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.
https://dmv.ny.gov/new-york-state-vehicle-safetyemissions-in...
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.