Speed
- Posted by ryan on September 8th, 2008 filed in Miscellany
Our car’s speedometer goes up to 140 mph. Why? A great point by Ezra Klein:
30 percent of traffic deaths are related to speeding. By contrast, 39 percent are related to alcohol. But with alcohol, we go to every possible length to keep tipsy drivers from their cars, up to and including embedding a breathalyzer in the steering column. When it comes to speeding however, we’re doing the equivalent of outfitting cars with a bottle of Jack in the cupholder.
It’s not legal anywhere in America to drive over 100 miles an hour. Hell, it’s not legal to go over 80. But most all cars can do that, and much more. Kent Sepkowitz has an easy fix: Build cars that cannot. Top them out at 75. Prevent 13,000 or so deaths. And it makes sense: We all agree — well, most of us — that there should be speeding limits, so why shouldn’t cars conform to them? In some ways, it would make it easier: You would no longer zone out on a long drive and find you’d pressed up to 85 and the cops were now behind you.
Makes sense, does it not?
September 8th, 2008 at 10:18 am
Seems more of a cultural thing. Speeds on the Autobahn regularly go 100+ MPH and their accident rate is nothing compared to ours. I think the accident rate is related to local governments handing out drivers licenses to anyone with a pulse. And if little Snotley doesn’t get his, parents Doug and Linda Boring end up being the little s**t’s chauffeur. Nothing in the Constitution says you’ve got a right to drive. Start yanking people’s licenses for minor infractions, and see how fast people start moving to walkable communities with decent public transit.
The technology to restrict speed limits is already readily available as an after market option for convicted drunk drivers. However, if they do implement some speed restrictions at the factory, I predict a booming market in cars that can still go 140 MPH. It’ll make the current muscle car fetish seem like lukewarm consomme at a spinsterish tea party.
September 8th, 2008 at 10:30 am
Is it “speeding” meaning going 55 on a winding back country road that is signed for 25, or “speeding” meaing going a buck twenty on the interstate that causes the traffic deaths? Because if the average is weighted towards the former, limiting the speed to 75 won’t do much (if anything). Also, as to Monkey’s point above, most cars today are safe and stable at 90-100 mph, it is more of an issue of driving skill.
September 8th, 2008 at 10:45 am
I have come around to agree with Monkeyrotica about not giving out so many licenses to anything that moves. Since I moved to a transit oriented environment, my perspective has switched over to that of a pedestrian first. I am generally freaked out by what I see motorists doing while driving and am incredibly cautious when I cross streets, walk on sidewalks, etc. I don’t trust any motorist to drive safely, simply because there are so many of them and it’s so easy for any nitwit to get a license.
Another thing is that environments that are designed for cars (suburbia) tend to enhance the inherent disconnect a driver has with his/her surroundings. They seem too safe, too easy. A driver gets overconfident about the safety of the road and their abilities to make sound judgements. A walkable town environment has more things going on so the driver is aware of the fact that dangerous stuff can happen. They are aware of the dynamic environment and their potential shortcomings.
September 8th, 2008 at 11:41 am
I know that lots of numbers about “alcohol-related” crashes are bloated exaggerations, lumping together cases where the alcohol was consumed by passengers, in order to build an alarmist case. Is the same true of “speed related”? What does that mean, how is the determination made, and how accurate is the determination?
Perhaps the original point is really a dig at the absurdity of breathalyzer ignition locks.
Taking it at face value, as others have pointed out, limiting cars to 75mph might stop people from speeding across Nevada or Montana, but it wouldn’t do anything about someone driving 60mph in a zone where 25mph is the maximum safe speed.
Surely there must be data of the speeds involved in “speed related” crashes. Show me a histogram!
September 8th, 2008 at 11:52 am
I’d be happy with speed limiters which kick in when the auto is operated in a defined location (e.g. within the District of Columbia).
You could tie this in with GPS, so that municipalities could set maximum speed limits.
If you really want a close-up look at the kind of speed that kills, set your cruise control to 25 mph, and drive around DC some time. Watching folks frantically trying to get buy while doing 15-20mph over the speed limit is both entertaining and a little scary.
September 8th, 2008 at 11:53 am
buy -> by
September 8th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
thm is right. What would be necessary is some kind of system based on speed zones. A given segment of road would have a particular speed zone, say 35mph. A transponder on the side of the road would communicate wirelessly with your car’s onboard computer to raise and lower the maximum permissable speed based on that zone’s speed limit. This would solve the problem of excessive speed in areas with a low speed limit.
That said, this is all just conjecture. It’ll never happen here in ‘Murka. I used to street race back in my reckless youth and knowing the degree to which car culture has America in a death grip, I’m skeptical.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Seems more of a cultural thing. Speeds on the Autobahn regularly go 100+ MPH and their accident rate is nothing compared to ours. I think the accident rate is related to local governments handing out drivers licenses to anyone with a pulse.
