And it’s not at all true that those incredibly rare, and probably mostly wrong, cases are ridiculously and overwhemlingly outweighed by the situations where more speed creates dangerous situations.
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Drivers create dangerous situations. They need to be taken out of the equation.
The safe answer is the pod car, or at least self driving cars.
I once drove a Mercedes that had a cruise control and also a maximum speed limiter you could set, which would be overridden if you really stamped on the accelerator. Something like that which would allow a short time above the limit when necessary would be okay.
If cars are going to be forced to stick to limits, something needs to be done about the arbitrary nature of said limits. They were all set decades ago and badly need to be thought about again. We all know country roads where the limits are too high, and clearly motorway limits are all far too low in the UK and USA - especially the USA - 55? Do me a lemon. They should also be far more adaptive to road conditions/traffic levels. An automated system could at least have more intelligence applied to it.
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Linking to the Telegraph for anything concerning the EU is just as bad as linking to the Daily Mail. Don’t do it.
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There’s no “safe” speed. There’s only safe driving.
Being able to adapt to your situation is important. I’ve personally had to avoid numerous collisions by speeding up. Typically it’s due to someone changing lanes without looking, or someone refusing to let me into traffic when forced to merge when entering onto a highway, or someone failing to obey a stop sign at an intersection about to sideswipe me, or the like. I guarantee, if my vehicle had not had the sufficient acceleration to allow me to respond to those situations, I’d have been in a wreck, with quite possible injuries or fatalities.
The real problem is that driving tests (at least in the US) are a crying shame. One of my transatlantic friends laughed when I discribed the minimal extent of our licensing, and then told me how much more rigorous and in-depth the examinations are in his home country of Germany. Many, many American drivers are simply not taught to drive well. They are required to demonstrate the bare minimum of aptitude to pass their tests, and the products of this limited training are self-evident.
Turn signals is a big one I notice. It varies from place to place, but it seems like a lot of drivers I encounter simply refuse to signal for anything. So they’re just putting along, then suddenly they’re shifting lanes without warning, often far too close in front of you and often far too quickly and jerkily.
Roundabouts are another oddity. I’ve seen neighborhoods where a classic intersection was switched for a “circle” and the confusion that resulted was flabbergasting. And that’s just the single-lane variety! I can barely imagine how Americans would react to a Parisian five-lane roundabout!
I’ve seen people try to stop hydroplaning by trying to turn away from the skid, I’ve seen people who only pass on the righthand side, I’ve been tailgated more times than I can recall, I’ve been caught for literally hundreds of miles in big highway “blobs” or “packs” of cars, trapped by a duo or trio of vehicles in the front driving side by side at identical speeds, I’ve been cut off by idiots gunning their engines just so they can get to a red light two seconds faster, I’ve been blinded at night by idiots who don’t know how to use highbeams properly, I’ve traded paint with hotshot motorcyclists weaving through traffic between lanes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Traveling at high speeds doesn’t cause accidents. Driving badly causes accidents. And boy, have I seen more than my fair share of bad drivers! And what’s more? Most collisions occur at low speeds anyways.
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Wonder how that proposal would account for people driving backwards on one-way streets to fool traffic cameras (Milan).
If the story was at all true, that is.
One word: Autobahn.
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Useful work.
Admittedly, American roundabouts (at least the rotaries here in Mass) seem just as bad if not worse than american driving. Who builds a rotary with five sets of traffic lights, two intersections, and barriers preventing incoming lanes from being able to see if there are any cars already in the rotary? (Americans, that’s who!)
In Waco the Elite grill is situated near a roundabout. They sell a t-shirt that says “I survived the circle”.
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Feh. I’ve been through Spaghetti Junction & the Magic Roundabout (Swindon’s, not Dougal’s). What terrors can Waco hold?
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Thus speaks a man who’s never been to Waco.
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Waco? Fuck, no, I’m from the north of England…
Well, yeah. But I’m from Leicester and I’ve been there. Not by choice, admittedly.
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Yiz is not gettin’ me ter bliddy Waco, Bonny Lad…
I’ve never really understood why no country has made it a required feature that all cars are limited to the highest legal driving speed in that country…
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I had to look it up, but from the air, that Magic Roundabout looks like some kind of dark, occult symbol engraved upon the landscape.
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It probably is. It’s horribly confusing, then, somehow, you’re magically on the other side of it unscathed. Weird Magicks is as good an explanation as any for that.
This news makes me react like Jeremy Clarkson.
Cue beautifully-shot essay on the glorious freedom of simpler times.
Conclude with lament on how we took it for granted, enabling its extinction.
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It seems a bunch of cars that I first heard about on Top Gear were governed to a top speed of 155 mph. I don’t know what regulatory agency settled on that number, or enforces it. Strikes me as a comfortably light regulatory hand, as far as these things go, at least when it comes to commercially-available street-legal cars.
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Because the countries with tough driving tests like the UK and France have such superior and safe drivers?
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