In Germany all drivers have to accept that there isn’t enough road capacity so everyone could drive as fast as they want and the Staus cannot be blamed on the car in front of you. It’s also common to drive under the limit, in Finland 115% of the limit is the socially acceptable minimum.

As for trucks having the same speed limit as cars in general: 1) a lot of the time there is a lower limit, 2) the truck itself has a lower max highway speed, 3) there a far fewer trucks on the road so it doesn't matter a much, 4) they are driven by professional drivers with things like electronically enforced daily driving limits, so many of the common causes of accidents are less likely.

Where in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, UK, Canada, or even most of US can you go 10 km/h over speed limit and not get fined?

For your other points.

1. Where? other than steep grades, differential speed is not a thing. 2. Where again? Which trucks? Majority of trucks can do highway speed just fine, despite their 3 to 10x stopping distance. 3. Fewer tracks where? Most of Australia and New Zealand runs on trucks. But even if they're rare, truck accidents over 60 are often fatal due to their weight and energy. 4. Professional drivers can't adjust the laws of physics. Stopping distance is stopping distance.

This is not one vs the other, multiple things can be true. Trucks are individually more dangerous than cars. There are far more cars than trucks on basically every road basically everywhere. Cars are driven by any idiot in all kinds of situations, trucks are driven by professionals during their regulated working hours.

There is absolutely zero chance any respectable study would support that focusing on maintaining exactly 110 km in a 110km is safer than allowing a 10% buffer (going 10km over) so you can focus on the road and spend more of your attention on spatial awareness than staring at the odometer.

Second, it is not about "who cares", it is about road design, a road that is up to standards of allowing a b-double doing 110km means a smaller car can safety do 140km or more. It is exactly one way or the other. It is either unsafe for B-Double to do 110km or a small modern car to do 140km. It is simple laws of physics.

You can't see my original comment, so opt to make some nonsense assumptions to feel good about yourself. By God,this place is a cesspit of arrogance.

And no, it's not strictly "if a truck can safely do X then a car can do X+Y. It's not just about physics. There are more cars than trucks, so speed limits matter more for cars. A truck getting into a crash is worse, but less likely. Trucks also already have lower limits in many places, so this isn't even relevant in most places.

Here, truck speed limits: https://dhl-freight-connections.com/en/business/truck-speed-...

And it is strictly "stopping distance" when it comes to speed, everything else is complete nonsense. The assertion about more cars than trucks is irrelevant. Driving risk is measured "per km" not some absolute numbers.

You sound like a typical idealogue who is completely disconnected from the reality of road engineering, statistics, and mechanics of vehicles that is typical of suburban mothers who think "speed bad" but then drive after drinks or text while driving. It is tedious.

And you're the one who brought "anglosphere" into the mix. And specifically in the UK, there seems to also be a lower speed limit for trucks: https://www.gov.uk/speed-limits

You're the one rambling off topic. You're the one calling people names. You're the one everyone is flagging. Log off and take a look in the mirror, you might find that I'm not the one "completely disconnected"

And just repeating things doesn’t make them different, up to 7.5 tones, it is the same speed and that is plenty enough different weight for stopping distance.

But then again, it is a useless conversation because you have no idea what road safety is about as you seem to focus on absolute numbers and the best way to get absolute 0 is to close all roads and ban driving.

You can accomplish that equally easily by sticking to 100 km/h.

What is it with the word "limit" that is so hard to understand? It's not the suggested speed, nor the target speed, nor the minimum speed. It's the maximum speed.

But without transport significantly more people will die from other things, due to reduced access to healthcare, employment, food, etc.

In a modern society, road transport is a critical part of our life support system. Those pushing for a what they see as a car-free utopia tend to ignore this.

In case of Finland summer cottages are one such case. They're extremely common, and located in areas that usually have no public transport. Lots of people have also older relatives who live in middle of nothing.

The need for car ownership would plummet if we had self-driving cars that can autonomously drive back to the city, and to pick you up from the countryside.

House prices are almost far higher in big dense cities, so people are clearly willing to pay a premium to live there.

People either want or need to live in big cities.

Same goes with the right of way in these places. You're in a car, you're getting where you're going much faster anyway, so you let pedestrians go first. On pedestrian crossings, and often even without them in such "last leg" places.