One ‘cultural thing’ that I’d be willing to bet is a major factor, is that on the autobahns, autostrades, etc. of Europe, “keep right except to pass - and don’t dawdle when you pass” is practically an inviolable code.
The result is, there are rarely any surprises on European limited-access roads. You go whatever speed you want in the right lane until you overtake someone, then you move left, speed up if necessary (going at least 15 kph faster than the car you’re passing is de rigeur), pass, and get back over as soon as it’s safe.
There’s no road rage, because there’s nobody slowpoking in the left lane, making it hard for you to get past. Nobody has to weave through traffic, passing some people on the left and others on the right, because everyone stays right unless they’re passing, and they waste no time in passing.
Compare that to driving the Capital Beltway, where you can be stuck behind drivers in all four lanes driving almost exactly the same speed.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
“lumping together cases where the alcohol was consumed by passengers”
Do you have evidence of that? That sounds absurd to me.
The problem with speeding and traffic-related fatalities period is that the public is largely unaware of the amount of fatalities that result from automobile use. More people die in car accidents than breast cancer, yet you don’t see many huge rallies and walkathons to fight dangerous driving. To the extent that people acknowledge the inherent deadliness of automobile transportation they chalk it up to the cost of convenience and try to place to blame on particularly reckless drivers, not good people like themselves. Yet about 70% of traffic fatalities cannot be blamed on alcohol.
It’s just ingrained into our culture to look the other way with cars. If a new pharmacutical drug, or a cell phone, or food product all the sudden killed 41,000 people in a year, there would be a huge uproar. Government officials would be thrown out of office and people would go to jail.
MADD did a good job demonizing drunk driving in the 80s. They took an inherently risky activity that was mostly tolerated due to its convenience and made it into an embarrassment. If only speeding and dangerous road construction were also on their demonization list.
September 8th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
I don’t have a problem with people driving 90 on I-70 in Kansas. If you’ve ever been there you know that frankly it’s safe to do so.
But I do have a problem with the cultural assumption that driving is a right. I agree w/ monkeyerotica - we should be yanking licenses left and right. Get caught driving recklessly? Bam. License is gone for two years. Do it again after? Sorry, you’re out of luck forever. Maybe in 20 we can talk again.
September 8th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
We need a better respect for driving, period. It needs to be seen as a privilege, rather than a right. A big way to do that is to provide some credible alternatives to get around.
My uncle is a big car nut. Grew up and lives in Indy, goes to the 500 every year, etc. He drives a Mercedes, and always relays a story about how his old M-B was the first model to have cupholders. The German engineers were baffled that the American salesmen kept asking for this feature - why would anyone distract themselves with a beverage while driving?
Culturally, Europeans have a lot more respect for driving. They have much higher standards in terms of skill proficiency before people are given a license, a much stronger culture of obeying the rules, etc.
September 8th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
“we should be yanking licenses left and right.”
Ah, but that old suburban sprawl strikes again. You take away a driver’s license from somebody living in suburbia, you practically take away their mobility period. To too many people, a car equals mobility. There’s no way that there’d be enough support to start taking away peoples’ mobility, simply because “they lost track of how fast they’re going” or whatever.
Again, it would take a MADD-scale demonization campaign to build up support for such punishments.
September 8th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
This is fine if you want to set a limit at 100 MPH. But you must understand that on interstate 80 in Nevada it is perfectly safe to drive 85 MPH. People in this part of the country remember the 55 MPH national speed limit. It was dumb.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
You take away a driver’s license from somebody living in suburbia, you practically take away their mobility period.
Well, that’s kinda the point, innit? When people start getting screwed to the floor for behaving like a jackass behind a two-ton hunk of steel flying at 30 miles over the speed limit, then maybe the word will start getting out that you need to chill the f**k out on the road and quit friggin “multitasking” with your two Blackberries and your lipstick and your kid in the backseat while you’re reading the Sunday Review of books and texting your husband that it’s over between you and him because you found the IMs he’s been sending to that whore he was supposed to be broken up from, all at 20 MPH under the speed limit and weaving in and out of the right lane.
It’s not MY problem that serial speeder/lane-maniac-who-gives-me-the-finger-for-doing-55-in-a-45-zone has to take the bus to work now. It IS my problem when you start f***ing with my s**t on the road
September 8th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
monkeyrotica - if you want the law to come down like a ton of bricks on people who are doing other s**t while they’re supposed to be paying attention to the road they’re driving on, I’m 100% with you.
It’s just that there’s a lot of difference between speeding, and doing stuff that keeps you from paying freakin’ attention while driving.
