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."