Not a Real American
- Posted by ryan on September 9th, 2008 filed in Internets
A propos of the blogospheric discussion yesterday on the speediness of cars, dana at Edge of the American West writes:
I had to read this article three times to make sure I wasn’t missing something. Am I? Ezra and Matt add their kudos to a proposal to cap the speeds at which cars can go at 75 miles per hour. The reasoning?
30% of all traffic deaths can be attributed to speeding.
Note the lack of absolute speed mentioned. The deaths could be caused going 40 mph in a 25 zone on a rainy night and sliding on wet leaves, or blowing through a traffic light at 50.
I’m guessing that the writers here don’t drive much, and when they do, they’re either in a city, where they’re not driving fast because they’re stuck in downtown traffic, or they’re driving on the highway, where they’re going fast and enjoying the open road. They’re surely not going to speed while gridlocked; ergo, the speeding crashes must be happening at highway speeds. But there’s a lot of driving that doesn’t fall into those categories: small towns; rural roads; commutes in from suburbia, to name a few. One doesn’t have to be going 75 to be speeding, or to end up squashed.
(It’s not that there’s no risk to going fast, or no risk to speeding. There are, but this is reminding me of nothing so much as junior high sex ed, where perky adults theorize that kids are having sex because of a lack of ideas on what to do for dates, and propose mini-golf. )
So our blogger recognizes that it is dangerous to drive at very high speeds. And that in fact, some proportion of highway fatalities–less than 30% but likely appreciable–can be attributed to driving at high speed. And yet it was deemed necessary to get in a dig at those crazy eastern elites, who don’t understand the charming, speedy ways of real America? Who will stand up for the right of rural and suburban teenagers to wrap their cars around trees? Who will defend the VERY IMPORTANT commuter riding the tailgates of people driving ten miles over the speed limit, because don’t you know that car can go faster.
Someone must fight against the biking, cab-taking, train-riding elites, with their peculiar conceptions of “driving” and “laws”.
September 9th, 2008 at 8:20 am
Interesting exchange on this topic over at Jalopnik, calling into question some of NHTSA’s numbers. My favorite is, “A 0 mph restriction would still not put an end to motoring accidents because even at a standstill many cars have large backseats.”
September 9th, 2008 at 8:41 am
Monkey, did you send me there just to piss me off?
I love that it’s totalitarianism to prevent people from driving 100 mph on public roads. Live free and/or die!
September 9th, 2008 at 8:57 am
Well, duh.
When the first VW Beetles rolled off the Nazi production lines, their top speed was 71MPH. Clearly people who want speed restrictions are worse than Hitler.
Ein Reich! Ein Volk! Ein Schpeed Limit!
September 9th, 2008 at 9:17 am
While I fundamentally disagree with the East Coast dig and the right to drive assertion, isn’t the general critique spot on? All those fatalities may be attributable to ’speed,’ but that doesn’t mean top end speed, it probably means speed differential more than anything else.
That’s not to say that limiting speed wouldn’t be a good idea, but it would address a different set of issues.
Also, I’d argue that the top end speed of most cars is more of a spillover effect of desires for other performance metrics - acceleration, power, torque, towing capacity, etc.
September 9th, 2008 at 9:20 am
How about a soft deterrent rather than a hard limit? What if companies installed (for example) a sensor that would make a really annoying noise or maybe disabled the stereo if the car exceeded 75?
I grew up in Texas, and when gas was cheaper I’d often zip back and forth between Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio at speeds of 90+. It sounds fast, but when there isn’t much traffic and the road doesn’t curve for 200 miles, there’s not much to speak against it.
September 9th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Not a bad idea, Arlen.
Car makers already do this. The ‘ding’ when you don’t have your seatbelt on is much more annoying in most cars these days than it was 5-10 years ago.
I also like the idea of mandating that you have an instantaneous MPG gauge on the dash, showing your fuel economy.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:02 am
I don’t know that the MPG gague will do anything. Many (if not all newer models) BMW’s have this, and it doesn’t seem to stop those guys from driving like maniacs…
September 9th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Our house backs to a 4-lane collector with a 35 MPH speed limit. Often the Very Important People Who Are Running Late are going 50 on this road, despite the kids walking alongside it. These same people drive their kids to and from the school along this road, and sit with the engine idling waiting for their obese progeny.
Having gas be $8.00/gal would do many things, including slowing down the VIPWARL crowd.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Here’s a market-based solution to speeding. Charge drivers (using GPS) a given rate per mph per mile. If the nominal speed limit is 35, you pay $0.10/mile if you drive 35 mph. But if you drive 45 mph, you pay $5.00/mile. If you drive over 50 mph, you pay $20.00/mile.
The problem with conventional speed limits (enforced by cops or even by cameras) is that the incentive to not speed is not internalizable–there’s no direct harm for the driver if they exceed the speed limit. By charging drivers dramatically more every time they speed, the incentive to not speed becomes instantly internalizable.
Setting a cap at 75 mph doesn’t prevent a driver from going 60 mph in a 35 mph zone. Any type of speed cap (whether totalitarian or market-based) has to be dynamic to prevent not only fatalities caused by absolute speeding but also fatalities caused by relative speeding.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:45 am
I’m skeptical of any GPS related systems, whether they be for a mileage tax or for speeding enforcement. As much as I hate the role that the driving culture has in the US (or more accurately, the impact it has had), that seems like an awful intrusion of privacy. If they have the ability to know how fast you’re going, they also know where you’re going.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:45 am
One has to wonder: Where are the insurance companies on this?
