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This is my huge problem with the article - it argues we have no control over speeding. And then it suggests places that ticket aggressively are behaving irrespo

This is my huge problem with the article - it argues we have no control over speeding. And then it suggests places that ticket aggressively are behaving irresponsibly, to the point of villafying a town in Missouri for enforcing its speeding laws. All while skirting the fact that there is a clear correlation between higher speeds and higher fatality rates. Everyone knows a place cops like to hang out, and slows down accordingly. Why not enforce speed limits more frequently so people obey them? Why suggest a worse solution (encouraging all drivers to go faster) instead of punishing more people for driving irresponsibly?

CrystalLangUser 9y ago
Vilifying
- gjm11 9y ago
  You're right (though I like the idea of villafying a town, which I suppose would mean filling it with large Mediterranean-style dwellings) but this sort of correction to something no one was in much danger of misunderstanding doesn't really contribute much and I suggest is best avoided unless (1) the perpetrator specifically asks for corrections, (2) there's serious danger of misunderstanding as a result of the mistake, or (3) correcting it gives the opportunity to say something genuinely interesting and relevant.
vuldin 9y ago
The article does not claim that we have no control over speeding. We do have control over or speed in numerous ways. The article merely says that signs have little impact on how fast a community goes on any stretch of road... other factors end up being more of a factor. At the same time, road safety is not as strongly tied to the speed of traffic. This article has an attention-grabbing headline (cop says to increase speeds!), but really it's drawing attention to how there are many factors that go into road usage and laws and there are places where people are starting to take these other factors into account. Sounds like a micro-level revolution in how the executive branch of US government operates.
bdhess 9y ago
> Why suggest a worse solution (encouraging all drivers to go faster) instead of punishing more people for driving irresponsibly? This is the same logic that failed in the "War on Drugs". First off, there's a false dichotomy between proscribing a behavior and encouraging it. And strict enforcement of a "crime" that it turns out lots of people commit on a regular basis doesn't really work so well.
- geofft 9y ago
  I think the problematic logic of the War on Drugs is a bit subtler than "If some people want to do something, it's a bad idea to make it illegal." Off the top of my head: Many of the drugs in question are responsible for far fewer deaths than cars are, and so it's not obvious why the penalty fits the crime and there's a strong argument for outright legalization. Many of the drugs are physically addictive and not merely something people want to do with full free will; many people arrested would be happy to stop doing drugs if they got treatment instead. The war involved foreign policy and foreign military activity, whereas nobody is suggesting that we bomb Toyota if they refuse to make slower cars. The war has been waged particularly aggressively among historically-oppressed races and classes (cf. The New Jim Crow), whereas no directly analogous danger exists from enforcing low speed limits.
- ausvisaissues 9y ago
  The "war on drugs" was largely won in Asian countries that have proper enforcement (Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, etc...) Just compare the streets of Tokyo to that of San Francisco and tell me it is not working! Also, compare driver (and pedestrian) behaviour in Japan. In urban areas, both largely follows the rules and it is safer. (Strict liability for drivers may also be a part of it...)
- ausvisaissues 9y ago
  The "war on drugs" was largely won in Asian countries that have proper enforcement (Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, etc...) Just compare the streets of Tokyo to that of San Francisco and tell me it is not working! Also, compare driver (and pedestrian) behaviour in Japan. In urban areas, both largely follows the rules and it is safer. (Strict liability for drivers may also be a part of it...)
emodendroket 9y ago
No, that isn't really what it's saying.
stellar678 9y ago
The real way to make people drive a certain speed - is to design a road that makes people drive that speed. It's been a really slow process, but bit by bit we are beginning to recover from the mistake of treating the design of transportation networks as a technical engineering problem rather than a social design problem. If you want people to drive 25mph, you have to design a 25mph road. You can't treat it like an engineering problem and include a "50% safety buffer", because then you designed a 37.5mph road and that's how fast people will drive.
- obstinate 9y ago
  Many ways to skin a cat. Design roads properly, sure. But I'm pretty confident that more aggressive ticketing would decrease speeding. Red light cameras certainly have that effect on red light running, and the negation just seems absurd to me. As a bonus, aggressive ticketing requires no new infrastructure.
  - Retric 9y ago
    Red light cameras increase accidents because people speed up if they think they are even slightly close to the limit. Think of it this way, which changes behavior getting a ticket in 4-6 weeks by mail or having a cop pull you over today. Or worse watching someone get a ticket, or possibly noticing a flash and having no idea what it's from.
    - obstinate 9y ago
      Your ideas about what red light cameras do are contradicted by the actual studies done to see what red light cameras do. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/05048/05048.pdf https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/05048/...
      - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
        Red light cameras increase rear end collisions and decrease side impact collisions; but side impact collisions are more dangerous. The problem, of course, is that there is a better way to reduce side impact collisions -- and red light running in general -- which is to increase the length of the yellow light. But because doing that actually does reduce the number of people who run a red light, the intersections with red light cameras do the opposite of that, because they need people to run red lights in order to generate revenue and pay for the cameras. And if you compare the results at red light camera intersections with short yellow lights against normal intersections with appropriately timed yellow lights, the cameras are killing people.
viraptor 9y ago
