Ergo, speeding is not a crime, it is an easy revenue target for greedy municipalities with overpaid cops.

The problem really isn't that you haven't caused damage, rather that you ignored the legal safety limits of the road just to get home a bit earlier while completely ignoring or dismissing that in case of bad luck you could have caused immense damage. Reckless behavior like that, where innocent third parties can be immensely hurt or killed, should be punished.

In Germany, we have strict laws all about this. If you endanger the traffic or any of the (potential) participants of the traffic, you get fined. It doesn't matter if you say "but officer the road was completely empty", the driver is rarely omnipresent to know everything happening on the next kilometer of road.

Accidents aren't predictable but preventable.

To be fair, road usage does matter.

If there is construction you will be fined more. If students traveling to school, the speed limit is lowered.

Point being that not all "speeding" is the same.

Just because you can break a law and it usually works out, doesn't mean that what you're doing isn't a crime.

Actually that is one of the reasons for the speed limit being what it is. Part of the speed limit is determined by the reaction time and stopping distance of a typical driver. That's not you per se, but it has to work for everyone. While a fit young person driving a 2017 Mercedes might feel they can safely drive much faster with all the modern safety features of their car like ABS, traction control, ESP, etc, the speed limit has to also work for an 85 year old in a 1981 Toyoto Corolla that has no safety features, tyres 0.1mm above the legal minimum, and the reaction times of an asthmatic snail.

https://priceonomics.com/is-every-speed-limit-too-low/

> Traffic engineers believe that the 85th percentile speed is the ideal speed limit because it leads to the least variability between driving speeds and therefore safer roads. When the speed limit is correctly set at the 85th percentile speed, the minority of drivers that do conscientiously follow speed limits are no longer driving much slower than the speed of traffic. The choice of the 85th percentile speed is a data-driven conclusion -- as noted Lt. Megge and speed limit resources like the Michigan State Police’s guide -- that has been established by the consistent findings of years of traffic studies.

If I choose to drive wearing a blindfold that wouldn't necessarily mean there's any damage but it should definitely be a crime.

Yes and no.

Those people usually have no role in applying the speed limits.

The max speed limits for a given type of road are given by some non-technical norms, i.e. - as an example - the Law may say that for a highway the max legal limit is 130 km/h, for a state route 90 km/h, etc.

People designing the road need to conform to those Law requirements, and - as a matter of fact - those requirements are normally exceeded (i.e. roads are usually designed in such a way that they could have from a purely technical standpoint higher speed limits).

The issue is particularly relevant where in single stretches of road there is something (a series of curves, a depression, etc.) that imposes (technically) a lower than Law mandated maximum speed for the type of road.

In these cases, if (technically) the max speed is - say - 120 Km/h (instead of 130 km/h) other factors (outside the powers or influence of the designer) will result in a much lower speed limit posted, let's say 90 Km/h.

This is done - usually - in good faith and to enhance security, but often - later - that specific stretch of road becomes a good way to make cash, as noone will suddenly reduce speed from the (allowed and legal till then) 130 km/h to 90 km/h and will go through the curves at 100-120 km/h (still within the technical limits, i.e. "safe enough" but far above the posted limit) thus being subject to fines.

You would of course be liable for any damages actually caused.