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Oh please. This is the kind of comical rhetoric that gets road safety advocates ridiculed. In practice speeding or at least the instance that resulted in gett

Oh please. This is the kind of comical rhetoric that gets road safety advocates ridiculed. In practice speeding or at least the instance that resulted in getting ticketed is usually inconsequential. Between highways signed well under the normal traffic speeds, revenue enforcement and fishing stops the overwhelming majority of speeding tickets are trivial. People engaging in the kind of speeding most people can agree is excessive are a tiny minority. If they weren't people wouldn't use a speeding ticket as the epitome of a trivial infraction. Of course speed is a factor in death and destruction. That's tautologically true thanks to how the equations in Newtonian physics are written but you don't see anyone (who isn't getting laughed at) advocating for the return of the national speed limit for obvious reasons.

dionidium 5y ago
Pushing back on a banal, obvious truism like, "we know speeding is a significant cause of and contributor to death, destruction, and injury in automobile crashes" is the kind of comical rhetoric that should get drivers ridiculed. It really shows just how disconnected the typical beliefs about driving are from reality.
- psd1 5y ago
  Trying to be charitable to both arguments: - speed is obviously a factor, but there's a wealth of other factors. 90 on a clear highway with little traffic, and the driver is alert? Fairly safe. 90 while weaving between lanes, leaving little reaction time? Not safe. - drivers seriously overestimate their competence. Humans undervalue outlier events. This is the root of the stat about accidents occurring within a mile of home. That's why we have generally-lax enforcement of motorway limits but "strict" enforcement of urban limits in the UK. I'm not asserting that we've got it right here, but it looks more sensible in my eyes. Caveat: urban centres are increasingly adopting 20mph. I think there's a tacit understanding that people will drive at 27. When it was 30, they'd do 34, so that's a big increase in survivability.

dionidium 5y ago

Pushing back on a banal, obvious truism like, "we know speeding is a significant cause of and contributor to death, destruction, and injury in automobile crashes" is the kind of comical rhetoric that should get drivers ridiculed. It really shows just how disconnected the typical beliefs about driving are from reality.

psd1 5y ago
Trying to be charitable to both arguments: - speed is obviously a factor, but there's a wealth of other factors. 90 on a clear highway with little traffic, and the driver is alert? Fairly safe. 90 while weaving between lanes, leaving little reaction time? Not safe. - drivers seriously overestimate their competence. Humans undervalue outlier events. This is the root of the stat about accidents occurring within a mile of home. That's why we have generally-lax enforcement of motorway limits but "strict" enforcement of urban limits in the UK. I'm not asserting that we've got it right here, but it looks more sensible in my eyes. Caveat: urban centres are increasingly adopting 20mph. I think there's a tacit understanding that people will drive at 27. When it was 30, they'd do 34, so that's a big increase in survivability.