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Laws to make cars smaller and drive slower will do 100x more to make crashes less deadly than fancy electronic gizmos. Not to mention all these electronics mak
by tryptophan 2y ago
Laws to make cars smaller and drive slower will do 100x more to make crashes less deadly than fancy electronic gizmos.
Not to mention all these electronics make the car much more expensive and harder to repair.
- parl_match 2y agoA law that prevents any FWD vehicle from going over 90 MPH, or offering significant insurance discounts, would go a long way towards reducing fatalities. There is no reason for any casual motorist to be going 91+MPH on surface streets or highways.
- nemomarx 2y agoIsn't the car already very dangerous at 70 or so? I can't think of a lot of streets where you'd be able to get up to 90 even.
- kayodelycaon 2y agoIt’s pretty easy to do a sustained 120 mph in a Honda Accord for several hours on I-71 through Kentucky. (Not personal experience.) A Toyota Prius can maintain ~90 mph on I-294 around Chicago. Anything above 95 mph degraded the tire traction to an unsafe level. (Personal experience.) I don’t do that much anymore now that my manic episodes are under control and I’m better able to recognize my judgement is impaired.
- lakis 2y agoI actually have to set up a car alert for when I go above 90, because the car is so quiet and powerful that I can easily go above 90 without realizing (obviously on the highway) . New cars have improved tremendously.
- huhuhu111 2y agothere are a few reasons though, like life threatening emergencies when the road is basically empty
- parl_match 2y agoMost vehicles on the road can't really be safely operated at 90mph, especially by the layperson, no matter the need.
- kayodelycaon 2y agoIf you have a turbocharged v4 I a light vehicle it’s pretty dang easy to drive 100+ mph. If you’re paying attention, the road conditions are good, and you’re not aggressively tailgating or passing people, it’s relatively safe. The problem is it doesn’t take much to become unsafe and physics is not very forgiving of bad judgement.
- parl_match 2y ago> The problem is it doesn’t take much to become unsafe and physics is not very forgiving of bad judgement. This is pretty much it. All it takes is a pothole (you'll barely see it coming at that speed) or something else, like a deer or small animal. And oops, it's over. Lots of people over-estimate their ability.
- huhuhu111 2y agotailgating at 100mph? I don't think that's what it's called... probably "reckless driving" or "aggressive driving" if you need to pass cars dangerously
- acdha 2y agoHow many situations are there where going over 90mph is make or break? Unless you’re Keanu Reeves driving a bus improbably, that seems like a freakishly rare situation compared to the number of crashes caused by people incorrectly thinking they could safely drive that speed – and with so much energy involved, those are usually fatal.
- huhuhu111 2y agoon many highways, it doesn't feel that fast in at least parts of America because the lanes are so wide... specially in a car (I went much faster on motorcycles)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dogman144 2y ago… empty and well paved country roads are a thing
- parl_match 2y agoMost vehicles (and most drivers) aren't capable of safely driving at 90mph, no matter how "empty" the road is.
- cityofdelusion 2y agoI’m not sure where you are getting your talking point, but here in Texas, there are stretches of highway where people safely pass at 90-100 mph with no issue. We have a lot of gigantic, straight, barren countryside.
- dogman144 2y agoYes exactly
- fragmede 2y agoit does matter how empty the road is. 90, in a modern car, on an actually empty road, is totally fine.
- seoulmetro 2y agoNo, most vehicles are more than capable of this. The drivers are not.
- blincoln 2y agoThere are freeways in Texas with speed limits of 85 MPH. 5 MPH of wiggle room for emergencies seems like a bad idea IMO.
- gpm 2y agoSpeed limits of 85 MPH sounds like the bad idea to me.
- basil-rash 2y agoClearly the experienced highway engineers in charge balancing a ton of different variables to make the Texas road network function in accordance with its design goals should have sought your advice.
- nanidin 2y agoI believe low speed limits were raised in Texas due to the number of drowsy driver accidents that were occurring due to the amount of time it took to transit the state at the lower speed limits. Everything is a trade-off.
- shepherdjerred 2y agoYou haven't driven through Texas. The stretch between El Paso and Dallas is 9 hours and there's almost nothing in-between.
- gpm 2y agoIndeed, I haven't. I'm from rather farther north. I have driven reasonably long distances at reasonably high speeds though. If you ask me whether I'd have rather save 30 minutes on a 9 hour drive or have the speed limit top out at 85* I'm definitely picking the latter. If you ask me if I'd rather have people driving through a community I'm living in at 90 mph or 85 mph I'm definitely picking the latter. * El Paso to Dallas is 635 miles, driving the whole way at 85 mph would take 25 more minutes than driving the whole way at 90mph. The reality is even further in 85 mph's favor because you aren't able to sustain 90mph the whole way and we're only going slower when we would be able to.
- brian-armstrong 2y agoThere have been cars that can do this and even provide geofenced exceptions for motorsport, e.g. the Nissan GT-R https://www.autoblog.com/2007/12/22/nissan-gt-r-recognizes-tracks-via-gps-removes-speed-limiter/ https://www.autoblog.com/2007/12/22/nissan-gt-r-recognizes-t...
- dheera 2y agoAlso prevent tailgating (have a minimum follow distance to car ahead based on speed, and auto-brake to match that minimum distance) and prevent going faster than the lane to your left while they are at it. The minimum follow distance alone would prevent a LOT of crashes.
- hobotime 2y agoYou need to be able to pass left-lane campers on the right now and then.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- chrismcb 2y agoHow many fatalities are caused by cars traveling in excess of 90 mph? I don't know the number. I am sure it is greater than zero, but I would guess it isn't much larger than that (percentage wise) I'm not sure why you picked 90 mph. But I think any arbitrary number is going to have an issue. The speed isn't the issue. It is the difference in speed between the vehicles on the road at the same time as well as other factors. Consider than the fatality rate on the autobahn is about half of the rate as US.