The other thing is that our sprawly environment has created situations where getting kicked out of your car doesn’t necessarily mean you’re taking the bus to work. It may mean you’re bicycling 10 miles to the nearest place where a bus stops, or to the nearest supermarket, or wherever.
Back in the West in the 19th century, horse thieving was a hanging offense, for exactly that reason: without a horse, you were stranded. Same thing out where I live.
September 8th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Right. So what’s the worst case scenario?
Some jackass who can’t behave properly loses his license and…
… moves to the city where he can get around without a car (a good thing), or
… lives for a while in the ‘burbs practically immobile, and becomes an advocate for better mobility options in the ‘burbs (a good thing).
Society gets a positive outcome either way, and the only inconvenienced party is the jackass who couldn’t drive without endangering lives.
Sounds like a good deal to me.
Getting it enacted… sure. Problem.
September 8th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
It’s not that I don’t agree that coming down like a ton of bricks would be a desirable outcome, it’s that I don’t think there is the public will power to see that happen.
Look what happens when we try to take away the drivers licenses of senior citizens for pretty much the same reason. They go apesh*t and everyone else just folds like a cheap suit. The problem: most drivers know full well that they don’t come close to following the letter of the law. They don’t want the punishment for speeding or even reckless driving to be draconian because they figure that every once in a while (if not more frequently) they speed and/or drive recklessly.
As long as enforcement is uneven, people will feel that punishments ought not to be too harsh.
September 8th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
You’re right, Reid. And you’ve go that whole driving-as-a-birthright thing.
As for the political willpower thing, yeah, it’s pretty much why we lost Vietnam. Nobody wanted to be the President that lost the war, and nobody wants to be the class that loses open lunch for the rest of the school.
September 9th, 2008 at 1:12 am
I agree with monkeyrotica’s initial point that we ought to rethink how many people are getting licenses.
Additionally, however, I believe Ryan does have a very valid point. Why are there automobiles that enable law breaking? It may be “safe” to do 90 on I-70 across Kansas, but it’s not legal. Why is it legal to make cars (apart from emergency vehicles) that do so with ease?
Factor in fuel economy in most cars at 75+ MPH. It’s not good, it burns a lot of gas, even in a hybrid. And if bending/breaking the law while hightailing it across the Midwest isn’t as viable an option, perhaps we’ll start to see high speed rail replacing the interstates.
Not a likely outcome, but not a bad thing to advocate.
September 9th, 2008 at 6:37 am
It may mean you’re bicycling 10 miles to the nearest place where a bus stops, or to the nearest supermarket, or wherever.
Again, why is this MY problem? And what are you worried about? Creating a race of super healthy ex-con traffic offenders with great cardio systems and legs they can crack walnuts with? And what’s the worse that can happen? Workplaces having to install showers because everybody has to bike and everybody stinks? That’s still win-win to me.
Most high-end European vehicles are designed to run at Autobahn speeds, but for North America sales, they install a speed limiter chip to top out at 140 MPH, so the technology’s been around for a while. But apart from the whole political willpower thing, you’ve also got technology against you. As soon as speed detectors came out, they came out with radar detectors. As soon as they moved to laser speed detectors, they came out with jammers. And as soon as they come out with speed restrictors, you’ll have people reprogramming chips to get you back over 140 and driving like a maniac.
Confession time. In my misspent youth, I had to give up my drivers license because all the parking tickets and moving violations made my insurance go through the roof. (Yeah, like none of YOU acted like a**holes when you were in your twenties.) So I had to move downtown to be closer to work and not be reliant on a vehicle. First in Baltimore, then by MARC to DC, and finally in Southeast. And you know what? I was biking/walking/Metroing everywhere, I was a lot happier, and a lot healthier. And even when my job took me out to frigging outer Rockville, I still did the Metro and bus. But eventually, I needed to get some wheels to take care of my invalid folks, then I got hitched, and then we pooped out some crotchfruit, so it’s all about getting kids to daycare and dropping the wife off at the subway and getting groceries on the way home and all that Ozzie and Harriet bulls**t. Still, I ended up in a walkable inner suburb that’s 10 minutes to Metro and on a major bus route with great bike access to the Mount Vernon Trail.
Moral of the story: never get married.
September 9th, 2008 at 9:45 am
Why are there automobiles that enable law breaking? It may be “safe” to do 90 on I-70 across Kansas, but it’s not legal. Why is it legal to make cars (apart from emergency vehicles) that do so with ease?
Back to the original point, I don’t see any reason why cars need to be able to go 140. Let’s put a cap on that, sure, but I think the cap ought to be closer to 90 than 70. Legal speed limits of 75 are very common out west, and 80 isn’t unheard of.
As for coming down hard on offenders, if the political will isn’t there right now then the obvious first step is to try and make the discussion mainstream, so that some day in the future the will might emerge. That’s what the internet is for