[jhkiehna]

yet 99% of people break that speed limit regularly. We all know speed limit laws are less about public safety, and more about generating revenue for the state, at least in the US anyway.

and 99.x% of people aren't engaging in sharing child porn anyway, it's the 0.1% of motivated criminals that will share encrypted files anyway, no matter what the law is. They will find ways around the law, they always do.

This is a thinly veiled excuse to take basic human rights away from people.

[mitchdoogle]

I'm curious where you get your information about speeding, because it kind of seems made up.

Speeding is tied to one third of traffic fatalities the last 20 years (https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/speeding), so of course speed limits are put in place in an attempt to increase safety on the road. There are plenty of arguments to be made about the best way to enforce speed limits, or ways to discourage aggressive driving (such as speeding), but there is little doubt that speeding is dangerous.

[oceanplexian]

"Speed related" is another one of those examples where the government lies with statistics to sell some safety FUD while failing to address the root cause of the problem.

Countries such as Germany have much lower traffic fatalities than the USA but they can operate vehicles at much higher speeds. Speed isn't the problem... uneducated drivers, poor vehicle maintenance, poor road quality, etc are the problem. But all those things would upset the masses who think they are entitled to operate a vehicle for 50 years after 2 months of training and a 15 minute test, so (in the USA) we get the lowest common denominator and roadways that are engineered to handle vehicles at 80+MPH are stuck with 55MPH speed limits.

[carlmr]

>Speed isn't the problem... uneducated drivers, poor vehicle maintenance, poor road quality, etc are the problem.

Speed isn't the problem, neither are any of the others you mentioned. They all add to the problem of traffic fatalities though.

They did a study in Germany and were able to halve traffic fatalities by adding a speed limit of 130kph on one Autobahn section, measured over 3 years.[1]

Sure you can improve road conditions and driver education, but a multi-pronged approach including speed limits is sensible.

[1] https://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/tempolimit-mit-130-km-h-...

[Sebb767]

> We all know speed limit laws are less about public safety, and more about generating revenue for the state, at least in the US anyway.

That's absolutely not true. Sure, some stretches are just to generate revenue, but that you're not allowed to go 200km/h through a city is not for revenue generation. It's also not given by common sense - the fact that you need to set the limit 20 lower than what's save should be plenty of evidence.