| There are a lot of ways to interpret this question, as shown in by the variety of responses in this thread. But we could rephrase it to "why aren't top speeds limited to the maximum speed limit?". It's got me thinking about the creeping culture of safetyism, especially against the current backdrop of Covid-related restrictions. In some ways it makes no sense that cars are not restricted to a sensible top speed. Either a simple dumb limiter set to the top speed limit for the country, or something more sophisticated using GPS (or a combination of the two). Doing so would possibly (probably?) save many lives per year. Yet it's unlikely to happen because: 1. there's a powerful automotive industry that relies on cars retaining their power as a status symbol 2. there are a lot of powerful and influential people who enjoy driving fast cars. It frightens me that we are seemingly only able to retain our freedoms when there is some powerful industrial lobby to protect them. People are currently being subjected to much, much greater restrictions of freedom than having the top speed of their car capped. Entire livelihoods are being destroyed on the basis of "saving lives". Perhaps this is justified. I personally don't think so but a convincing argument can be made. If there's a conclusion to this, it's that we need to move past the "if it saves some lives, it's worth it" style of argument. It sounds brutal, but some values are worth holding on to even if they kill people. You may balk at that statement, but you implicitly accept that compromise every day, even if you've never explicitly thought about it. |
Places that have some roads with unrestricted speed probably wouldn't be a candidate for non-GPS blanket restrictions (Germany has the autobahn, Montana has/had some roads posted as 'reasonable speed').
There is also the argument against both types of restrictions that some situations can warrant excess speeds. If you are speeding to a hospital because your neighbor has potentially life threatening injuries from being run over by a tractor, most states have a clause that allows you to break the laws to avoid greater harm in situations like this.
The best answer I know of so far is to increase driver test requirements in the US. Many European countries have more stringent testing with lower fatalities per million miles, even when comparing US interstates to the German autobahn. The number of drivers I witness who make bad decisions or don't know the law is quite high.