Since a lot of the discussion has moved towards the relative safety of speeding, I'd be curious to see a break down of accidents and fatalities, by absolute spe

Since a lot of the discussion has moved towards the relative safety of speeding, I'd be curious to see a break down of accidents and fatalities, by absolute speed, by in-excess speed, and by roadway type. If I had to guess (having been in a number of accidents caused by other people) is that accidents are more common at lower speeds (because they are at intersections and other conflicting right of ways where you are more likely to be going slow) but fatalities are more likely at higher speeds where the safety systems fail to protect those involved. However high speed accidents are not automatic death sentences as some posters have implied. I was in a head on collision on a small two lane residential street with no other traffic. Both vehicles were going 35mph, so effective collision speed was ~70mph. I was on a motorcycle and the oncoming truck was on a cell phone. He veered into my lane, and I tried to move left but parked cars limited my ability to avoid him. After the collision, I flew for a distance, and on landing my head hit the point of the curb. The two things that saved my life was (obviously) my helmet--without it, by brain would have been on the street--and I had crash bars that were severely deformed after the accident, but they kept my left leg from getting pinned between the bike and the truck. So relatively high speed accidents can be survivable, especially with modern technology. The only injury I had was a badly sprained hip.