| When in a hole, stop digging. > Statistics repeatedly fail to bear out your assertion. Except they don't: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1108.p... More interestingly: http://www.trb.org/Main/Blurbs/157220.aspx I'll leave off the usual pedestrian fatality statistics here, because you seem not to be interested in that, and it's shooting fish in a barrel. > Promised increases in death rates that accompany increased highway speed limits essentially never materialize. From the second link's abstract: ...a speed limit increase from 55 to 65 mi/h on the average section would
be associated with a 24% increase in the probability of an occupant being
fatally injured, once a crash has occurred.
That study looked at actual collision data. Where people had raised the speed limits, and actually seen actual increases in actual death rates.> Modeling drivers as ideal gas particles whose collision rate is proportional to speed is simply wrong. Don't do that, then. It's not directly proportional to speed, but there is a positive correlation. If you're going to convince me that speed limits are pointless and irrelevant, you're going to need to explain away some pretty basic physics. |
The reason this isn't a particularly great comparison is that driver training, car design and even the German attitude to driving are all built around the potential for high speeds.