Call me crazy… but let’s make the speed limit 45 mph.
Shane April 28th, 2007
I know you are thinking “Oh, a wacko! Who would think this is a good idea? It would take forever to get anywhere.”
Take this article that shows the top 10 reasons for accidental death in the U.S. Number 2 is Falling, at 14,900 deaths per year while Automobile accident deaths is number 1 at 43,000 deaths per year. This is a small city dead, every year, due to automobiles.
How to solve this? Well, try to take yourself outside of society’s influence and think about it for a moment. The obvious solution - get rid of automobiles. Now I can be extreme sometimes, but I am not advocating this answer. But… our society existed before we had automobiles, so the point here is that we accept 43,000 dead people per year so that the rest of us can… well what do we get from automobiles? We get to travel quickly, and further than we would if there were no automobiles. So why do we need to travel great distances? It’s been a long time since I took a history class, but if I remember correctly, people outside of towns and cities had to run a farm, as there was no way to drive to a workplace that was far away. So your ‘employment’ had to be where you were located - your home. If you didn’t run a farm, you had to live in or very near a town, so that you could get to your workplace easily.
So what have cars given us? Instead of having to be work at home (farms) or be very near to a town, we can now live miles and miles from where we work, where we buy food, find entertainment, etc etc. The cost of this is that we use the earth’s resources, we pollute our environment and ourselves, and we know that 43,000 people died last year (actually the article I referenced doesn’t have a date) that would not have died if we didn’t drive cars.
All that being said… there is no way we would ever get rid of automobiles. Well… until we run out of oil that is, but that is another article for another day.
So. Why can’t we try to find some sort of compromise? As I have shown, cars are not a necessity, they are absolutely a luxury. Well they ARE necessary now, but only because our society has changed to the point that we could not function if we just suddenly stopped using them.
What if we just changed the maximum speed limit over a certain period of time to 45 mph? This change would:
Reduce gas consumption by 32% vs driving at 65 mph. (see this article) I could not find an exact article that stated how much gas consumption would drop, but the article I linked to says your gas consumption goes up by 8% ever 5 mph over 60 mph.
It would reduce accidental deaths DRAMATICALLY. Common sense would indicate that slower speeds mean you have more time to react, and hitting another car at 45 mph would be much less dangerous than at 65 mph. Having more time to react would also mean you could slow down more before hitting another car that might have pulled out in front of you.
It would also reduce CO2 emissions. Increased fuel efficiency = less gasoline burned which = less CO2 put into the air. Now I actually feel the Global Warming idea is being abused by politicians and big companies as just another way to make money, but I put this in for all the people that do feel it is important. Even beyond CO2, increasing fuel efficiency reduces all of the pollutants a vehicle puts into the air.
How many times have you heard the saying on television: ‘If we could save just one life by doing (insert some altruistic act here) then it’s worth the effort, isn’t it?’ I must have heard this statement a hundred times in my lifetime on TV shows and in movies. It always seems though, that the ‘thing’ that people talk about doing is something that doesn’t really impede upon our lifestyle.
So isn’t it funny that if someone actually came up to you and said ‘hey why don’t we lower the speed limit to 45 mph’ you would laugh at them? Yet doing so would save THOUSANDS of lives every year. I would bet any amount of money that we would save more lives each year than were lost in the 9/11 tragedy. It would reduce our oil dependancy, reduce pollutants into the air. Hell it would reduce noise pollution.
It would mean we would need to transport freight by train, and have trains again run into most towns like they did 60 years ago. Trains again are more efficient than trucks. Less gas consumtion, less pollution, less tractor trailers on the road to cause accidents… you get the picture.
Yet we do not do this. We let thousands die each year… for what? I drive 10 miles to work each day. Traveling 45 vs 65 mph would mean it would take me less than 4 extra minutes each trip. Doesn’t seem like much to lose, when there is so much to gain.
- Business , Environment
- Comments(14)
A drop like that would mean my commute would an extra ten to twenty minutes tacked on, depending on the congestion on the freeway.
Here’s another alternative, no speed limits. Germany has that and their accident are significantly less than ours.
