Re:Future Ford's May Detect Speeding and Report You to the Cops
by Zak on Wednesday July 31, 2024 @09:09AM
(#41118887)
Maybe there's better research available, but this DOT report found that changing speed limits has fairly little effect on how fast people drive: http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/sl-irrel.html
My take on it is that when the speed limit doesn't match the 85th percentile speed of actual drivers, something should be changed. Sometimes, (often, in my view) it's the speed limit. Sometimes, it's the design of the road, especially in cases of neighborhood streets that are shaped like highways. Sometimes the answer may be highly-visible traffic cameras, as the advance warning and certainty of punishment will slow down almost every driver.
I would be very interested in if people would then go the reasonable new speed limit or if they would continue in their speeding flocks and only travel even faster. To me it seems like their speed is mostly something they evaluate relative to the rest of the drivers and not to absolute speeds so it'd take quite a change in behavior.
As for [0], the traffic back-up proves only that the vast majority of people on that road are speeding.