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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.




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