If 30% of accidents are related to speed, why wouldn’t insurance companies offer much lower rates to people who had vehicles that were electronically limited to some lower maximum? Put a 75 mph limiter on the engine, and get a 20% discount on car insurance. Gecko?
September 9th, 2008 at 11:52 am
Cortright,
I seem to recall hearing an NPR piece of some insurance companies looking to pilot insurance tied to a GPS. They then knew where you drove (thus what the speed limit was) and evaluated your safety based on that. They also had it tied to a quasi pay-as-you-drive rate.
Still, all of the privacy concerns are still there.
September 9th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
> If they have the ability to know how fast you’re going, they also know where you’re going.
This is an obvious and very real concern. The data would have to be guarded with very stringent legal safeguards from all parties (*especially* the government) and would have to be destroyed after some fairly short period of time (immediately after the bill is paid, for example).
September 9th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Yes, by all means let us put an upper cap on speed. We can even attach a positive social goal to it — Gas savings! In a time of high prices! — and then find some way of enforcing it across the entire country. People will see the good in it and won’t fight it or attempt to get around it somehow. But just to be sure, let’s do this at the federal level, set the speed limit at 55mph, and…
Oh, right, they already tried that, and it was yet another another checklist item on the miserable failure of central planning by well-meaning elites who thought they had all of the data and social goals figured out. Turns out that in spite of what they said at the time, even with 1970s and 1980s car technology it is not particularly more dangerous to drive at 65 or 75 as compared to 55 given a suitable road for that speed, and in fact studies have repeatedly found that most roads have a “natural speed” that a majority of drivers will adjust to regardless of the posted speed limit.
Meanwhile, the NYT writer was out of his depth; he doesn’t understand that “attributable to speed” means “too fast for conditions” not an exceeding of some upper boundary limit, and in any case, a speed governor on your car doesn’t make you a better driver if the proximate cause of your accident (and whatever “speed” it involved) was something else, such as a drug or a distraction. You can wreck just as spectacularly at 45 or 55 as you can at 75 or 95, in fact more-so in a head-on involving cars from opposite directions.
Perhaps what we really need are the vehicles shown in Minority Report, complete with a Certificate of Castration for each and every driver blessed with the privilege of living in a fully matronized world run by people who are NOT, they insist, “crazy eastern elites”. Pity they have a tendency to look like exactly that whenever they open their mouths on the subject, for example using fallacious arguments about suburban teens gift-wrapping trees.
September 9th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
The safety problem is not absolute speed. It’s relative speed and following distances. That car driving 35mph on the freeway is just as dangerous as the fool going 90.
As for the Brave New Worlders,
WHETHER the State can loose and bind
In Heaven as well as on Earth:
If it be wiser to kill mankind
Before or after the birth—
These are matters of high concern
Where State-kept schoolmen are;
But Holy State (we have lived to learn)
Endeth in Holy War.
Whether The People be led by The Lord,
Or lured by the loudest throat:
If it be quicker to die by the sword
Or cheaper to die by vote—
These are things we have dealt with once,
(And they will not rise from their grave)
For Holy People, however it runs,
Endeth in wholly Slave.
Whatsoever, for any cause,
Seeketh to take or give,
Power above or beyond the Laws,
Suffer it not to live!
Holy State or Holy King—
Or Holy People’s Will—
Have no truck with the senseless thing.
Order the guns and kill!
Saying—after—me:—
Once there was The People—Terror gave it birth;
Once there was The People and it made a Hell of Earth.
Earth arose and crushed it. Listen, O ye slain!
Once there was The People—it shall never be again!
September 9th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Ryan,
If you go to western states you will find that many interstates have a 75 MPH speed limit right now.
If you had followed the issue you would also know that the amount of highway fatalities decreased when they raised the speed limit from 55 MPH.
The idea that limiting cars to 75 MPH would decrease fatalities is not at all supported by facts.
Furthermore the proponents of this idea have given no thought or consideration to the technical requirements and increased manufacturing costs that would be required to implement this procedure.
In spite of this and with no supporting engineering or technical evidence of any sort Kent, Matt, Ezra and others are perfectly happy to mandate a policy just based on a whim.
That is one real reason why the supporters of this idea are getting(completely justified in my opinion) grief for it.
September 9th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
The never ending caterwauling about elite vs bubba is not terribly interesting.
I will note that (outside of some cultural items pushed by social conservatives) residents of the western states in particular are happy to let the residents of the “elite urban” areas govern those areas as they see fit.
However, the “elite urban” areas are not willing to return the same courtesy to the residents of the “non urban elite” areas.
The mandated 55 MPH speed limit and the mandated maximum 75 MPH cars are prime examples of this.
This is a big reason the bubba belt gets really aggravated when the proposals like mandated maximum speed limits are proposed as national policy.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
The last time I drove through W Texas (Monahans to El Paso) the speed limit was 80 for most of the trip.
So naturally, I drove 84. I really don’t know what everybody else was driving, as I didn’t see anybody for miles.
Occasionally I would pass a truck.
There were no trees for me wrap my car around.
Frankly, there are places in Arizona and Colorado that 75 is a bit too fast for my taste. But 80 in W Texas is perfect.
September 10th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Forcing everybody to top out at the same speed would cause cars to bunch up on rural interstates, probably resulting in devastating pileup crashes. Even disregarding the obvious arguments against such a proposal, the unintended consequences are too big to ignore.
This really is an issue where East Coast elites should just leave the rest of the country alone. As a transplanted Midwesterner I’ve noticed that a lot of people on the East Coast just don’t have a proper sense of scope in relation to the distances that people have to travel in other parts of the country, especially between big cities.