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You're basically saying that everyone should defect because everyone else does. Which may well be true for a single human driver, but is probably not how autono

You're basically saying that everyone should defect because everyone else does. Which may well be true for a single human driver, but is probably not how autonomous cars as a whole should be programmed. Nor does it support the claim that "speed itself is not dangerous". If everyone were driving slower, everyone would be safer (which we may actually be able to achieve once a sufficient number of law-abiding robot cars displace human drivers).

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Exactly. If everyone followed the traffic rules instead of considering themselves smarter than traffic engineers, rules could then be adjusted to accomodate for optimal flow and safety. Alas, drivers know better and you can't optimize anything, because people will ignore the rules anyway.
- ubernostrum 11y ago
  If everyone followed the traffic rules instead of considering themselves smarter than traffic engineers Traffic engineers don't set speed limits. Politicians do. If politicians would stop thinking they're smarter than the engineers, the speed limits would match the design and operating speeds of the roads much more often.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Politicians don't think they're smarter than engineers. They just do what politicians do. Pandering to the public and seeking easy revenue, the latter in this case is possible only because drivers are irresponsible and can be gamed for money by lowering speed limits. Anyway, I wouldn't accuse politicians of being any saner than your average driver when on the road.
Dylan16807 11y ago
>If everyone were driving slower, everyone would be safer But that's always true. All the way down to 10mph speed limits. The job of speed limits is not maximum safety at the cost of everything else. In practice, people can tell the design speed of a road and mostly follow that, no matter what the signs say. Defecting or not doesn't matter very much.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > In practice, people can tell the design speed of a road and mostly follow that, no matter what the signs say. Defecting or not doesn't matter very much. It does, because what people can tell is only the design of the stretch of the road they're at. They have no awareness of how it interacts with rest of the roads in the area. By ignoring the rules they make it significantly harder to optimize traffic flow globally. And even if the limits were wrong, it's still better to have bad rules that are actually followed, because then people responsible can actually observe they're bad and change them for the better.
  - ubernostrum 11y ago
    By definition, the design speed of a segment of road comes from taking into account the entire segment. If a segment contains sharp curves, for example, then the entire segment can be designed around that fact.
- Robin_Message 11y ago
  > In practice, people can tell the design speed of a road I think there have been quite a few studies showing most people think they are above average at driving. I don't think people do this at all. I think they are overconfident, hurrying apes, with no real conception of stopping distance or kinetic energy, aiming to just miss each other with these multi-ton projectiles. It's sadly not surprising how many people are killed on the roads.
  - terryf 11y ago
    > It's sadly not surprising how many people are killed on the roads. In 2013, US, total number of traffic deaths was 32719. Total number of miles driven: 2,946,000,000,000. Miles driven per one death: 90,039,426 It's not even one-in-a-million chance of dying. It's one-in-90-million chance. That is really very good odds. Driving is really quite safe and getting safer all the time. Cars manufactured today have safety systems and braking ability, traction control and other safety measures that are basically incomparable to cars made 20-30 years ago. The speed limits are still the same for everyone though. The whole point of a car is to quickly get from one location to another.
ubernostrum 11y ago
You're basically saying that everyone should defect because everyone else does. So, there are three speeds we need to be concerned with here: 1. Design speed -- this is the speed anticipated and planned for by the engineers who designed the road. It's visible in features like curves, merging areas and so on. 2. Operating speed -- this is the actual speed of traffic on the road once built, and typically is measured as the 85th percentile of observed traffic (i.e., the speed such that 85% of traffic travels at or below that speed). 3. Speed limit -- this is the posted maximum above which vehicles can be stopped and ticketed by an enforcement officer. In real-world scenarios both the design speed and the operating speed are often higher than the speed limit, because speed limits are often more strongly influenced -- and always downward, when they are influenced in this way -- by factors other than safety (i.e., politics and revenue). Which is a problem. Good road design anticipates roughly what the operating speed will be, and attempts to match that in the design. Setting a limit which differs significantly from the operating and design speeds is only good for politics ("we're making you safer by slowing down the traffic") and revenue (more tickets issued for speeding); it has no relation to actually-safer roads. And in general, yes, speed differential is more commonly a danger than simple raw speed; the intuitive explanation is that every event of one vehicle passing another creates an opportunity for a collision, and moving at a speed significantly different from all other traffic (regardless of whether faster or slower) increases the number of passing events which necessarily increases the chance of a collision. Thus, regardless of posted limits, it is safer to match your speed to that of surrounding traffic. This is not a case of "everyone should defect because everyone else does". It's a case of "the people who posted the speed limit defected, and you shouldn't follow their example".
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  You realize that "politics" only works because drivers drive like idiots and generally ignore speed limits? If they were responsible, the operating speed would always be less or equal than speed limit.
  - ubernostrum 11y ago
    As long as ticket revenue goes into the budget of the local government entity issuing the tickets, it doesn't really matter how awful you think drivers are. There are plenty of documented cases of deliberate meddling with safety features to increase revenue. Look at red-light cameras, for example, where local governments have been known to change the light timing in unsafe ways in order to manufacture ticketable violations. And, again: the safest thing is to keep to the average speed of surrounding traffic. If you deliberately operate your vehicle at a significantly different speed than surrounding traffic, you are deliberately creating a hazard to yourself and others.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

