4 ms·

This is not a good analogy because if you speed on the highway you are putting other peoples lives at risk, and doing it in public. I think we probably should h

This is not a good analogy because if you speed on the highway you are putting other peoples lives at risk, and doing it in public. I think we probably should have a satellite tracking every car and issuing a ticket as soon as a car speeds.

snicky 6y ago
Oh yeah? And what if there are no other cars on the highway?
- jay_kyburz 6y ago
  Killing yourself is still a cost to society. People have to come out and scrape you off the road, put all your bits in a box and bury you.
  - bigwavedave 6y ago
    Hard to collect more taxes if you're dead.
  - kube-system 6y ago
    It is also worth noting that 'speeding' has only a very rough correlation with risky driving behavior. A road that meets MUTCD standards is usually guaranteed to have at least 15% of drivers speeding on it by design.
    - jay_kyburz 6y ago
      You got me interested in the subject so I did some searching. This document, while doesn't address speed as a factor of accidents directly, does seems to show that speed cameras do push down Australia's fatality rate on the roads. (I'm Australian) https://www.bitre.gov.au/publications/2010/is_039 https://www.bitre.gov.au/publications/2010/is_039
      - kube-system 6y ago
        Of course, from a physics perspective, lower speeds means less force in an accident. To take an extreme example, if we set a nationwide speed limit at 1 mph (1.6 km/h in kangaroo units) and enforce it completely, we might not have any traffic fatalities. What if at a 5 mph speed limit, one person dies in total across the entire country? Do you say that driving at 1 mph is safe and driving at 5 mph is putting lives at risk? Well, I guess statistically that is the case, but only if you ignore all of the other factors that went into the crash and attribute everything to speed. For most accidents there is more than one factor that contributed to the accident. While speed is a measurable and oft-cited factor in a crash, it is not necessarily the reason that the crash occurred. Example: Someone drives 75 in a 70 zone, stops paying attention, and drives off the road into a wall. Speed and inattention could likely both be cited by forensic examiners as a factor, but the crash may have had the same outcome regardless of the speeding and entirely determined by the inattention. And to the other opposite, there are plenty of scenarios where someone could follow the legal speed limit of a road while operating their car at an unsafe speed. Someone could drive 65 in a 70 zone on an icy road, or past stopped traffic, etc. While they are following the legal speed limit, they are operating at a speed that puts others at risk. Basically, speed limits are an easy to understand approximation of what is usually a good idea for most drivers in most cars under reasonable conditions. Given that, sometimes they are too high and sometimes they are too low. You might find this page interesting: https://www.ite.org/technical-resources/topics/speed-management-for-safety/setting-speed-limits/ https://www.ite.org/technical-resources/topics/speed-managem...
        MaximumYComb 6y ago
        Higher speed makes all road behaviours riskier. I'm also from the Kangaroo states and while I know of not a single person who likes getting a speed fine I think the vast majority agree that having some speed limits makes things safer. Australia doesn't have the same cultural views as America with regard to freedom. We have high taxes, virtually no guns, heavily enforced traffic policing, etc. On the Wikipedia page for road death per 100000 population Australia is about 5 compared to the US at 12. A large number of Americans seem to be culturally ok with this as long as the government doesn't interfere with their life. Hacker News has an international audience and you often see the different value systems at play in the comments.
  - snicky 6y ago
    I guess we also need some thought police to penalize suicidal thinking too...
pdonis 6y ago
> if you speed on the highway you are putting other peoples lives at risk If you drive at all you are theoretically putting other people's lives at risk. Everyone always has to exercise prudence when they drive in order to mitigate that risk. If their judgment is bad and they cause an accident, they are held legally liable for the harm they cause, and that gives people a strong incentive to not cause an accident. That, in a sane society, would be considered sufficient as a matter of public policy, and the government could just stop worrying about it and move on to more important things. But ticketing someone because of an arbitrary number posted on a sign, which might have little or no relationship to the speed a reasonable and prudent person under the actual conditions on the actual highway would choose to drive, is not protecting people's lives. It's the government tapping an alternate source of revenue because it doesn't want to just admit it needs more money and raise taxes. Not to mention decreasing everyone's respect for the law, since everyone knows that under current conditions speed limits are unenforceable (and what enforcement does exist is arbitrary), and doing what it would take to actually enforce speed limits completely would be a draconian violation of our rights that no citizen of a free society should accept. > I think we probably should have a satellite tracking every car and issuing a ticket as soon as a car speeds. I think the government should stop trying to micromanage every aspect of people's lives and focus on protecting our rights.
- jay_kyburz 6y ago
  This is the same kind of self destructing thinking that has the US on the ropes right now. So much of our society has rules and penalties because people are not very good at "exercising prudence". Instead we ask experts to think carefully about problems and set limits around what we should do so that we can all get along in a safe and peaceful society. We don't allow doctors to practice surgery without a license and training. We don't allow tall buildings to be built without approvals. We mandate that a restaurant kitchen must be reasonably clean. We need to have faith in our societies ability to set and review these rules and limits. If we can't trust the experts and the public servants we employ to enforce the rules, then we need to ask why not? What we should _not_ do, is just blow off expert advice because its inconvenient or because somebody on Fox News told us to.
JAlexoid 6y ago
That's complete BS. Speeds have not been updated to match the technical characteristics of modern cars. There's a reason why Germany doesn't even have a speed limit - the limit itself is pointless. They only fine you for dangerous driving.
- jay_kyburz 6y ago
  From Wikipedia. " In 2018, the autobahn rate of 1.7 fatality per billion traveled kilometer is less secure than both the French one at 1.4 per billion traveled kilometers, and the British one at 1.4 fatalities per vehicle-miles traveled[27]. This means the risk of fatalities per traveled vehicle kilometer is 20% higher in Germany than in France, and near 92% higher than in the UK. "
  - bananasbandanas 6y ago
    Seems they are cherry-picking their cases somewhat. This graphic [1] shows a comparison of European countries with Germany pretty much in the middle. [1] https://de.statista.com/infografik/16765/todesfaelle-auf-autobahnen-im-europa-vergleich/ https://de.statista.com/infografik/16765/todesfaelle-auf-aut...
    - jay_kyburz 6y ago
      I can't read that one, but I did read a few newspaper articles on the topic and it sounds like there is a lot of debate around the issue. I can imagine its almost impossible to take into consideration all various factors like road conditions, and local cultural issues, and quality of cars and everything. I'd also like to know how much the spend building and maintaining the unrestricted stretches of road, I would imagine you don't want to hit a pothole at 180km/h But my personal view is that sacrificing safety so people can get from A to B a little faster is not worth it, and perhaps it's not clear whether or not speed is a big factor, but why risk it? Whats the rush?
      - peroporque 6y ago
        Many Autobahnen here do have a speed limit. Or too much traffic to drive fast. Those that don't do not have potholes.

