[nitrogen]

There should be a distinction made ib every discussion about this subject between "dangerous" driving and merely "illegal" driving. Sometimes they are the same, like speeding through a school zone (never do this!). But sometimes they are not, like when four lanes of traffic on a limited access freeway all decide to drive at 80mph in a 65mph zone. In that case, driving 65 would be the much more dangerous choice, as it forces other traffic to back up and make more lane changes (more opportunities for accidents).

[UrMomReadsHN]

Speeders love to argue that speeding is not dangerous. Or that THEY are such good drivers that they know how to speed safely. I am not 100 percent convinced of that. The reason being is humans are very, very bad at analyzing risks as well as being very bad at analyzing their own skill. Famously 93% of drivers think they are above average in driving skill.[1] As far as cold hard facts, i don't know if they exist but government organizations claim speeding kills. The reliability of such claims of course can be challenged. Physics also tells us that if number of accidents remain constant than higher speeds during an accident would lead to more damage/death/injury.

In theory we would have safety experts analyze each road and come up with an effective speed that would be safe in optimal conditions. We don't have that unfortunately. Speed limits can tend to be somewhat arbitrary. This is unfortunate.

The other issue is, yes, it is safest when drivers are mostly operating at the same speed. How do cars all communicate with each other to set the speed? That would be issuing a speed limit. Speed limits are unfortunately set at a maximum which means driving below the speed limit is legal and potentially make the roads unsafe when everyone else is driving at or near the maximum.

It is a difficult problem that probably won't be solved until we have self driving cars. But for now i think we are not taking the human element of road safety as serious as i believe we should be. Road accidents are a MAJOR cause of death in people under 25. On the engineering side we have made huge strides in engineering safer cars and roads.

[1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/00016918819...

[pixl97]

>In theory we would have safety experts analyze each road and come up with an effective speed that would be safe in optimal conditions

That would be nice, but it's important to recognize that 1/4 of accidents are weather related. Often that is because they were going over the maximum safe speed at the time, even though it was below the posted speed limit. Per the NHTSA only somewhere around 10 to 15% of accidents are directly related to speeding, the most likely cause of an accident is inattention.

[wlesieutre]

Ah, what we really need then are eye trackers in cars. Look off the road for more than two seconds? Ticket! Not watching your mirrors? Ticket! Change lanes without checking your blind spot? Ticket!

[nitrogen]

I believe I've heard of cars that will make an obnoxious noise if you appear to be falling asleep.

[jghn]

Part of the problem with this argument is that safety is often not the real motivation behind any particular speed limit.