5 ms·

You're making a rather large and unsupported assumption that "speeding" is dangerous. In the overwhelming majority of cases it is not. 10-100M people in the US

by zionic 4y ago

You're making a rather large and unsupported assumption that "speeding" is dangerous. In the overwhelming majority of cases it is not. 10-100M people in the US speed every day. "Speeding" as a term makes no distinction between the common 5-10 over and doing 120 in a 75. Meanwhile US speed limits are incredibly low, and treat a sports car on an open dry road the same as an 80,000lb semi on wet tarmac.

dazc 4y ago
I believe the ideal use case for this app is on residential streets where the chances of impact with a pedestrian or child playing are sufficiently high to warrant a low speed limit? Anyone who chooses to exceed this limit in such an area IS driving dangerously. I am guessing your defence of speeding relates to less populated areas where the chances of hitting a pedestrian are pretty much zero?
- zionic 4y ago
  >I believe the ideal use case for this app is on residential streets where the chances of impact with a pedestrian or child playing are sufficiently high to warrant a low speed limit? Case in point. Many neighborhoods have 15mph limits and speed bumps. Everyone drives 25-30 plus and it's far from mad-max. We live in a world where exceeding this particular "limit" by 60% is not only safe, it's common. On first glance it just seems stupid, but on deeper inspection the real goal of these systems becomes obvious. If everyone is speeding, you can arbitrarily pull over anyone at any time with legal justification. These types of selective enforcement schemes are how bias slips in to what should be deterministic systems.
  - danhor 4y ago
    Well, almost all reasons to enforce the speed limit (playing kids, pedestrians) have been eliminated over the years. But increasing the speed limit now will probably not reduce speeding, since residential roads in the US are way overbuilt. Speeding is probably one of the reasons why there are almost no pedestrians and kids on suburban streets now.
    - zionic 4y ago
      This is another thing I hate about the term "speeding". It makes no distinction between someone doing 55 in a 15mph neighborhood with playing kids, and someone doing 90 on an autobahn-tier controlled access highway with no traffic.
  - dazc 4y ago
    > We live in a world where exceeding this particular "limit" by 60% is not only safe, it's common. It's funny how there are so many road accidents caused by people with this very same attitude. Since it isn't their poor driving that's at fault, obviously, what do suggest is?
    - zionic 4y ago
      I'd argue distracted driving is far more causative than the speed limit. Remember that my 60% claim was someone doing 25 in a 15 in a neighborhood. 15 mph is unreasonably slow in even the worst-case scenario. The real speed-do-not-exceed in my neighborhood is 35MPH, but instead of setting that and enforcing even 1MPH over they set the speed limit to 15 hoping people actually go 25-30. My argument is that this system is stupid and should be reformed.
danhor 4y ago
One of the most common deaths in the US is from traffic accidents and 26% of all fatalities have speeding as a contributing factor or ~10000 per year (https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/speeding https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/speeding).
- zionic 4y ago
  There it is, "speed as a factor" (or in this case, a variant). This is a classic law enforcement trope. I'm sorry but no-shit "speed" is a factor in a collision, so is the strong nuclear force. Stating such a thing proves nothing towards: 1) If someone was _actually_ speeding, as often the precise speed is totally unknown at the point of impact/accident. A cop that rolls up to a car impacted on a tree has no idea if they were doing 50 or 60 in a 55, but you can bet the farm they'll check the "speed as a factor" box. 2) If the accident would have happened had they been traveling 5MPH slower (speeding vs not speeding) 3) If the person would have survived at 65MPH vs 70. Remember that survivability has a cut off point, you're dead. Hitting a concrete wall head on at 65MPH is 100% lethal, 70MPH doesn't make any difference with respect to "survivability". Couple all this with speed limits being insanely low throughout the US and routinely exceeded by 10+ MPH, no-shit that it's "a factor" in the majority of collisions... everyone does it. That's garbage data.
  - danhor 4y ago
    I mean, speed is the obvious issue with road safety. It increases stopping distance by a large amount, at 50km/h (~30mph) you're not even stopping while you already at a standstill at 30km/h (~20mph). If everyone drove at 10km/h almost no fatal accident would happen (probably mostly old people reversing into others). According to german data, reducing the speed limit from 50km/h (~30mph) to 30km/h (~20mph) reduces heavy injuries and deaths by 60-70% (https://www.vsf.de/fileadmin/inhalte/public/06_Engagement/tempo30/Maria_Limbourg_Tempo30.pdf https://www.vsf.de/fileadmin/inhalte/public/06_Engagement/te...) and decreases fatalities after a collision with a pedestrian from 80% to 30%. That's not quite mad max, but still very bad. We know that even for interstates speed limits have an large effect (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000145759900010X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000145759...), with deaths rising by ~15% after the speed limit was increased from 55mph (afaict, for urban interstates it was mostly raised by 10mph, with average travel speed only changing slightly). So even at those speeds there is a very noticable effect on deaths. If these numbers apply to speed limits, it's obvious that they should also apply to speeding. Even more so, it makes it clear that setting the speed limit higher has an pretty large effect on safety, so people do use the speed limit as a guide (with, as you said, often some amount of additional speed), so raising the speed limit seems like a very bad idea. All the figures I've seen for US speed limits seem in line with most of the speed limits commonly used in Germany, which are more on the high side for the EU. I don't know how you come to the conclusion that they're amazingly low.

