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> Having fines graduated by ‘skill’ would just be more of a declaration that it’s okay to break the law and speed if you’re a ‘better’ driver, whatever that mea
by ethbro 6y ago
> Having fines graduated by ‘skill’ would just be more of a declaration that it’s okay to break the law and speed if you’re a ‘better’ driver, whatever that means.
You misunderstand. I'm proposing actual limits be different for different classes of drivers. So C1 gives you 50 mph max on a given road, C2 60, etc.
> no licensing in our system is capable of distinguishing the skills of different drivers
A CDL clearly requires additional knowledge beyond a standard license. E.g. brake failure modes and technical operation.
> The speed limit is a declaration of what the safe speed of a given road and today’s vehicles are - again, because physics.
So between 1994 and 1996 all roads and vehicles became substantially safer?
> these limits have been raised in some locales by law makers in spite of the Highway Patrol’s objections and evidence that accidents and fatality rates are higher with the raised limits
To put it bluntly, Highway Patrol does not seem like an objective third party in this matter.
>> It’s also incredibly sub-optimal, given that vast variance in drivers and vehicles.
> So by what metric is it sub-optimal? How do you arrive at the conclusion that it’s “incredibly” sub-optimal? What does optimal mean, and what are you suggesting?
Total travel time has an economic cost. Very few people work at full productivity while driving their cars.
An optimal allocation would be permitting everyone to drive at a precise maximum speed, calculated on the basis of all their attributes which effect likelihood of accident, and standardizing for likelihood of outcome.
Some of those attributes are constant from driver to driver (road geometry, weather).
Some of those attributes are variable (driver skill, attention, tendency to drive drunk, vehicle performance, vehicle maintenance).
Unless you're willing to argue that the variable attributes have neglible effect on accident likelihood or that their variable range is negligible, I'm not sure how you arrive at anything less than "incredibly sub-optimal" given static speed limits for everyone.
> Are you saying more skilled drivers should be allowed to driver faster than other people, or just suggesting that fines should be lower?
The former.
> Who, exactly, is being harmed by speed limits, what is the damage being done, and what is the alternative?
Everyone, but particularly drivers, by economic inefficiency. The alternative is my modest proposal.
> There are statistics showing increased rates of death in higher speed limit areas, so you need to have a pretty convincing argument that a thousand people being stuck at 70mph are being hurt more than someone getting killed.
See earlier points about the difficulties in normalizing statistics for proposed driver skill level.
> I suspect the unintended consequence of increasing the speed differential would be more road rage and more road fatalities.
Possibly, in additional to innumerable other things we haven't considered.
But my point is that we can't, on the face of things, defend the current system as the best we can possibly do.
- dahart 6y agoUsing cars at all isn’t the best we can possibly do. > Very few people work at full productivity while driving their cars. Very few people work at all while driving their cars; their commute is outside of their paid working hours. What is the economic cost of commuting time? This is a serious question. You’re not paid for non-work hours, so by choosing to live far away from your job, or work far away from where you live, you’re choosing to trade away your own free time, and choosing to pay more in gas (often, but not always, in return for lower rent/mortgage). There is no loss to the economy in terms of the time spent. So what — exactly — is optimized economically by having higher speed limits? Where — exactly — would more money come from if the speed limits were raised for some people? And are you proposing to have the speed classes only apply while commuting to work, or at all times? What would be the justification for doing it at all times? It would help if you’d elaborate on your proposal with real numbers. Do you want to drive at a higher speed than you can right now, or do you want people you believe to be unskilled to have to slow down compared to today? How fast do you want to drive? How much faster will your commute be? 50mph roads probably aren’t as common as 65mph highways. What do you imagine the actual speeds to be on the highway in your system? Your calculus, as presented so far, is completely ignoring: 1- the economic costs of safety, or lack of it. Every crash can cost those involved tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it goes up when there’s serious hospital time involved. See the term “expected value” in statistics. You have to account for the risks and probabilities of a negative outcome in order to even know if your proposal can pay off. 2- the fact that drivers in a lower speed class would need to be able to react to the faster drivers; in effect they would need to be as skilled in order to share the same roads safely. 3- traffic, not the speed limit, is the limiting speed factor almost everywhere that long commutes exist. But hey, if you’re proposing that we make new, separate roads for the multi-speed-class system, maybe I’m for it. Everyone who thinks they’re better drivers and wants to ignore the risks can go drive together on their own road. > So between 1994 and 1996 all roads and vehicles became substantially safe? No, but both the US interstates and the cars have together become substantially safer over the last 50 years. I’m curious why you’ve dismissed the Highway Patrol? You’re not objective either, why are you ignoring the people who actually have to respond every time some idiot in a fast car who thinks he has “skill” loses traction and hits someone else or wraps himself around a telephone pole?