Exactly. If everyone followed the traffic rules instead of considering themselves smarter than traffic engineers, rules could then be adjusted to accomodate for optimal flow and safety. Alas, drivers know better and you can't optimize anything, because people will ignore the rules anyway.

ubernostrum 11y ago
If everyone followed the traffic rules instead of considering themselves smarter than traffic engineers Traffic engineers don't set speed limits. Politicians do. If politicians would stop thinking they're smarter than the engineers, the speed limits would match the design and operating speeds of the roads much more often.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Politicians don't think they're smarter than engineers. They just do what politicians do. Pandering to the public and seeking easy revenue, the latter in this case is possible only because drivers are irresponsible and can be gamed for money by lowering speed limits. Anyway, I wouldn't accuse politicians of being any saner than your average driver when on the road.

Dylan16807 11y ago

>If everyone were driving slower, everyone would be safer But that's always true. All the way down to 10mph speed limits. The job of speed limits is not maximum safety at the cost of everything else. In practice, people can tell the design speed of a road and mostly follow that, no matter what the signs say. Defecting or not doesn't matter very much.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
> In practice, people can tell the design speed of a road and mostly follow that, no matter what the signs say. Defecting or not doesn't matter very much. It does, because what people can tell is only the design of the stretch of the road they're at. They have no awareness of how it interacts with rest of the roads in the area. By ignoring the rules they make it significantly harder to optimize traffic flow globally. And even if the limits were wrong, it's still better to have bad rules that are actually followed, because then people responsible can actually observe they're bad and change them for the better.
- ubernostrum 11y ago
  By definition, the design speed of a segment of road comes from taking into account the entire segment. If a segment contains sharp curves, for example, then the entire segment can be designed around that fact.
Robin_Message 11y ago
> In practice, people can tell the design speed of a road I think there have been quite a few studies showing most people think they are above average at driving. I don't think people do this at all. I think they are overconfident, hurrying apes, with no real conception of stopping distance or kinetic energy, aiming to just miss each other with these multi-ton projectiles. It's sadly not surprising how many people are killed on the roads.
- terryf 11y ago
  > It's sadly not surprising how many people are killed on the roads. In 2013, US, total number of traffic deaths was 32719. Total number of miles driven: 2,946,000,000,000. Miles driven per one death: 90,039,426 It's not even one-in-a-million chance of dying. It's one-in-90-million chance. That is really very good odds. Driving is really quite safe and getting safer all the time. Cars manufactured today have safety systems and braking ability, traction control and other safety measures that are basically incomparable to cars made 20-30 years ago. The speed limits are still the same for everyone though. The whole point of a car is to quickly get from one location to another.

ubernostrum 11y ago

You're basically saying that everyone should defect because everyone else does. So, there are three speeds we need to be concerned with here: 1. Design speed -- this is the speed anticipated and planned for by the engineers who designed the road. It's visible in features like curves, merging areas and so on. 2. Operating speed -- this is the actual speed of traffic on the road once built, and typically is measured as the 85th percentile of observed traffic (i.e., the speed such that 85% of traffic travels at or below that speed). 3. Speed limit -- this is the posted maximum above which vehicles can be stopped and ticketed by an enforcement officer. In real-world scenarios both the design speed and the operating speed are often higher than the speed limit, because speed limits are often more strongly influenced -- and always downward, when they are influenced in this way -- by factors other than safety (i.e., politics and revenue). Which is a problem. Good road design anticipates roughly what the operating speed will be, and attempts to match that in the design. Setting a limit which differs significantly from the operating and design speeds is only good for politics ("we're making you safer by slowing down the traffic") and revenue (more tickets issued for speeding); it has no relation to actually-safer roads. And in general, yes, speed differential is more commonly a danger than simple raw speed; the intuitive explanation is that every event of one vehicle passing another creates an opportunity for a collision, and moving at a speed significantly different from all other traffic (regardless of whether faster or slower) increases the number of passing events which necessarily increases the chance of a collision. Thus, regardless of posted limits, it is safer to match your speed to that of surrounding traffic. This is not a case of "everyone should defect because everyone else does". It's a case of "the people who posted the speed limit defected, and you shouldn't follow their example".

TeMPOraL 11y ago
You realize that "politics" only works because drivers drive like idiots and generally ignore speed limits? If they were responsible, the operating speed would always be less or equal than speed limit.
- ubernostrum 11y ago
  As long as ticket revenue goes into the budget of the local government entity issuing the tickets, it doesn't really matter how awful you think drivers are. There are plenty of documented cases of deliberate meddling with safety features to increase revenue. Look at red-light cameras, for example, where local governments have been known to change the light timing in unsafe ways in order to manufacture ticketable violations. And, again: the safest thing is to keep to the average speed of surrounding traffic. If you deliberately operate your vehicle at a significantly different speed than surrounding traffic, you are deliberately creating a hazard to yourself and others.