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The tradeoff for speeding is stupidly small. Average US worker spends 25 minutes on a one-way trip to work. Lets assume an average speed of 60mph (hint: it's s

by rtpg 12y ago

The tradeoff for speeding is stupidly small. Average US worker spends 25 minutes on a one-way trip to work. Lets assume an average speed of 60mph (hint: it's slower). If you went at 70 instead of 60, then you'll save a whole 3.5 minutes. Here(http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jWbI1mKY8qgJ:www.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/enforce/speed_forum_presentations/ferguson.pdf+&cd=1&hl=fr&ct=clnk http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:jWbI1mK...) is a link to a NHTSA presentation on speed limit changes and its effects on crashes. Notably, when states were given control of speed limits, we saw raises from 60-65 to 70-75 mph in some situations, and a 35% increase in fatalities. if we do the whole "life is worth $3M dollars" argument, divide by two because I'm trying to make this favorable to you (even though car fatalities disproportionately affect young people), letting people go 70 instead of 60 could still end up causing almost 10k more deaths per year, so there's $15B in lost value per year. At least I'll get to sleep in for 3.5 more minutes.

rokhayakebe 12y ago
This is the reason I do not speed. I figured I barely ever drive more than 10-15 miles one way, hence going from 60 to 80 miles per hour is only going to save me a very few minutes and increase my chance at 1) getting a ticket, and 2) wasting 30 minutes when a cop pulls me over.
Scoundreller 12y ago
You still haven't shown that the increased risk of danger outweighs the aggregate time savings. It's a big consideration when looking at things like, the value of screening for unlikely outcomes. 3.5 minutes/trip saved * 2 trips/day * 200 working days per year (probably more) = 1400 minutes saved per year per person. working-age population of US (2012) = 243 million. Employment-to-population_ratio = 67%, so 162 million. Let's say that half drive, or 80 million. So, 80m * 1400 minutes = 112 billion minutes a year saved by speeding or 1.9 billion hours. At a wage of $10 per hour, that's $19 billion, which is a bit ahead of the $15b loss of value per your number, but I'm sure our confidence intervals overlap. 112 billion minutes = 213000 person-years of being stuck inside a car saved by speeding. With a US average lifespan of 79, that's 2700 total additional lifespans spent in a car by losing those 3.5 minutes.
- jacalata 12y ago
  so, 2,700 additional lifespans of time saved in trade for 10,000 people killed, let's pretend each of them was halfway through their lifespan (40) so we lost 5,000 lifespans of time, or net loss of 2,300 lifespans. Sounds like it's not worth the time savings.
Dylan16807 12y ago
>At least I'll get to sleep in for 3.5 more minutes. Come on, that's not a fair argument. The effects are obviously much bigger than one guy saving 3.5 minutes. To get closer to the meat: If your calculation always outputs numbers that make slower traffic look better, no matter what the starting speed is, then your methodology is wrong. Your method here would make 15mph look better than speeds 20mph or faster, despite a 15mph speed limit being a blatantly terrible idea. (Also doesn't your assumption of an average speed of 60 bias your argument heavily against high speed limits? I would expect saving 4 minutes on a 30mph route to be much safer than saving 4 minutes off a 60mph route. Is my expectation wrong here?)
- rtpg 12y ago
  actually my argument is based more around 60 mph average speed because that's more or less the average speed on highways and people spend a decent amount of time driving on highways and the like. Also, the increased fatality rates were concerning a rise from 60 to 70mph. Obviously if we're going from 15 to 20 the numbers change. But at the same time if people were on average driving around at 15mph on average car accidents wouldn't be such a big issue, instead of the leading cause of death among teenagers. actually with lower speed limits you would gain more time by going 10mph faster. For example, if people were driving at 10mph on average, going 20mph would half their transit time. The point is that the speeding people commit usually doesn't earn them much more time, but disproportionately endanger themselves and those around them at higher speeds.
  - Dylan16807 12y ago
    >actually with lower speed limits you would gain more time Right, not sure why you have 'actually' there because that was my point. When you picked 60 vs. 70 you were picking the speeds most likely to favor not going faster. >the speeding people commit usually doesn't earn them much more time, but disproportionately endanger themselves and those around them It's the 'disproportionately' that's at argument. A tiny-per-person cost for a noble purpose seems like an obvious choice, but when you repeat the action a billion times over it gets more complicated.
easytiger 12y ago
My goodness, that is quite a load of nonsense.

