What would happen if everybody obeyed all speed limits on the roads. Would there be less accidents? Would it take longer to get anywhere? Would there be less congestion?
Are we also all following the 2-second rule for following the car in front of us?
I’ll tell you what would happen: they would have to LOWER the speed limits.
Speed limits are not there for safety; they are there for revenue. They know a certain percentage of drivers will exceed them, and they can snag you and get you to cough up some scratch. If nobody fell for the ruse, they’d have to lower the limits until people *had *to violate them.
It’s the same as street cleaning. They don’t do it to get the streets clean. They do it so they can give tickets to people who forget to move their cars.
Is that why the Federal Government imposed, indirectly, the old 55 mph speed limit? To generate revenue for the states? (Actually it was primarily a fuel-saving measure.)
And your evidence for this is…?
I don’t think your degree of cynicism is warranted here. The revenue from tickets isn’t so great that - after paying the cops to patrol, paying for the relevant equipment, paying for the legal system to process these cases - police departments are adding truckloads of money into the city/county coffers
Speed limits, apparently much to your chagrin, are probably warranted on the vast majority of roads. You really think that a 30 MPH speed limit in a residential zone is there for revenue and **not **safety? Really?
Likewise, in downtown cores where there are freeway exits very close together, it may not be wise to have through traffic going at 85 MPH and expecting cars to enter the highway from a city street and accelerate to traffic speed in the short amount of space they would be given to merge
The only real stretches of road where speed limits may not be warranted at all are on deserted/lightly used stretches of rural interstate. And even then, judging by the characters that you run across nowadays who excessively speed (i.e. 20+ MPH over the speed limit), I’m not so sure it would be safe to allow them speed-limit freedom
To answer the OP: probably nothing would happen. Accidents may drop, but not by much. Congestion is a symptom of too many automobiles on a road where the road is not designed to handle that many cars. The kinds of accidents that cause traffic jams at rush hour are probably not speed-related as they are “too many cars on the road and not enough attention being paid” related. That won’t change if everyone suddenly obeys the speed limit.
You would still have people driving way too slow and clogging traffic. Plus people making illegal turns and all other kinds of infractions. There might be a reduction in fatal accidents, though, as most crashes would be a lower speeds.
IIRC the increase from 55 to 65 MPH actually reduced accidents and fatalities. Roads seem to have a natural speed limit by road design and usage, when artificial speed limits are imposed by man we get into trouble.
IMO, The biggest problem with traffic is the fact that people go “different” speeds. People that go 55 mph in 65 mph zone are just as big of hazard as the ones that go 80.
What nonsense. :rolleyes:
Really? Florida just raised traffic fines in response to its budget crunch. You would have to contend that they are at least a revenue enhancing device, no?
And you would have to also contend that the powers that be: legislators, governors, county commissioners, etc. would be very unhappy if everyone started following traffic laws and there was no more traffic fine revenue, correct?
So, it seems pretty straightforward to me that your rolleyes are unwarranted when the state uses traffic fines as part of its required, relied upon revenue instead of punishment for a treacherous act.
Not in my practical experience. I believe, from reading a lot and being very observant for many years, that this is true:
Here they dropped the speed limit from 65 to 55 and installed cameras and guess what? My commute time was CUT IN HALF.
Everyone basically had to go the same speed.
And if I felt like spending enough time digging around in my old posts, I could probably prove to you that I was never a fan of speed limits or sub-5-over drivers. I saw the light when my drive home went from a parking lot to a steady flow of 45-55mph.
I imagine the acid test for “it’s all about revenue” will be the advent of so-called “automatic” highways where computer-controlled cars zoom along. If a state resists with a flimsy excuse, it’s likely because they see revenue drying up.
I don’t doubt that. You can fit a lot more cars on the road without congestion if everybody is going the exact same speed. It is variation from the avg speed that clogs up the roads during rush hour.
I don’t think we really disagree. I agree that the problem is that people go at different speeds, which is why I said that even with perfect compliance to the speed limit you would still have the problem of people driving under it.
I hadn’t thought of the idea of a lower limit strictly enforced, which would (to a point) eliminate the problem of people driving under the limit. Very interesting.
I don’t think that is the only conclusion you can draw. For example, what if enforcing speed limits for safety reasons costs Florida $100m and they get back $25m in fines but by increasing the fines they may get back $35m? In this case, the fines and increase are clearly not there for revenue purposes - the increase would be merely to defray a bit more of the cost of running this safety program.
Note - I have no clue whether the above is actually the case. It is possible that Florida makes a boatload of money on traffic fines. I am just saying that you cannot draw your conclusion from the facts presented.
I saw a documentary about the Autobahn in Germany, and was surprised to learn that they have very few accidents. As long as people aren’t being idiots about the speed they are going, and following conscientious and safe driving habits, it doesnt really matter what the speed limit is.
That and the propensity of drivers not to space themselves properly in heavy traffic, which magnifies the effect of a braking by any driver in a given lane.