Speed Kills?

[MadOven]

http://jalopnik.com/this-is-the-best...ium=socialflow

Pretty Interesting video. Thoughts?

[MichiganSRT]

Unfortunately the gov makes too much money for them to want to raise the speed limit and get less money from tickets. Unfortunately not very many people are good enough drivers are good enough to go 70 let alone 80.

Great video man, thanks for sharing!

[SkunkJunk420]

somebody got an A on their report lol

[tys2010camaro]

1

[wakespeak]

Highway fatalities are at all time lows right now despite raising the speed limits to 75-85 mph and many more cars on the road. This trend is not debatable. Texas raised all speed limits (there are some 75 mph stretches on rural single lane country roads), then ratcheted down on some stretches when it was clearly too fast. Ahhh.....not a chore driving anymore.

There is much less tension and conflict on highways as the video points out, so the irony is that it is less stressful going faster too. The real causes now get focus, drunk driving, texting, not paying attention, and poorly designed roads.

[Angrybird 12]

It's not the speed that gets you in trouble it's the differences in speed. When you have a speed limit of 70 and 70-80% are obeying it within a few MPH and you have the occasional person doing 90+ cutting in and out of traffic or the occasional person wanting to do 45, THAT is when you have the majority of speed related accidents. JMHO.

[stray bullitt]

That report is absolutely spot on. If I'm travelling any distance where the speed limit is 50mph, I feel bored, frustrated, and tend to drift off from the task of driving. However when I'm travelling on a motorway at 80mph (UK limit 70, but cops won't stop you unless you're doing something really stupid) I feel invigorated, and alert. We have speed cameras over here, automatically sending fines to, otherwise impeccably behaved people. The thought over here is, that they are only making money out of "speeders", who include my 70 year old mum.

[ChrisBlair]

If speed killed, the landscape would be littered with dead jet pilots

[90503]

Interesting video...and some good stats....but, probably will never see any change...Problem is rules of the road are usually based on the lowest common denominator....That is, not all vehicles could even safely achieve the highest posted speed...too many varieties of vehicles share the same roads....

....The common sense rule of slower traffic keep to the right for this to work is never going to be realized any time soon...and that is my understanding is what makes the Autobahn a safe place for higher speeds...

Would be fun and nice to think all drivers are on the same page, but unfortunately, not the case.....

[DGthe3]

Let me start off by saying that I've been saying that we should increase our speed limits around here for quite a while, as its rather ridiculous to have a limit of 100 km/h while the speed of traffic is 130 in the left lane (62 & 81 mph)

Anyway, if you think that speed doesn't play a role in vehicle fatalities, you don't know how physics or the human body works. There are 3 things that high speed does to increase the likelihood of fatal accidents: reduces time you have to react to things on the road, makes it harder to maintain control in an emergency, and impacts are more severe.

But in regards to that video in particular, the first example that they showed of an unreasonable speed limit looked to me like it was windy road built in a wooded, hilly area. That restriction of visibility would make it fairly easy to drive beyond what you can safely react to.

I also disagree with the idea that cops sitting out in the open would discourage speeders more than hidden cops. Because if cops only sat in the open to try and catch speeders, chances people would only not speed in those specific locations, at those specific times. The next day the cop is gone & everyone goes back to normal. But if the cops hide, you don't know if there's a cop around the next corner or behind the next sign. There probably isn't, but you never know. So to prevent being ticketed, you have to assume they could be anywhere at any time.

As for the 'speed is/isn't' a factor, simply put if someone dies it probably was a factor in some way, shape or form. Might not have been the main factor, their speed might not have been excessive or even illegal, but it would have played a role. See my 2nd paragraph.

Their last example, of the Sea to Sky highway, they cited a report from 2003 that listed a number of roads where the limit should be increased. He implied that the Sea to Sky is one of them, due to the upgrades that were done. Problem is, the major revamp of the highway was started in 2005 and wasn't completed until late 2009. Bending the truth, leading viewers to connect things that aren't related ... sounds a lot like the criticisms that he had about the mediaa few minutes early in the video.

