretical and practical tests that driving "all out" does not decrease travel time drastically in almost all circumstances.
Those tests do not seem relevant to highways, where it is easy to measure differences in travel time between driving at the speed of traffic and driving at the speed limit. When traffic is at 70mph and the speed limit is 55mph, keeping pace with traffic results in a 21% reduction in highway travel time. How things go when someone is ‘driving "all out"’ is not relevant here.
> Forcing people to drive slower drastically reduced the risk of collisions because people are slower and have more time to react.
A highway is not a regular road where it is stop and go based on lights. The purpose of a highway is to have a free flow of traffic such that you do not need to be continuously reacting to others. You do need to maintain a certain distance between you and the car to react in emergencies, but these are supposed to be exceptional and plenty of collisions occur when changing lanes, which would be lessened with fewer cars on the road. Cases where everyone needs to stop would also be lessened.
> You'll have to control for other factors, of course. Cars in the US are much larger and heavier than in Germany, for example. In statistics, you want to compare apples to apples, so you control for vehicle weight when trying to make observations about the impact of speed on accident severity.
Those same vehicles are legal to drive in Germany as far as I know. There is a possibility that they are popular in the U.S. because of the speed limits such that they would be less popular if the highways did not have speed limits. After all, their acceleration, braking and fuel economy are terrible. They would only be worse at autobahn speeds. The knowledge that it is legal to drive at higher speeds tends to encourage people purchasing vehicles to purchase ones that can handle higher speeds well. We could see vehicles more similar to those driven in Germany become popular if there were no speed limits and then things would naturally become apples to apples.
> True. But the same holds true for vehicle collisions. It's really basic physics. All other things being equal, faster cars have more energy. More energy = more severe accident outcomes.
There is no law of physics that dictates that such things cannot be done with greater safety than we currently have. Germany is a fantastic example of this. Germany permits speeds that would be considered hazardous by the thinking behind motor vehicle rules in the US, yet is substantially safer.
> No. There are plenty of other sources that support my views, i.e.
If I tell you what is wrong with your sources one last time, I hope you will stop posting links under the misguided hope that some random thing superficially agrees with your claims sticks. Your first link involved studies in a country where speed limits should obey the 85th percentile. The findings are not relevant to the U.S. where the 85th percentile is ignored. Even without knowing about the 85th percentile, it is obvious the applicability to other countries would depend on how similar the process for establishing the speed limit is. Your second link is behind a paywall and cannot be scrutinized, but the German autobahn likely contradicts it. Problems only occur when the distance between a vehicle and another object reaches 0. If that is avoided, the speed does not matter.
That said, it is impossible to prevent future Darwin Award recipients from earning their awards. If you insist on trying to stop them from earning rewards from motor vehicles, you might as well push for a complete ban on motor vehicles. That is the only thing that would eliminate motor vehicle fatalities.