by zionic 4y ago

dazc 4y ago

I believe the ideal use case for this app is on residential streets where the chances of impact with a pedestrian or child playing are sufficiently high to warrant a low speed limit? Anyone who chooses to exceed this limit in such an area IS driving dangerously. I am guessing your defence of speeding relates to less populated areas where the chances of hitting a pedestrian are pretty much zero?

zionic 4y ago
>I believe the ideal use case for this app is on residential streets where the chances of impact with a pedestrian or child playing are sufficiently high to warrant a low speed limit? Case in point. Many neighborhoods have 15mph limits and speed bumps. Everyone drives 25-30 plus and it's far from mad-max. We live in a world where exceeding this particular "limit" by 60% is not only safe, it's common. On first glance it just seems stupid, but on deeper inspection the real goal of these systems becomes obvious. If everyone is speeding, you can arbitrarily pull over anyone at any time with legal justification. These types of selective enforcement schemes are how bias slips in to what should be deterministic systems.
- danhor 4y ago
  Well, almost all reasons to enforce the speed limit (playing kids, pedestrians) have been eliminated over the years. But increasing the speed limit now will probably not reduce speeding, since residential roads in the US are way overbuilt. Speeding is probably one of the reasons why there are almost no pedestrians and kids on suburban streets now.
  - zionic 4y ago
    This is another thing I hate about the term "speeding". It makes no distinction between someone doing 55 in a 15mph neighborhood with playing kids, and someone doing 90 on an autobahn-tier controlled access highway with no traffic.
- dazc 4y ago
  > We live in a world where exceeding this particular "limit" by 60% is not only safe, it's common. It's funny how there are so many road accidents caused by people with this very same attitude. Since it isn't their poor driving that's at fault, obviously, what do suggest is?
  - zionic 4y ago
    I'd argue distracted driving is far more causative than the speed limit. Remember that my 60% claim was someone doing 25 in a 15 in a neighborhood. 15 mph is unreasonably slow in even the worst-case scenario. The real speed-do-not-exceed in my neighborhood is 35MPH, but instead of setting that and enforcing even 1MPH over they set the speed limit to 15 hoping people actually go 25-30. My argument is that this system is stupid and should be reformed.

danhor 4y ago

One of the most common deaths in the US is from traffic accidents and 26% of all fatalities have speeding as a contributing factor or ~10000 per year (https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/speeding https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/speeding).

zionic 4y ago
There it is, "speed as a factor" (or in this case, a variant). This is a classic law enforcement trope. I'm sorry but no-shit "speed" is a factor in a collision, so is the strong nuclear force. Stating such a thing proves nothing towards: 1) If someone was _actually_ speeding, as often the precise speed is totally unknown at the point of impact/accident. A cop that rolls up to a car impacted on a tree has no idea if they were doing 50 or 60 in a 55, but you can bet the farm they'll check the "speed as a factor" box. 2) If the accident would have happened had they been traveling 5MPH slower (speeding vs not speeding) 3) If the person would have survived at 65MPH vs 70. Remember that survivability has a cut off point, you're dead. Hitting a concrete wall head on at 65MPH is 100% lethal, 70MPH doesn't make any difference with respect to "survivability". Couple all this with speed limits being insanely low throughout the US and routinely exceeded by 10+ MPH, no-shit that it's "a factor" in the majority of collisions... everyone does it. That's garbage data.
- danhor 4y ago
  I mean, speed is the obvious issue with road safety. It increases stopping distance by a large amount, at 50km/h (~30mph) you're not even stopping while you already at a standstill at 30km/h (~20mph). If everyone drove at 10km/h almost no fatal accident would happen (probably mostly old people reversing into others). According to german data, reducing the speed limit from 50km/h (~30mph) to 30km/h (~20mph) reduces heavy injuries and deaths by 60-70% (https://www.vsf.de/fileadmin/inhalte/public/06_Engagement/tempo30/Maria_Limbourg_Tempo30.pdf https://www.vsf.de/fileadmin/inhalte/public/06_Engagement/te...) and decreases fatalities after a collision with a pedestrian from 80% to 30%. That's not quite mad max, but still very bad. We know that even for interstates speed limits have an large effect (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000145759900010X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000145759...), with deaths rising by ~15% after the speed limit was increased from 55mph (afaict, for urban interstates it was mostly raised by 10mph, with average travel speed only changing slightly). So even at those speeds there is a very noticable effect on deaths. If these numbers apply to speed limits, it's obvious that they should also apply to speeding. Even more so, it makes it clear that setting the speed limit higher has an pretty large effect on safety, so people do use the speed limit as a guide (with, as you said, often some amount of additional speed), so raising the speed limit seems like a very bad idea. All the figures I've seen for US speed limits seem in line with most of the speed limits commonly used in Germany, which are more on the high side for the EU. I don't know how you come to the conclusion that they're amazingly low.