snicky 6y ago

Oh yeah? And what if there are no other cars on the highway?

jay_kyburz 6y ago
Killing yourself is still a cost to society. People have to come out and scrape you off the road, put all your bits in a box and bury you.
- bigwavedave 6y ago
  Hard to collect more taxes if you're dead.
- kube-system 6y ago
  It is also worth noting that 'speeding' has only a very rough correlation with risky driving behavior. A road that meets MUTCD standards is usually guaranteed to have at least 15% of drivers speeding on it by design.
  - jay_kyburz 6y ago
    You got me interested in the subject so I did some searching. This document, while doesn't address speed as a factor of accidents directly, does seems to show that speed cameras do push down Australia's fatality rate on the roads. (I'm Australian) https://www.bitre.gov.au/publications/2010/is_039 https://www.bitre.gov.au/publications/2010/is_039
    - kube-system 6y ago
      Of course, from a physics perspective, lower speeds means less force in an accident. To take an extreme example, if we set a nationwide speed limit at 1 mph (1.6 km/h in kangaroo units) and enforce it completely, we might not have any traffic fatalities. What if at a 5 mph speed limit, one person dies in total across the entire country? Do you say that driving at 1 mph is safe and driving at 5 mph is putting lives at risk? Well, I guess statistically that is the case, but only if you ignore all of the other factors that went into the crash and attribute everything to speed. For most accidents there is more than one factor that contributed to the accident. While speed is a measurable and oft-cited factor in a crash, it is not necessarily the reason that the crash occurred. Example: Someone drives 75 in a 70 zone, stops paying attention, and drives off the road into a wall. Speed and inattention could likely both be cited by forensic examiners as a factor, but the crash may have had the same outcome regardless of the speeding and entirely determined by the inattention. And to the other opposite, there are plenty of scenarios where someone could follow the legal speed limit of a road while operating their car at an unsafe speed. Someone could drive 65 in a 70 zone on an icy road, or past stopped traffic, etc. While they are following the legal speed limit, they are operating at a speed that puts others at risk. Basically, speed limits are an easy to understand approximation of what is usually a good idea for most drivers in most cars under reasonable conditions. Given that, sometimes they are too high and sometimes they are too low. You might find this page interesting: https://www.ite.org/technical-resources/topics/speed-management-for-safety/setting-speed-limits/ https://www.ite.org/technical-resources/topics/speed-managem...
      - MaximumYComb 6y ago
        Higher speed makes all road behaviours riskier. I'm also from the Kangaroo states and while I know of not a single person who likes getting a speed fine I think the vast majority agree that having some speed limits makes things safer. Australia doesn't have the same cultural views as America with regard to freedom. We have high taxes, virtually no guns, heavily enforced traffic policing, etc. On the Wikipedia page for road death per 100000 population Australia is about 5 compared to the US at 12. A large number of Americans seem to be culturally ok with this as long as the government doesn't interfere with their life. Hacker News has an international audience and you often see the different value systems at play in the comments.
- snicky 6y ago
  I guess we also need some thought police to penalize suicidal thinking too...