I think the problem is not the speed but the attitudes of the people behind the wheel.
In a FREE COUNTRY, you can do whatever you please with your PERSONAL PROPERTY.
In a SOCIALIST or COMMUNIST COUNTRY The State tells you what you may do with THEIR property.
Ask yourself where YOU want to live.
The Price of Freedom and Liberty is ACCEPTING THE RISK of other people having Freedom and Liberty.
Are we brave enough to DESERVE Freedom?
Well the problem is, our society has been designed so that we require cars. It would be almost impossible to have people in big cities drive 45 mph. My point is, isn’t it crazy that we accept 43K deaths a year and in other instances, we would claim to do anything ‘to save just one life’.
I am pretty sure Germany has speed limits except on the Autobahn. Wikipedia says it has no speed limit on ’some’ of its roads.
No speed limit also means increased pollution.
What if cities had been designed so that people could economically live near their workplace? THings might be different. But they weren’t, because we have vehicles and travel quickly.
This article wasn’t intended as a real solution, more just something to think about. Unfortunately it would be impossible to impose a 45 mph speed limit in todays society…
Most accidents occur within 10 miles of the home, so the distance thing I don’t really see as an issue.
Also speed accounts for about 1/3 of fatal car crashes (yes I had sites to back this up but they got eaten twice and I didn’t feel like loosing them again =D) so speed is only a part of the problem.
The fix I see is to increase fines. Make the fine 1000 dollars per 5mph over the speed limit and watch people start to obey the posted limit much like I not only quit drinking and driving because of my DWI I quit drinking all together, I learned my lesson. Cell phone fines need to be increased as well, it’s been shown that someone talking on a cell phone can be MORE dangerous then a drunk driver and the fines are nowhere’s near comparable. Jack it up to 5000 dollar fine like the whole process for a DWI is and you’ll see a change.
Pure Freedom like you talk about Mike is a myth, dangerous and would pretty much be the end of everything.
The price of that kind of freedom would be sacrificing the weak to the strong because with that kind of freedom people with power would take what they wanted when they wanted.
We have a responsibility to take care of each other and no offense but your attitude smells faintly of American programming. IE mine mine mine. If we Americans have a fatal flaw it’s our independence, not from foreign rule but from each other. We’ve become so inured in the concept of us being an “independent” country that we are starting to forget that we still need the we in there, we can’t let it become an “I”
And while I’m no socialist or communist have you ever talked to anyone from one of those countries? It wasn’t all bad and while bad things did happen (not like they don’t here) there is a reason they were some of the most powerful countries in the world, there’s also reasons why people supported that system.
Let’s remember that just because we’re the most powerful atm doesn’t really mean much. We’re also one of the youngest, our greatest enemy still has to be defeated … Time.
The price of freedom was paid a long time ago by men far greater and braver then we so that we could enjoy what we have today and it wasn’t accepting the risk of other people having freedom it was standing together against unfairness and injustice. Working together to come up with ways to have a free country and they wrote the first laws for us to abide by to keep that freedom, and you should be ashamed of yourself for sullying their vision with your selfish view of their dream.
no time for long reply but…
speed is a factor in accidents - i am pretty sure those statistics are when people go over 55 mph, (when someone is speeding). Thats why i said 45 mph. Its a very slow speed. If we had governors on cars that made it so that cars could ONLY go 45 mph, i think vehicle deaths would drop dramatically.
Well, personally, I’d be all for a 45 mph speed limit. Driving is insane, if you ask me. I’ve been in two rollovers in my life and I have a very healthy (okay maybe a bit unhealthy) fear of driving. I will not drive in the snow anymore, and usually not in any kind of weather (my rollovers were both in the snow). And speeding along at 75mph just freaks me out a lot of the time.
I do it, because I’m addicted to dog agility, and for a lot of it I have to travel. I could take the bus to work. I did for a while, but it takes me over an hour to go 7 miles on the bus, when in my car it takes 15 minutes. And my time is, at this point in my life, more valuable. And I don’t even get on the freeway to go to work.
I have been on the autobahn, in Germany, and it’s nuts. I don’t like it at all and won’t go on without a seatbelt.