> Why not enforce speed limits more frequently so people obey them? As long as we do it consistently, actually stop people, and do it across the country... which is pretty hard. The are quite a few issues with just extra ticketing because speeding is dangerous. The worst ideas imo are the automated checks during holidays. So you get caught on a random road, in a place you're never coming back to. You pay the ticket you get a week after the fact, and what changed? You were still speeding during the busy holiday weekend, you'll likely forget about it next year. Another one is small speeding (5 km/h) fines in residential area. You're constantly changing direction, slowing down and starting again. Would you rather people paid attention to their dashboard to keep the right speed, or actually looked around for people/cars? As much as people made fun of it, I liked the idea that was used in Poland (maybe still is?) where instead of actual cameras or patrols, a simple plastic shape of a car painted like the police cars was placed near the road. [0] Works great on non local people and sometimes you would get an actual police car behind it to stop people who get used to / ignore that warning. [0] https://creators-images.vice.com/content-images/contentimage/no-slug/eb9544a1acc5f95ef87f925930b5738a.jpg https://creators-images.vice.com/content-images/contentimage...
- massysett 9y ago
  Consistent enforcement is not hard: photo traffic enforcement devices.
  - pdonis 9y ago
    Sure, if you don't mind penalizing people who have caused no harm. I strongly disagree with that approach.
    - SXX 9y ago
      So you're okay with people driving while drunk or high as well? They might not cause any harm too.
      - pdonis 9y ago
pdonis 9y ago
> there is a clear correlation between higher speeds and higher fatality rates But according to the article, there is little or no correlation between the posted speed limit and the actual speeds at which people drive. So lowering the speed limit does not actually reduce fatality rates. But it does, as others have commented, creaet a misperception of what the actual expected speeds are on a road, which increases risk. > Why not enforce speed limits more frequently so people obey them? Because that would be way too expensive, not just in the increased cost of cops but in the lost time of all the people getting stopped even though they are driving at about the average speed of other drivers on the road--which, as the article notes, is the biggest factor in traffic safety. The enforcement algorithm that most cops appear to actually use is to go after people who are going significantly faster than average, i.e., who are increasing the variance in speeds and therefore the risk of an accident. > instead of punishing more people for driving irresponsibly? This assumes that driving over the posted speed limit must equate to "driving irresponsibly". I strongly disagree with this assumption, and so, I suspect, do many others.
- fulafel 9y ago
  > Because that would be way too expensive, not just in the increased cost of cops but in the lost time of all the people getting stopped You can automate it for much less than what traditional cop labour costs, and speeding ticket revenue would pay for the automation. If there was more enforcement, people would keep to the speed limits more frequently and there would be less stops. It's a control system with a feedback loop.
  - greenshackle2 9y ago
    France is a natural experiment for that, they have a lot of automated speed traps. They really ramped up automated radar deployment in 2003-2007, I spent 10 minutes trying to find data that would let me see at a glance if accidents went down more than usual starting in 2003 but didn't find anything straightforward. Anecdotally, most people who speed just slow down at the traps, then accelerate back. I'm not sure that's much safer than going steady at the higher speed.
caseysoftware 9y ago
> Why not enforce speed limits more frequently so people obey them? Personally, I prefer to see police enforce more meaningful laws and investigate crimes where there are actual victims involved.
- aleksei 9y ago
  Like hit and runs?
  - caseysoftware 9y ago
    Yes. Seems like drunk driving is a key contributor to that: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/10/hit-and-run-crashes-los-angeles/3452699/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/10/hit-an...
ensignavenger 9y ago
That small town in Missouri was in fact violating the law, and as the article pointed out.
jfoutz 9y ago
After the city put in a speed limit sign with radar that shows speed, kids put up a high score list under the signs. I thought it was hilarious and scary.
u801e 9y ago
> All while skirting the fact that there is a clear correlation between higher speeds and higher fatality rates. The NMSL was repealed in 1995 (22 years ago). Most states have raised their interstate highway speed limits from 55 or 65 mph to 70 mph and beyond. Yet, the fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled has dropped substantially since 1995. Therefore, higher speeds do not have a correlation with higher fatality rates.
- dimaggiosghost 9y ago
  Vehicle safety is a significant confounder here. It is possible that increased deaths from higher limits was more than offset by mandatory airbags, anti lock disc brakes, crumple zones, etc. Actually it's pretty neat how much safer cars in America have gotten since then.
  - u801e 9y ago
    While that is true between 1995 and 2005, if you look at the data [1] between 2005 (roughly 10 years after both drivers and passenger side airbags were required equipment) and 2015, you can see the fatality rate dropped from 1.46 down to 1.08 Given the average age of a vehicle on the road is about 10 years give or take, then by 2005, the majority of vehicles had both drivers and passenger side air bags and crumple zones. Traffic speeds have also increased to some extent in the last 10 years as well. [1] https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx
    - learc83 9y ago
      There are other new safety features introduced on many cars since then. Vehicle stability control is a big one.
      - u801e 9y ago
        Vehicle stability control isn't mandated by NHTSA, and I don't think that it's a feature on a substantial portion of the vehicle fleet. You would have to look at what vehicle safety features were mandated between 2000 and 2010 to really see if any of them played a part in the decline in the fatality rate in the 2005 to 2015 time period.
gnopgnip 9y ago
Alameda CA has all of that too. 25MPH speed limit over most of the city, heavy enforcement of traffic laws, narrow lanes, wide bike lanes, walk buttons with flashers, raised crosswalks for visibility. People still speed but much less so that in neighboring cities
walljm 9y ago
> Why suggest a worse solution (encouraging all drivers to go faster) instead of punishing more people for driving irresponsibly? The article addresses this. the posted speed limit doesn't affect how fast people drive (slow or fast). They drive as fast as is comfortable regardless. Posting a higher speed limit doesn't make people drive faster. But it does give a clearer warning to pedestrians and parents as to what the probably speed of drivers is, so they can take the appropriate cautions. > it argues we have no control over speeding. And then it suggests places that ticket aggressively are behaving irresponsibly, to the point of villafying a town in Missouri for enforcing its speeding laws. He doesn't argue that we have no control. Only that posted speed limits aren't effective as a control measure. The point of discussing the towns that use traffic violations as a revenue source is that, if posted speed limits aren't effective at creating safer drivers, then the only reason to use super low speed limits is to generate revenue which is a conflict of interest and counter productive for the reasons stated above.