pdonis 6y ago

> if you speed on the highway you are putting other peoples lives at risk If you drive at all you are theoretically putting other people's lives at risk. Everyone always has to exercise prudence when they drive in order to mitigate that risk. If their judgment is bad and they cause an accident, they are held legally liable for the harm they cause, and that gives people a strong incentive to not cause an accident. That, in a sane society, would be considered sufficient as a matter of public policy, and the government could just stop worrying about it and move on to more important things. But ticketing someone because of an arbitrary number posted on a sign, which might have little or no relationship to the speed a reasonable and prudent person under the actual conditions on the actual highway would choose to drive, is not protecting people's lives. It's the government tapping an alternate source of revenue because it doesn't want to just admit it needs more money and raise taxes. Not to mention decreasing everyone's respect for the law, since everyone knows that under current conditions speed limits are unenforceable (and what enforcement does exist is arbitrary), and doing what it would take to actually enforce speed limits completely would be a draconian violation of our rights that no citizen of a free society should accept. > I think we probably should have a satellite tracking every car and issuing a ticket as soon as a car speeds. I think the government should stop trying to micromanage every aspect of people's lives and focus on protecting our rights.

jay_kyburz 6y ago
This is the same kind of self destructing thinking that has the US on the ropes right now. So much of our society has rules and penalties because people are not very good at "exercising prudence". Instead we ask experts to think carefully about problems and set limits around what we should do so that we can all get along in a safe and peaceful society. We don't allow doctors to practice surgery without a license and training. We don't allow tall buildings to be built without approvals. We mandate that a restaurant kitchen must be reasonably clean. We need to have faith in our societies ability to set and review these rules and limits. If we can't trust the experts and the public servants we employ to enforce the rules, then we need to ask why not? What we should _not_ do, is just blow off expert advice because its inconvenient or because somebody on Fox News told us to.

JAlexoid 6y ago

That's complete BS. Speeds have not been updated to match the technical characteristics of modern cars. There's a reason why Germany doesn't even have a speed limit - the limit itself is pointless. They only fine you for dangerous driving.

jay_kyburz 6y ago
From Wikipedia. " In 2018, the autobahn rate of 1.7 fatality per billion traveled kilometer is less secure than both the French one at 1.4 per billion traveled kilometers, and the British one at 1.4 fatalities per vehicle-miles traveled[27]. This means the risk of fatalities per traveled vehicle kilometer is 20% higher in Germany than in France, and near 92% higher than in the UK. "
- bananasbandanas 6y ago
  Seems they are cherry-picking their cases somewhat. This graphic [1] shows a comparison of European countries with Germany pretty much in the middle. [1] https://de.statista.com/infografik/16765/todesfaelle-auf-autobahnen-im-europa-vergleich/ https://de.statista.com/infografik/16765/todesfaelle-auf-aut...
  - jay_kyburz 6y ago
    I can't read that one, but I did read a few newspaper articles on the topic and it sounds like there is a lot of debate around the issue. I can imagine its almost impossible to take into consideration all various factors like road conditions, and local cultural issues, and quality of cars and everything. I'd also like to know how much the spend building and maintaining the unrestricted stretches of road, I would imagine you don't want to hit a pothole at 180km/h But my personal view is that sacrificing safety so people can get from A to B a little faster is not worth it, and perhaps it's not clear whether or not speed is a big factor, but why risk it? Whats the rush?
    - peroporque 6y ago
      Many Autobahnen here do have a speed limit. Or too much traffic to drive fast. Those that don't do not have potholes.