It's completely logical. You don't go faster in places where somebody can suddenly walk out from behind a parked car, bush, whatever. But it's a cultural thing in Scandinavia.

The problem is when passenger cars that require a fraction of stopping distance of a truck at given speed limit are fined for going 3-4 km over limit. Essentially, fined for driving at a speed where they can stop many meters before a truck going the sign posted limit. Revenue raising in the name of safety, down playing other factors like attention, driver training, road design, maintenance, and so on, but they don't bring as much money.

30mph was close to the sweet spot and had been for decades. Or it would have been with a reasonable level of enforcement.

But as the ideological and/or climate-driven war on cars ramped up there's been a big push to reduce ever-more areas to 20mph, which is just too slow, especially when deployed widely/indiscriminately as it has been in Wales. (Used very sparingly, e.g. outside schools, 20mph limits were a good 'take particular care' signal to motorists - but that effect is lost when they're widespread)

Is it really about safety or is it about 'fuck cars'?

On the other hand, average speeds in populated areas usually are way lower than 30km/h, so lowering the top speed to 30km has negligible effect on travel times.

If you consider 50km/h the sweet spot, you prioritize vehicle speed over the very real risk of bodily harm for all other traffic participants.

At that point it's barely superlinear. That means instead of dropping by 30kph it dropped 20kph.

Personally I'd focus more on how even a linear increase in stopping distance is a problem when pedestrians are around.

> On the other hand, average speeds in populated areas usually are way lower than 30km/h, so lowering the top speed to 30km has negligible effect on travel times.

Negligible speed impact also means negligible safety impact.

For car drivers maybe. From the POV of a pedestrian, 30 mph is very fast.

Speed limit is 65, everyone is doing 80. When you pull over someone how do you explain why only that person gets a ticket?

A limit is only a limit when it's enforced. Anything else will become arbitrary.

You may want to update your knowledge on the stopping distances of modern trucks.

> are fined for going 3-4 km over limit

Obviously. Is there anything confusing about the word "limit" in particular that you don't understand?

> Essentially, fined for driving at a speed where they can stop many meters before a truck going the sign posted limit.

It is not your job as a driver to decide whether to stick to a particular traffic rule or not. The limit is there, so follow it.

You go 40 km/h. The same kid runs on the same street. You brake the exact same way. You hit the kid with over 30 km/h. You just killed a kid.

> without transport

Nobody argues to remove all cars altogether, and certainly not other forms of transport. However we certainly can rethink the millions of individual cars in each cities: does everybody needs its own 1ton vehicle to bring food back from the local supermarket? To go to work 2-20km away?

[0] (2012, french) https://www.ors-idf.org/nos-travaux/publications/les-benefic...

Yeah this argument comes up a lot in the UK from people advocating 20mph speed limits everywhere. It's a super dumb argument though. Obviously increasing speed is never going to decrease danger. But if "slower is safer" is the only argument for 20mph then the logical conclusion is 0mph.

Clearly there are other factors at play, but the 20mph people never acknowledge that for some reason...

(To be clear I'm not advocating for 30mph everywhere. I feel like 25mph is actually the best trade-off for most suburban roads.)

Hilariously wrong. Kinetic energy is equal to mass times velocity squared divided by half. That squaring of velocity kills your argument.

The argument is, going 0 mph, meaning not driving at all is safer than even slow driving. Meaning the argument is, there has to be a compromise, all driving is dangerous.

However, as with tobacco, the evidence cannot be papered over forever and there are many studies that indicate they are a bad idea (tm) in urban environments. And in particular with respect to the setting of speed limits that they should be lower than many of us have been influenced to think because the rate of injury and death increases disproportionately with speed.

For instance https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffi... states that a "1% increase in mean speed produces a 4% increase in the fatal crash risk and a 3% increase in the serious crash risk". And that for pedestrians "The risk of death for pedestrians hit by car fronts rises rapidly (4.5 times from 50 km/h to: 65 km/h.".

So yes, slower is safer - not in some reductio ad absurdum sense that implies '0mph', but in a public health sense where a fair and practical compromise should be sought.

To my mind, 15 - 20mph in urban areas is that compromise.

It allows practical vehicle use, while also respecting the rights of other road users - especially pedestrians and cyclists - to exist and move about without significantly elevated risk.