It is sad that our society is now built around cars. They do give us a lot of personal freedom. While at the same time they are a terribly huge risk with our lives. I don’t know the answer either, but I do know that cars are dangerous.
exactly. also there are some arguments that removing a speed limit reduces accidental death, but as I pointed out, there are other benefits to slowing down beyond the death toll.
i also do not see how driving100 mph can possibly be safer than 45.
http://www.science.org.au/nova/058/058key.htm
While looking for fatal car speeds I found this which I think is what you were looking for before about the every 5 mph over 60 increases the likelihood of a fatal car crash. I was looking for more info for my point but found that instead =P.
I hadn’t however said that speed wasn’t a factor merely that it was only a third (and yes I realize using the word only there is a bit off but you get the picture I hope). So 2/3 of accidents are caused by other factors, Cell phone usage, DWI, reckless youthful drivers (there is a reason insurance companies have a risk pool and you can see in a lot of these statistics that it’s young drivers and their recklessness combined with lack of exp in how to handle a potentially fatal situation). Hell I almost kicked the shit out of a kid at work a couple weeks ago because he passed me going about 20 mph over the speed limit on a double solid line coming over a blind hill on the way home from work, they just don’t think.
When I was a senior in high school we went to a park for a field trip and they had a go cart track. One of the kids got in trouble for tampering with his go cart’s governor to make it go faster, he did this while the cart was moving on the track. So an 18 year old kid on a moving go cart managed to disable the governor, something tells me putting them on cars in the age of the internet would do almost nothing.
It comes back to enforcement, stiffer fines, maybe having the vehicle impounded or taken away completely for multiple offenses. Most people don’t do things because they make sense, they do them out of fear of what will happen if they don’t. Even if it’s a minority that falls into that catagory, those of us who do follow the laws are still in danger from those who don’t. I have no problem with a higher fine or punishment to keep the crazies driving more safely because I do it already and don’t have to worry about getting one myself.
that article says speed over 60 *km/h* which is 37.8 mph. also, cell phones are not as bad as drunk driving because as the mythbusters guy said - you can see that you are coming up to a high traffic area and end the call, or just tell them to hold on. you cant make yourself sober.
just because people could bypass the governor doesnt mean we shouldnt put it into effect. also, the governor on a gocart is mechanical, the governor on cars today is in the cars computer. much much harder to bypass. and with that logic, why dont we just make drugs legal? kids will find them anyway…
and locally, there were two guys i went to high school with that got seriously hurt going 140 drunk, over a hill. if they had been doing 45 mph, they wouldnt have crashed.
i think alcohol should be made illegal, dont get me wrong. I just think that a 45 mph would help too. even if speed is only a factor in 1/3 of the accidents (remember this means over the speed limit, doesnt it? So if someone was doing 55mph, the dont consider speed a factor of the accident, they are talking about people speeding, because in reality, speed is ALWAYS a factor in an accident. Even 45 mph creates a factor in an accident.) so even if 1/3 of the accidents are due to speeding, that means 45 mph speed limit would reduce 1/3 of 43K deaths, which is about 14,500 deaths. Thats STILL more deaths than any other accidental death type.
how many people do you think actually put their phone down when they’re talking on it when they come to a situation where they need to pay attention? Other then putting it down by their side when a cop drives by I would say very very few. Do you know what kind of shit Mythbusters would’ve gotten from all kinds of organizations if they had just left it at Cell phones being more of a distraction driving then drinking? A lot and I’m sure that’s why they added the very PC little tidbit at the end.
The logic of the governors is much different then drug legality and you know that very well, but we all have to sensationalize our posts a bit I guess. The governors is an extra addition that wouldn’t be needed if we just made the fines high enough that people governed themselves. Having an alternate solution doesn’t mean that nothing should be done, it just means there is another way to do it. So to my logic (not you making my logic sound wrong) yes I would rather raise the fines and the jail time and every other aspect of drug related crime punishment then to use your logic and just regulate how much drugs we have out (ie we should just “govern” drug usage and not stop it with stiffer punishment, because that’ll be a better way of stopping drug usage).