- Petersipoi 2y ago"Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" applies here. Good luck convincing people to give up their big cars. Or to double their trip length by driving half the speed. This is something that law makers can actually achieve.
- blacksmith_tb 2y agoI can't see why the insurance industry hasn't done more to "get people to give up their big cars" - SUVs, in particular. They clearly have the actuarial data showing how much damage those do.
- basil-rash 2y agoIf they have the data and you don’t, why do you assume you’re in the right? Insurance isn’t interested in damage, they’re interested in liability, which is much more closely tied to personal injury than property damage. And it’d be impossible to claim SUV’s don’t help protect the individual most at risk of costing the insurance company money.
- blacksmith_tb 2y agoThat's an interesting point, it could be they have a perverse incentive if their insured are well-protected and thus make smaller claims - but I'd think doing more damage to other vehicles would tend to cancel that out?
- usefulcat 2y agoThat might require some sort of collusion to accomplish. If only one company increases rates for SUV drivers, said drivers will just switch to a lower priced competitor.
- blincoln 2y agoSignificantly reducing the maximum speed of passenger vehicles would cause millions of Americans to suddenly have untenable commute times. There are a handful of cities here with mass transit systems that aren't an absolute joke. Everyone who lives outside those cities relies on a car. What you're describing would be political suicide.
- hammock 2y agoThe reason cars are so large today is because of safety laws
- operatingthetan 2y agoThere are still small cars today sold that meet the safety laws. The prevalence of large vehicles is primarily from consumer choice.
- invalidator 2y agoSubcompacts sold today are much larger and heavier than what they used to be. Here are the lightest cars I could find for sale in North America in 2024 in 15 minutes of searching: Honda Fit 1,070–1,280 kg (2,359–2,822 lb) Mazda Miata 1,058 kg (2,332 lb) Mitsubishi Mirage 955 kg (2,106 lb) Many of the old standbys (Scion, Fiat 500, Mini, etc) have disappeared, or gone electric (which is fine, but they're quite heavy). Safety standards have driven a lot of that. Air bags, impact beams, high hood line for pedestrian safety, rollover protection, ABS, etc all add weight, which disproportionately impacts small cars. An SUV with a V8 doesn't care, but it's a pretty significant thing to add a few hundred pounds to what used to be a 1500 lb subcompact. It requires a bigger engine to keep performance acceptable, and now you need bigger brakes for the extra power, a better suspension for the higher center of mass, and it all just snowballs. And that's where consumer choice comes in: people look at a "subcompact", and find that they're heavy, inefficient, and expensive, which are exactly the opposite of what they want in a subcompact car. Once you've already made those concessions, you might as well buy something bigger.
- basil-rash 2y agoEnvironmental laws too. small pickups don’t exist any more because they can’t meet the MPG requirements for their body size. Giant 3/4 Tons on the other hand? Take two.
- dogman144 2y agoYes, the exemplary example of auto safety, the 2024 Ford F-150. No other way to do it safely, gotta be the F150 body
- dabbledash 2y agoBut they would also decrease the utility of the cars.
- alephxyz 2y agoEntirely depends on your definition of utility. For some of us it's a simple binary function: "will it get me from home to work in less than X minutes"
- m463 2y agoPeople don't want that. Butts are getting bigger and people don't want to drive slow. As a matter of fact I think forcing people to drive slower seems to cause more accidents. I mean moving away from 85th percentile engineering criteria - I mean laws making people drive slower ignoring engineering design. That said, I'll bet even if emergency braking fails to prevent a collision, even slowing down a modest amount will pay off with significant crash energy reduction. (energy goes up with square of velocity, so e = 1/2mv^2)
- kccqzy 2y agoThe solution is not to have laws dictating that people drive slower, but to engineer roads so that people naturally drive slower. Add some curves to roads. Add speed bumps in all residential streets and parking lots. Make roads narrower. Add more stop signs or traffic lights.
- tharkun__ 2y agoCurves to slow down? Sorry but a bunch of curves don't make you drive slower than the 100km/h / 65mph / 70mph speed limit. Germany's Autobahn has many many curves and many of those have no speed limit and you can take them easily at 150+ km/h. Seriously, buy a plane ticket and try it for yourself. It's awesome. Stop signs are aggravating if people had to actually stop 'properly' at every single one. No wonder people do a rolling stop most of the time. Many European countries do this the right way and do not have stop signs everywhere but instead have the main road have right of way or rules. To bring up Germany as an example again: in many places where we need stops signs all around, they simply have a rule that says the person to the right is allowed to drive first. Speed bumps do nothing, except very very locally. You can't have enough of them to actually slow down cars along any reasonably long stretch of road and adding so many that it would will get the locals to NIMBY them into oblivion. I can almost guarantee that. Like put two or three in front of that school, sure. Plaster the entire neighborhood with them? Forget it.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 2y agoStreet design can and does affect how fast people drive. It's weird that you are arguing that it doesn't.
- seoulmetro 2y agoCars smaller: Good Cars slower: Not Good You don't need slower cars. Just efficient at X, Y, Z average speeds. Cars are mostly getting bigger due to safety regulations though. The interiors are smaller than ever but the exteriors get bigger and bigger. The gap is being filled with crumple zones and airbags.
- coryrc 2y agoWe need laws for all road-going vehicles to protect pedestrians and strict liability for anyone driving a pedestrian-hostile vehicle. You want a drive a big lifted truck? You need to be on the hook for the deaths and damages from those monstrosities.
- matthewfelgate 2y agoIf people moan about something as basic as AEB, how would you implement automatic speed limit enforcing in cars.