[codazoda]

As an aside…

I wonder why “80 mph” was picked as an arbitrary value. In rural areas of Utah we have 80 mph posted limits and prima facie speed laws. A lot of Utah drivers regularly exceed 80 MPH and I’d argue they do so legally. It’s just a weird number for them to pick.

[tzs]

They may be looking at a correlation between speed and claims rather than whether or not the speed is legal. Accidents at 80 mph will tend to be more severe, and possibly also more frequent.

Note that they are also looking at night driving, which as far as I know is legal everywhere, but someone who spends a higher percentage of their time driving at night probably is a bigger risk for the insurance company than a similar person who doesn't drive as much at night.

[ang_cire]

I'd surmise it's because several states (CA comes to the top of mind) set speeds in excess of 80 as a potential felony enhancement.

iirc in CA it's 20mph over the speed limit, or speeds over 80.

The insurance companies probably want to know who to raise rates on.

[dexterdog]

Which is crazy because when I do 80 in Mostly PA and NJ I am getting passed constantly.

[dlev_pika]

I just looked and both PA and NJ, have way below natl average car accident deaths per 100K drivers, even if death in over speeding seems to be a a significant contributing factor to overall rates.

Interesting to me. I wonder what are they doing right.

[polski-g]

It's not arbitrary. In Virginia that's a guaranteed reckless driving charge.

[pixl97]

Texas: we set the speed limit at 85.

[mschuster91]

Meanwhile Germany: that's the target speed you should aim for, but if you want to drive faster, you absolutely can.

[stackskipton]

Not anymore. It got moved to 85 because speed limit on interstates moved to 70.

[rirze]

How do one know this? I don't know where to get this information and whether to trust it.

[smalltorch]

It's not arbitrary, there are limits of physics to how fast you can slow down on rubber wheels no matter how good your brakes are. The stopping distance starts to grow dramatically around these speeds.

[SoftTalker]

Even it it's legal, it's probably less safe. Insurance companies care about your likelihood of being in an accident that they will have to pay for, not strictly whether your driving is legal.

[moron4hire]

In jurisdictions where 65MPH is the highway speed limit, 80MPH is usually the "reckless driving" threshold. And in Virginia, reckless driving is a felony misdemeanor.

[8note]

people that drive on those high speed roads are more likely to be involved in more dangerous/harmful collisions?

legally and unlikely-to-make-expensive-consequences are separate items that insurance exists to differentiate

why shouldnt people driving on such dangerous roads have to pay higher insurance rates?