by rtpg 12y ago

rokhayakebe 12y ago

This is the reason I do not speed. I figured I barely ever drive more than 10-15 miles one way, hence going from 60 to 80 miles per hour is only going to save me a very few minutes and increase my chance at 1) getting a ticket, and 2) wasting 30 minutes when a cop pulls me over.

Scoundreller 12y ago

You still haven't shown that the increased risk of danger outweighs the aggregate time savings. It's a big consideration when looking at things like, the value of screening for unlikely outcomes. 3.5 minutes/trip saved * 2 trips/day * 200 working days per year (probably more) = 1400 minutes saved per year per person. working-age population of US (2012) = 243 million. Employment-to-population_ratio = 67%, so 162 million. Let's say that half drive, or 80 million. So, 80m * 1400 minutes = 112 billion minutes a year saved by speeding or 1.9 billion hours. At a wage of $10 per hour, that's $19 billion, which is a bit ahead of the $15b loss of value per your number, but I'm sure our confidence intervals overlap. 112 billion minutes = 213000 person-years of being stuck inside a car saved by speeding. With a US average lifespan of 79, that's 2700 total additional lifespans spent in a car by losing those 3.5 minutes.

jacalata 12y ago
so, 2,700 additional lifespans of time saved in trade for 10,000 people killed, let's pretend each of them was halfway through their lifespan (40) so we lost 5,000 lifespans of time, or net loss of 2,300 lifespans. Sounds like it's not worth the time savings.

Dylan16807 12y ago

>At least I'll get to sleep in for 3.5 more minutes. Come on, that's not a fair argument. The effects are obviously much bigger than one guy saving 3.5 minutes. To get closer to the meat: If your calculation always outputs numbers that make slower traffic look better, no matter what the starting speed is, then your methodology is wrong. Your method here would make 15mph look better than speeds 20mph or faster, despite a 15mph speed limit being a blatantly terrible idea. (Also doesn't your assumption of an average speed of 60 bias your argument heavily against high speed limits? I would expect saving 4 minutes on a 30mph route to be much safer than saving 4 minutes off a 60mph route. Is my expectation wrong here?)

rtpg 12y ago
actually my argument is based more around 60 mph average speed because that's more or less the average speed on highways and people spend a decent amount of time driving on highways and the like. Also, the increased fatality rates were concerning a rise from 60 to 70mph. Obviously if we're going from 15 to 20 the numbers change. But at the same time if people were on average driving around at 15mph on average car accidents wouldn't be such a big issue, instead of the leading cause of death among teenagers. actually with lower speed limits you would gain more time by going 10mph faster. For example, if people were driving at 10mph on average, going 20mph would half their transit time. The point is that the speeding people commit usually doesn't earn them much more time, but disproportionately endanger themselves and those around them at higher speeds.
- Dylan16807 12y ago
  >actually with lower speed limits you would gain more time Right, not sure why you have 'actually' there because that was my point. When you picked 60 vs. 70 you were picking the speeds most likely to favor not going faster. >the speeding people commit usually doesn't earn them much more time, but disproportionately endanger themselves and those around them It's the 'disproportionately' that's at argument. A tiny-per-person cost for a noble purpose seems like an obvious choice, but when you repeat the action a billion times over it gets more complicated.

easytiger 12y ago

My goodness, that is quite a load of nonsense.