CrystalLangUser 9y ago

Vilifying

gjm11 9y ago
You're right (though I like the idea of villafying a town, which I suppose would mean filling it with large Mediterranean-style dwellings) but this sort of correction to something no one was in much danger of misunderstanding doesn't really contribute much and I suggest is best avoided unless (1) the perpetrator specifically asks for corrections, (2) there's serious danger of misunderstanding as a result of the mistake, or (3) correcting it gives the opportunity to say something genuinely interesting and relevant.

vuldin 9y ago

The article does not claim that we have no control over speeding. We do have control over or speed in numerous ways. The article merely says that signs have little impact on how fast a community goes on any stretch of road... other factors end up being more of a factor. At the same time, road safety is not as strongly tied to the speed of traffic. This article has an attention-grabbing headline (cop says to increase speeds!), but really it's drawing attention to how there are many factors that go into road usage and laws and there are places where people are starting to take these other factors into account. Sounds like a micro-level revolution in how the executive branch of US government operates.

bdhess 9y ago

> Why suggest a worse solution (encouraging all drivers to go faster) instead of punishing more people for driving irresponsibly? This is the same logic that failed in the "War on Drugs". First off, there's a false dichotomy between proscribing a behavior and encouraging it. And strict enforcement of a "crime" that it turns out lots of people commit on a regular basis doesn't really work so well.