Originally Posted by MichiganSRT

Unfortunately the gov makes too much money for them to want to raise the speed limit and get less money from tickets. Unfortunately not very many people are good enough drivers are good enough to go 70 let alone 80.

Great video man, thanks for sharing!

There is absolutely nothing that would prevent them from raising the fines for speeding at the same time they increase speed limits. If you anticipate issuing 1/10 the tickets ... make each ticket cost 10x as much, in the end it will balance out.

Originally Posted by wakespeak

Highway fatalities are at all time lows right now despite raising the speed limits to 75-85 mph and many more cars on the road. This trend is not debatable. Texas raised all speed limits (there are some 75 mph stretches on rural single lane country roads), then ratcheted down on some stretches when it was clearly too fast. Ahhh.....not a chore driving anymore.

There is much less tension and conflict on highways as the video points out, so the irony is that it is less stressful going faster too. The real causes now get focus, drunk driving, texting, not paying attention, and poorly designed roads.

Are you arguing that higher speed limits are the cause of the lower fatality rates? Because personally, I would think that perhaps safer cars (ABS, traction control, stability control, crumple zones, air bags, etc) might be the main cause.

[Number 3]

Originally Posted by MichiganSRT

Unfortunately the gov makes too much money for them to want to raise the speed limit and get less money from tickets. Unfortunately not very many people are good enough drivers are good enough to go 70 let alone 80.

Great video man, thanks for sharing!

Used to crash cars for a living several many years ago. This made me laugh as we always said, "it's not the first impact that gets you it's the second", meaning the car hitting a barrier does nothing but when you in turn hit the no longer moving interior of your car bad thins happen.

I read an article years ago about the autobahn in Germany. A writer for one of the magazines drove the unlimited lane and his conclusion was that while fun the stress level of driving at those speeds was very tiring from having to stay alert and focused.

So there is a balance and yes you can go too fast.

At those autobahn speeds, just a simple idiot pulling out into the left lane at 100 mph can get a 50m, 60 or 70 mph collision in a heart beat.

So I agree (tongue in cheek) speed itself does not kill. But the inability to drive at those higher speeds can certainly lead to that second impact.

[midnighter]

Speed doesn't kill, it's the splat.

[fielderLS3]

EXACTLY. I fully agree that it is not speeding that kills, ("speeding" itself is a specious notion, in that it is defined relative to an often arbitrary or artificial number). If anything kills, it is setting the bar too low for licensing. Everything highlighted in that video is a result of lowest common denominator thinking, that always ruins things for 90% of the people in the name of making systems suitable to those on the fringes of the bell curve. What causes accidents are those outliers in the flow of traffic that go to slow, and make sudden, unexpected moves on the road for no apparent reason.

I spend a lot of time on the roads (I just got back from my last cross-country road trip last weekend), and those moments on the roads that are most sketchy and most risky (you all know what I am talking about) are almost always caused by a car going way too slow for conditions. When traffic is moving along at a good clip, often 5-10 mph above the limit, cars move at steadier speeds, and tend to spread out more and make fewer sudden or unexpected moves.

However, when there is that one car going 10 under the limit, lines of cars back up behind it, following distances accordion, and speeds are constantly changing increasing amounts with distance back in the line. Cars shuffle around more, making more lane changes and other sudden, unexpected moves, made more dangerous by the closeness the backup itself causes, or worse yet, have to make 2-lane road passes.

And the damnedest thing about it, more than 80% of the time, that one slow and/or non steadily moving car causing all that havoc, is a Toyota. Why is that?

[fielderLS3]

Originally Posted by DGthe3

There is absolutely nothing that would prevent them from raising the fines for speeding at the same time they increase speed limits. If you anticipate issuing 1/10 the tickets ... make each ticket cost 10x as much, in the end it will balance out.

Is this an admission that the existing system of speed limits is about extracting revenue, not safety? Needing to include in the argument a strategy to maintain the revenue stream through any changes to said system suggests exactly that.