There is approximately 0% chance that the speed limit decreed by faceless bureaucrats is the optimal speed for the current circumstances on a given road.
It has always seemed strange to me that restrictive speed limits persist in a supposedly democratic nation despite the functionally unanimous opinion of the citizenry, expressed through actual driving behavior, that the legally prescribed safety margins are excessive. I doubt you could find any other issue on which Americans of varying political persuasions would demonstrate such a high level of practical agreement.
In comment threads like these, one invariably views vigorous venting of virtuous vitriol versus the vice of velocity, but simply getting out on the road and having a look around - pretty much anywhere in the country - will show that such opinions must either be hypocritical or held by a small minority.
People are bad at risk management. I see oodles of people making wild decisions in their cars (sweeping across 4 lanes at once, backing up on the highway shoulder to return to a missed exit). The norm for trailing the car in front of you is also way way too short based on real physical limitations of braking.
Speed limits can also exist for reasons beyond the safety of drivers. There are roads around me that are wide, straight, and empty enough to comfortably drive 40mph but are right next to a school. The school-zone limit exists to provide extra safety for children who might foolishly step into the road very suddenly.
You're the one calling them faceless bureaucrats. Most speed limits are set in place by a mix of safety boards and urban planners, who do take these limits into account. Explain to me what makes them faceless and detached from the situation?
> Explain to me what makes them faceless and detached from the situation?
The fact that they’re not there.
The idea that the same speed is appropriate at 9am when kids are crossing the street going to school and 2am when there’s noone there and no cars parked on the side of the road, is insane beyond belief.
Speed limits are generally repressive and mostly just a tax collection scheme (though I strongly support most daytime city speed limits!)
No speed limits anywhere, or at least no enforcement.
As I said above, speed limits are repressive and a way for the government to bully its citizens and extract money from them. If the government actually wanted to solve the problem (making roads safer), they would simply design the roads differently. Speed bumps are also a very bad solution. Good solutions are "road islands" [1], "curvy roads" [2] or "metal rods" [3].
No limits on the highway either, except to mark more dangerous parts of the road (i.e. it's a suggestion not a limit).
By definition, if you don't crash, your speed was OK. So maybe there should be speeding-related fines only if you do crash.
> By definition, if you don't crash, your speed was OK.
Definition of what? By this logic SBF shouldn't be jailed but rather given an award for making FTX users whole with modest interest.
The law must scale to all of society. There cannot be different rules based on whether you are lucky, "skilled", or not. Most people overestimate the their competence, as evidenced by fatalities involving motor vehicles. (A professional truck driver I knew died, killing his wife, and harming his nephew just driving back home.)
Not driving cars at all offers the lowest. There has to be a degree of nuance when evaluating this.
Ironically in my town, we did have a "string" (3 people in 5 years) of pedestrian fatalities. All of which took place downtown where people actually do drive 25.
Well its not a sure rule of thumb that lower speeds are safer. People die falling bad from standing too. But it sure as hell makes it a guarantee you kill someone if you hit them at that speed. Especially some of these newer suvs where the front end is effectively a wall at pedestrian height.
I live in Texas and I would unironically feel safer driving the normal ~10-15mph above the speed limit that traffic is normally going than go exactly the speed limit, because I don't want everyone else flying around me recklessly because they all know that nobody goes exactly the legal limit here.
Yes! Speed difference is dangerous. So yes the difference in speed between vehicle and stationary objects it can hit (trees, poles, parker cars). On highways without a divider the danger is from incoming cars as that will double the impact speed. On highways with dividers having speed different from cars around you can be dangerous because it means either you are changing lanes to pass often else others are changing lanes often to get around you.
Laws are necessarily very blunt things. The actual optimal speed limit will vary with car, driver, traffic, weather, time of day etc, would vary hugely along the road and wouldn't be in neat 5mph increments.
But making such dynamic limits would be an extremely expensive endeavour.
If you want to optimize for least deaths and injuries, thr optimal speed limit is 0 km/h. Everything else is a tradeoff between convenience and potential harm.