geofft 9y ago
I think the problematic logic of the War on Drugs is a bit subtler than "If some people want to do something, it's a bad idea to make it illegal." Off the top of my head: Many of the drugs in question are responsible for far fewer deaths than cars are, and so it's not obvious why the penalty fits the crime and there's a strong argument for outright legalization. Many of the drugs are physically addictive and not merely something people want to do with full free will; many people arrested would be happy to stop doing drugs if they got treatment instead. The war involved foreign policy and foreign military activity, whereas nobody is suggesting that we bomb Toyota if they refuse to make slower cars. The war has been waged particularly aggressively among historically-oppressed races and classes (cf. The New Jim Crow), whereas no directly analogous danger exists from enforcing low speed limits.
ausvisaissues 9y ago
The "war on drugs" was largely won in Asian countries that have proper enforcement (Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, etc...) Just compare the streets of Tokyo to that of San Francisco and tell me it is not working! Also, compare driver (and pedestrian) behaviour in Japan. In urban areas, both largely follows the rules and it is safer. (Strict liability for drivers may also be a part of it...)
ausvisaissues 9y ago
The "war on drugs" was largely won in Asian countries that have proper enforcement (Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, etc...) Just compare the streets of Tokyo to that of San Francisco and tell me it is not working! Also, compare driver (and pedestrian) behaviour in Japan. In urban areas, both largely follows the rules and it is safer. (Strict liability for drivers may also be a part of it...)

emodendroket 9y ago

No, that isn't really what it's saying.

stellar678 9y ago

The real way to make people drive a certain speed - is to design a road that makes people drive that speed. It's been a really slow process, but bit by bit we are beginning to recover from the mistake of treating the design of transportation networks as a technical engineering problem rather than a social design problem. If you want people to drive 25mph, you have to design a 25mph road. You can't treat it like an engineering problem and include a "50% safety buffer", because then you designed a 37.5mph road and that's how fast people will drive.

obstinate 9y ago
Many ways to skin a cat. Design roads properly, sure. But I'm pretty confident that more aggressive ticketing would decrease speeding. Red light cameras certainly have that effect on red light running, and the negation just seems absurd to me. As a bonus, aggressive ticketing requires no new infrastructure.
- Retric 9y ago
  Red light cameras increase accidents because people speed up if they think they are even slightly close to the limit. Think of it this way, which changes behavior getting a ticket in 4-6 weeks by mail or having a cop pull you over today. Or worse watching someone get a ticket, or possibly noticing a flash and having no idea what it's from.
  - obstinate 9y ago
    Your ideas about what red light cameras do are contradicted by the actual studies done to see what red light cameras do. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/05048/05048.pdf https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/publications/research/safety/05048/...
    - AnthonyMouse 9y ago
      Red light cameras increase rear end collisions and decrease side impact collisions; but side impact collisions are more dangerous. The problem, of course, is that there is a better way to reduce side impact collisions -- and red light running in general -- which is to increase the length of the yellow light. But because doing that actually does reduce the number of people who run a red light, the intersections with red light cameras do the opposite of that, because they need people to run red lights in order to generate revenue and pay for the cameras. And if you compare the results at red light camera intersections with short yellow lights against normal intersections with appropriately timed yellow lights, the cameras are killing people.

viraptor 9y ago

> Why not enforce speed limits more frequently so people obey them? As long as we do it consistently, actually stop people, and do it across the country... which is pretty hard. The are quite a few issues with just extra ticketing because speeding is dangerous. The worst ideas imo are the automated checks during holidays. So you get caught on a random road, in a place you're never coming back to. You pay the ticket you get a week after the fact, and what changed? You were still speeding during the busy holiday weekend, you'll likely forget about it next year. Another one is small speeding (5 km/h) fines in residential area. You're constantly changing direction, slowing down and starting again. Would you rather people paid attention to their dashboard to keep the right speed, or actually looked around for people/cars? As much as people made fun of it, I liked the idea that was used in Poland (maybe still is?) where instead of actual cameras or patrols, a simple plastic shape of a car painted like the police cars was placed near the road. [0] Works great on non local people and sometimes you would get an actual police car behind it to stop people who get used to / ignore that warning. [0] https://creators-images.vice.com/content-images/contentimage/no-slug/eb9544a1acc5f95ef87f925930b5738a.jpg https://creators-images.vice.com/content-images/contentimage...

massysett 9y ago
Consistent enforcement is not hard: photo traffic enforcement devices.
- pdonis 9y ago
  Sure, if you don't mind penalizing people who have caused no harm. I strongly disagree with that approach.
  - SXX 9y ago
    So you're okay with people driving while drunk or high as well? They might not cause any harm too.
    - pdonis 9y ago

pdonis 9y ago

> there is a clear correlation between higher speeds and higher fatality rates But according to the article, there is little or no correlation between the posted speed limit and the actual speeds at which people drive. So lowering the speed limit does not actually reduce fatality rates. But it does, as others have commented, creaet a misperception of what the actual expected speeds are on a road, which increases risk. > Why not enforce speed limits more frequently so people obey them? Because that would be way too expensive, not just in the increased cost of cops but in the lost time of all the people getting stopped even though they are driving at about the average speed of other drivers on the road--which, as the article notes, is the biggest factor in traffic safety. The enforcement algorithm that most cops appear to actually use is to go after people who are going significantly faster than average, i.e., who are increasing the variance in speeds and therefore the risk of an accident. > instead of punishing more people for driving irresponsibly? This assumes that driving over the posted speed limit must equate to "driving irresponsibly". I strongly disagree with this assumption, and so, I suspect, do many others.