The idea that some people should be granted the ability to move through shared space at speeds that make them dangerous beyond anyone else simply because they're encased in a car is not just unfair - it creates noisy, dangerous, and ultimately unliveable environments.

> To my mind, 15 - 20mph in urban areas is that compromise.

This is precisely my point. None of the "slower is safer" people even acknowledge that it is a compromise. Their entire argument is "slower is safer" which does lead to 0mph.

It's impossible to have a proper debate if some people are saying "I know slower is safer but I don't want to go at 20mph everywhere" and others are saying "but... it's safer!"

There are many cases where wide roads with good visibility and few pedestrians crossing have 20mph limits. In one egregious case I experienced recently near identical stretches of the same road (it was a main road, I think an A road, passing through a built up area) switched between 20 and 30 mph limits. If anything it created a significant distraction keeping track of the limits.

There are a number of other roads like that have 20mph limits. On the other hand narrower side roads in the same areas has 30mph limits.

My road has a 20mph limit. On the bit I live on it makes no difference - narrower, parked cars etc. means you drive very slow anyway. Further down the road is broader and clearer. I think the reason maybe to encourage people to use the bypass instead of driving through the village so it may be reasoned- although I suspect the speed bumps are more effective at doing that.

> My road has a 20mph limit. On the bit I live on it makes no difference - narrower, parked cars etc. means you drive very slow anyway.

Make up your mind ;)

If you're making a joke I don't get it. Can you explain it?

It improves traffic flow and reduces pollution too.

My only objection is that it's been applied in a somewhat blind way. Long sections of road with no houses and no reported accidents should probably be 30, or even 40mph.

Yes it is. If the only thing you consider is safety then 0mph is the safest. That's unarguable.

The point is that you can't only consider safety. There are other factors, but they are often deliberately ignored.

If that's your best argument _against_ saving lives through road traffic controls then at least we know it's not wrong...

I hope your computer is completely unsecured, because if you cared about security you wouldn't even use the web.

I don't really see a step change between 32kph and 48kph.

It's obviously a trade between various participants, who have their own interests. 30km/h limits have had good success. If people think the number of fatalities is a problem, there's a solution waiting for you.

Collisions at 15mph would be even more survivable though.

I am from the alps, with my share of knowledge about frozen roads. I would add to that: "People drive more carefully on frozen roads, *if they are not used to frozen roads and/or know roads are frozen."

For point one: In Austria I have seen (local) cars drive 30 km/h over the speed limit on the Autobahn while it was snowing at sub zero,with exactly the same (too close) distance to others. In my experience for many people used to snow/ice the speed limit is still the orientation for many during ice/snow. If anything I'd expect the increase in defensive driving to be offset by the increase in accidents due to bad view, longer breaking distances, etc.

As for the second point: In Austria the second it snows or rainfall happens at subzero amadas of snow/ice clearing vehicles hit the road, yet during my lifetime I experienced black ice multiple times. Tho those who don't know what this is, it is a invisible layer of extremely smooth ice coating the road, which can happen of air + road temperatures and rainfall just align in the worst way possible. The resulting road is so slippy, I remember a time where no-one could leave my village because they couldn't get up the hill on foot. As if friction had been turned off. I managed to get to school by stomping through half a meter of snow next to the road and slipped 10 times on the way to the school while wittnessing multiple (minor) car crashes. I have seen such conditions happen on the Autobahn as well and the results are not pretty.

Zero traffic accidents in a cold climate therefore has to mean absolutely lightning fast road maintenance and/or stellar information on the current road conditions and is certainly an extremely impressive feat. I can't imagine this is possible without adaptive speed limits (and rhe infrastructure that is needed to pull that off). The Finns have reason to be proud (aside from them being really nice people in my personal experience).

Also. Finland has a long history of maintaining both dirt roads all year and ice roads in the winter on top of body of water so I guess drivers are much more used to them. It is also a relatively flat country.

Is that a fair characterization of your comment?

- There are more accidents (per active vehicle) on frozen roads

- There are fewer fatalities on frozen roads due to the lower speeds

This is a bit like per capita, requires a certain level of abstract thinking that eludes most people.

At a couple of locations there’s morning room but lots of room to overtake (as long as nothing comes the other way), the road is nearly wide enough to have a line down the middle. