I went it wouldn’t matter because … I haven’t seen speed as being the biggest problem. Distracted and/or flat-out poor driving is usually more the issue I see and see the results of. Speed is sometimes a factor but more as a contribution than the main culprit.
Speed limits are bullshit mostly picked based on generating the most revenue. The is no reason that the safest speed on a given road is the same for a professional race car driver in athe corvette as me in my 72 cj5. I normally drive 5 under the speed limit in my jeep since every pothole moves it around the road and I don’t stop as well as modern cars. Back when I had my challenger I hated only going 5 over since it could handle any curve or dip in the road and could stop faster then most cars.
If anything we should give people a test based on their capabilities and their vehicle and assign a plus or minus on their speed limit. So Mario Andretti (or other famous driver) in a corvette could get a plus 25 while my grandmother would get a negative 25 which would put her under the minimum freeway speed and prevent her from driving on them.
Calm down. Take another thalidomide tablet.
A world in which I cannot ride my Vespa is not worth living in.
A world in which I cannot ride my Vespa exactly as fast as I want to is even worse.
I am going to sleep fitfully tonight, disturbed by dreams of hypothetical dystopias where scooters do not exist and everyone drives slow.
Similar technology for this actually exists, and is called a governor. The difference is that is an absolute limit rather than based on a given road. The speeds at which they are set are often so high as to reach practical limits before then.
Some problems:
[ol]
[li]Quite frankly, people would not accept it.[/li][li]Sometimes speed limits are set based upon a measurement of how fast people actually drive on that street, e.g. 85th percentile of drivers, and how can they adjust the speed in the future.[/li][li]What happens when you need to drive faster for emergency reasons?[/li][li]Law enforcement/the DMV in certain places acknowledge that driving the same speed as prevailing traffic is better than strictly adhering to limits. Obviously, with this “magic” the issue will be self-limiting, still…[/li][li]It can be unsafe to pass vehicles at the speed limit. Also related to practical limits: I drive on mountain Interstate semi-regularly. There are often semi trucks who drive even 50% of the speed limit because they physically cannot drive faster while going up a slope, or don’t want to drive too fast down a slope and overheat their brakes.[/li][li]I don’t follow the technology too closely, but it seems that driverless cars would solve some of the assumed problems with speeding.[/li][/ol]
Nooooo! Humph! I don’t like you.
As an experiment, they once asked everyone at a manufacturing business to follow every rule exactly - not break any company rules.
The business came to a stand-still! It turned out it was necessary for people to regularly break some rules to get their job done.
So far as driving, I know most people regularly exceed the speed limit on Los Angeles freeways. Faster speeds mean more cars are getting through. Slow them all down to the speed limit and I bet you would have a big mess!
As opposed to the freely flowing, virtually empty expanses that they are currently?
It would be worse. Generally, speeding isn’t nearly as much of a contributor to accidents as unpredictable or erratic driving. In fact, I think people going too slow is often MORE of an issue than people going to fast. I see people going significantly faster than traffic only rarely, particularly in heavy traffic because there’s just no space to let loose. However, people going below the speed limit have a way of making people want to pass, sometimes unsafely due to impatience. And I see plenty more people going below the speed of traffic, whether it’s because they feel it is safer or they’re inattentive or whatever. So, unless this device can also make people stay within a range, not just below the maximum safe speed, but also above the minimum safe speed, then I think it could exacerbate that problem.
Also, there are times where what might be safe in general or across a longer section of road may not be safe in a particular circumstance. Passing is a notable reason. Other times, going faster to get away from an erratic or inattentive driver, particularly as I’d rather have them BEHIND me, than in front of me, or even some dangerous situations are best avoided by pressing the gas rather than the brake.
Only up to a point. The faster you go, the more space you take up, as you need to leave braking distance between yourself and the next guy ahead. This increase in the space needed by each car produces a quadratic equation based on speed, and indicates a maximum effective speed. Beyond that speed, fewer cars are getting through.
“The maximum safe speed based on the conditions” certainly should be the definition of a speed limit, but it isn’t. The actual definition is “that speed posted on the signs next to the road, as decided by some government official or agency”. And that government official or agency is making that decision based on any of a number of criteria, of which safety might or might not be one, and might or might not be the dominant one.
These magic cars would decrease the visible and spectacular bad consequences by a small amount, but would increase subtle and small bad consequences by a very large amount. I believe that the net effect of the subtle and small consequences would be greater than that of the spectacular consequences, and so such magic would, on net, be bad.
Yep, absolute rigidity isn’t much of a regime to live under.
Vespas can go faster than 25mph?
Huh.
Missed the edit window:
Also, it’s pretty rubbish magic if the only thing it can do is set a car’s speed governor to match an arbitrarily-established speed limit of whatever street it’s on. Hell, with GPS and wi-fi, we have the technology to do that NOW…
So, worse is my vote. Everybody would start planning their routes so as to maximize their time on fast streets and minimize their time on slow ones.
I’d like to add that another reason I think this would be a whole lot of taxpayer money spent and bureaucracy created for absolutely no gain is because speeding in and of itself is not a leading cause of accidents. Alcohol, driver distraction/driver error and weather are all much greater contributors. Accidents caused by speeding are merely more visually spectacular therefore they garner greater attention than they really deserve…
Here in Taiwan speeding is a major problem, along with reckless driving as people try to pass with seemingly complete disregard to safety while others go along at the posted limits.
Forcing people to obey to law would help overall safety by eliminating the potential to save those few minutes saved by speeding.
This is for Taiwan. The US could be different.
That math only makes sense if he actually killed dozens of people on the way to the hospital. Since he killed nobody, he made the right call.
In fact, I recall from when I was learning to drive that it is legal to speed for up to 1/4 mile for the purpose of passing.
This would have a number of interesting side-effects.
As many have noted, speeding isn’t a very big safety issue. Some accidents would be prevented, but not a big number certainly.
In fact, speed limits would be raised. Since the 55mph limit came in, people got habituated to speeding because they knew that limit had nothing to do with safety. the result was that speed limits got lowered because the autorities knew people would speed. If the road is safe at 35, you have to set the limit at 25 to keep most people under 35.
Most communities rely on traffic fines for part of their revenue. there is a town in Ohio that is rather famous for not having taxes: their only source of revenue is speeding tickets issues on a 2-mile stretch of interstate. (There isn’t even an exit within their town.)
On the whole, I think it is wrong to use “law enforcement” as a way to collect money, so I think it would be good if we were forced to stop. But for the various governments involved it would be bad to suddenly lose that revenue.