And right from my very first post in this thread I said that speed is a factor and that 1/3 isn’t to be forgotten but if you’re going to fix something go after the whole thing not just a piece of the pie. Stiffer penalties means people being more cautious with the deadly piece of machinery they have been given control of. I also find it a bit of a surprise that you think your school mates would’ve been fine if they’d of been going 45 drunk instead of 140 drunk. Not sure about anyone else but while the 140 is extreme the drunk part is more worrisome in my book, still a very good chance they would’ve gotten seriously hurt some other way.
I haven’t disagreed with you about speed being a factor or being dangerous thru this whole thing, just pointing out that putting up a sign saying don’t do this doesn’t stop people from doing it and that there are many other factors that are just as legitimate ways of decreasing fatal car crashes if not more so. Speed is a factor in every car accident in the same way that it is in every shooting in that without movement there can be no accident that doesn’t mean there aren’t a million other controllable variables.
no i really thought the drug example was a sound one, i wasnt sensationalizing. That is the exact same logic that people use when advocating legalization of drugs, prostitution, etc.
Move the example to seat belts. They make fines for not having them, when all they had to do was make it athat a loud alarm would go off if you drove without it. AND not let it turn off at all, until you put it on. Instead they made fines, (more govt income) and people still die from not wearing a seatbelt.
they would have been safer if the car would only let them go 45. being drunk still put them at risk, but going 45 drunk is still safer than 65, 75, or 140. Im not saying its ok to drive drunk, just saying that their chances would have been much less if the car had a governor and could only do 45. They crashed because they launched themselves into the air over a hill - you couldnt drive this hill at 140 sober, much less drunk. Thats why i said if the car could only do 45, they would have made it. (or at least, had a much much higher chance of making it)
im not saying it would fix everything, or that we shouldnt also make fines higher, just saying that a 45 mph would help in a lot of ways.
and… what organizations would say cell phones are as bad as drunk driving? I just heard on tv that there is another study that says the same thing, no one is making a fuss about it. They already have made it illegal in many states, so its not like its controversial…
Not sure why I’m going to continue beating my head against the wall but here goes…
The difference is that there is a world of difference between getting people to drive responsibly and drug control at the core of the issues. You changed the focus to put advocating drugs in my corner and totally ignored the fact that I was offering up other solutions, you took a small part of the whole picture and used it to make your point, kudos.
What’s the fine for not wearing your seat belt? 100 bucks, is that really a deterant? With the amount of times people get stopped for something like that and the low fine it’s not a surprise that people still ignore this law so much, make it a grand and watch people start to buckle up. I’m sure it still won’t be everyone but it’ll be more then 100 gets em.
And to the drunk driving example again, I guess I didn’t do a good job of describing that this is a chicken or the egg situation. Do you think they would’ve been going 140 mph over a hill if they had been sober? So what caused the accident, the fact that they were going 140 mph or the fact that it was their impaired judgment that made them go 140 in the first place. The drinking is what caused that accident in my eyes.
How many decades were drunk driving laws lax, and their enforcement even more lax before there was pressure put on by parent groups and such to drive the fines and the legal ramifications to the point where they are now? Just because no one is making a fuss about it doesn’t mean it’s not an issue.
Once again it would appear while we’re both putting how we agree that something should done and how much we agree with the other person’s point we’re failing to really communicate. I see your one little “or that we shouldn’t also make fines higher” and I’m sure you’re seeing my little “I’m not saying speed isn’t an issue” but here we are splitting hairs as always about all sorts of things around the issue that we started with…..so does a dead body float? (for the masses that was a little private joke)
I agree with you, but at the same time I know that it would be the most difficult thing in the world for me to do because I drive way too fast. I guess I will have to temper myself.
yeah, it would be the most difficult thing for everyone, impossible even. Our society is built around being able to travel long distances quickly. in cities, it would be impossible to ask people to drive 45 mph.
mostly i was trying to say ‘isnt is crazy that we accept thousands of deaths each year ONLY because we need to travel long distances quickly… and if we had designed our cities more thoughtfully, we wouldnt have to drive that fast anyway.