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Did you even read the article? Many speed limits are not based on safety, which is the entire point of a speed limit. That's where "artificially low" comes from

by Sargos 10y ago

Did you even read the article? Many speed limits are not based on safety, which is the entire point of a speed limit. That's where "artificially low" comes from. 85% of people drive at a safe speed regardless of what the speed limit is. The speed limit should more closely match that safe speed. Forcing everyone to drive at a slower speed than what's safe by force does not actually make the road safer. 100% enforcement of current speed limits would not actually make things better.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> Did you even read the article? Yes, and I directly addressed it's points. Did you read my post? Because you don't seem to address what I've said, and you ignore that I've more directly dealt with the points made in the article than you do in yours. > 85% of people drive at a safe speed regardless of what the speed limit is. No, traffic engineers have come to the conclusion that, because speed variance is a significant source of risk, the safest speed limit (considering auto vs. auto issues only) is the 85th percentile speed of traffic on the road, which (at least with patterns of enforcement over the time the rule was found and since) seems not to vary much based on posted limits, in any case. That's the 85th percentile rule, and it's the single most common rule for setting speed limits in the US. Its incorporated in federal guidance, its incorporated in most state laws (though with some exceptions—e.g., school zones, upper highway speed limits—in virtually all of them). Given that the 85th percentile speed will rarely fall on exactly a convenient numbee, you'd expect nearly half of limits to be below that because of rounding, and add in some conditions which create downward departures in limited cases, and, sure, as the article body says, most (>50%) are below. But that's not the headline's "every speed limit". Not is it clear, as I stated previously, that the 85th percentile rule is ideal for safety for mixed use. There's considerable global evidence that lower speed limits are better for that.

by Sargos 10y ago

dragonwriter 10y ago

> Did you even read the article? Yes, and I directly addressed it's points. Did you read my post? Because you don't seem to address what I've said, and you ignore that I've more directly dealt with the points made in the article than you do in yours. > 85% of people drive at a safe speed regardless of what the speed limit is. No, traffic engineers have come to the conclusion that, because speed variance is a significant source of risk, the safest speed limit (considering auto vs. auto issues only) is the 85th percentile speed of traffic on the road, which (at least with patterns of enforcement over the time the rule was found and since) seems not to vary much based on posted limits, in any case. That's the 85th percentile rule, and it's the single most common rule for setting speed limits in the US. Its incorporated in federal guidance, its incorporated in most state laws (though with some exceptions—e.g., school zones, upper highway speed limits—in virtually all of them). Given that the 85th percentile speed will rarely fall on exactly a convenient numbee, you'd expect nearly half of limits to be below that because of rounding, and add in some conditions which create downward departures in limited cases, and, sure, as the article body says, most (>50%) are below. But that's not the headline's "every speed limit". Not is it clear, as I stated previously, that the 85th percentile rule is ideal for safety for mixed use. There's considerable global evidence that lower speed limits are better for that.