fulafel 9y ago
> Because that would be way too expensive, not just in the increased cost of cops but in the lost time of all the people getting stopped You can automate it for much less than what traditional cop labour costs, and speeding ticket revenue would pay for the automation. If there was more enforcement, people would keep to the speed limits more frequently and there would be less stops. It's a control system with a feedback loop.
- greenshackle2 9y ago
  France is a natural experiment for that, they have a lot of automated speed traps. They really ramped up automated radar deployment in 2003-2007, I spent 10 minutes trying to find data that would let me see at a glance if accidents went down more than usual starting in 2003 but didn't find anything straightforward. Anecdotally, most people who speed just slow down at the traps, then accelerate back. I'm not sure that's much safer than going steady at the higher speed.

caseysoftware 9y ago

> Why not enforce speed limits more frequently so people obey them? Personally, I prefer to see police enforce more meaningful laws and investigate crimes where there are actual victims involved.

aleksei 9y ago
Like hit and runs?
- caseysoftware 9y ago
  Yes. Seems like drunk driving is a key contributor to that: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/10/hit-and-run-crashes-los-angeles/3452699/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/10/hit-an...

ensignavenger 9y ago

That small town in Missouri was in fact violating the law, and as the article pointed out.

jfoutz 9y ago

After the city put in a speed limit sign with radar that shows speed, kids put up a high score list under the signs. I thought it was hilarious and scary.

u801e 9y ago

> All while skirting the fact that there is a clear correlation between higher speeds and higher fatality rates. The NMSL was repealed in 1995 (22 years ago). Most states have raised their interstate highway speed limits from 55 or 65 mph to 70 mph and beyond. Yet, the fatality rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled has dropped substantially since 1995. Therefore, higher speeds do not have a correlation with higher fatality rates.

dimaggiosghost 9y ago
Vehicle safety is a significant confounder here. It is possible that increased deaths from higher limits was more than offset by mandatory airbags, anti lock disc brakes, crumple zones, etc. Actually it's pretty neat how much safer cars in America have gotten since then.
- u801e 9y ago
  While that is true between 1995 and 2005, if you look at the data [1] between 2005 (roughly 10 years after both drivers and passenger side airbags were required equipment) and 2015, you can see the fatality rate dropped from 1.46 down to 1.08 Given the average age of a vehicle on the road is about 10 years give or take, then by 2005, the majority of vehicles had both drivers and passenger side air bags and crumple zones. Traffic speeds have also increased to some extent in the last 10 years as well. [1] https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx
  - learc83 9y ago
    There are other new safety features introduced on many cars since then. Vehicle stability control is a big one.
    - u801e 9y ago
      Vehicle stability control isn't mandated by NHTSA, and I don't think that it's a feature on a substantial portion of the vehicle fleet. You would have to look at what vehicle safety features were mandated between 2000 and 2010 to really see if any of them played a part in the decline in the fatality rate in the 2005 to 2015 time period.

gnopgnip 9y ago

Alameda CA has all of that too. 25MPH speed limit over most of the city, heavy enforcement of traffic laws, narrow lanes, wide bike lanes, walk buttons with flashers, raised crosswalks for visibility. People still speed but much less so that in neighboring cities

walljm 9y ago

> Why suggest a worse solution (encouraging all drivers to go faster) instead of punishing more people for driving irresponsibly? The article addresses this. the posted speed limit doesn't affect how fast people drive (slow or fast). They drive as fast as is comfortable regardless. Posting a higher speed limit doesn't make people drive faster. But it does give a clearer warning to pedestrians and parents as to what the probably speed of drivers is, so they can take the appropriate cautions. > it argues we have no control over speeding. And then it suggests places that ticket aggressively are behaving irresponsibly, to the point of villafying a town in Missouri for enforcing its speeding laws. He doesn't argue that we have no control. Only that posted speed limits aren't effective as a control measure. The point of discussing the towns that use traffic violations as a revenue source is that, if posted speed limits aren't effective at creating safer drivers, then the only reason to use super low speed limits is to generate revenue which is a conflict of interest and counter productive for the reasons stated above.