HolyCoast: What Happens When People Drive the Speed Limit?
Follow RickMoore on Twitter

Saturday, December 04, 2010

What Happens When People Drive the Speed Limit?

Mass civil obedience, and a traffic jam:
Speed laws are much more about revenue generation than they are about safety. Most cars are capable of safely going much faster than posted highway speed limits and most roads are engineered for speeds much higher than those posted. It's more about the money government can generate from fines than keeping people safe.

1 comment:

Robert Fanning said...

While true that CARS may be safely driven at speeds greater than current speed limits, the rub is the drivers. Most drivers are barely able to handle posted speeds with the multitude distractions of daily life. For even skilled and safety conscious drivers these unskilled are a constant source of unexpected danger. Even though many drivers could negotiate roads in the company of like minded people, they must share the roads with a wide spectrum of capability, and thus the posted speed limits to limit mayhem.

One might argue that the rational approach would be to use statistics to set speed limits, however, for that option speeds would have to be raised until significant accidents occurred. I doubt anyone would wish for that approach. Perhaps it would be best to leave the speed limits in place and train drivers to obey...this is where speeding fines come in. Perhaps speeding fines should be increased until such revenue decreases. Oh...now that would be bad for law enforcement budgets. Does anyone else see a pattern?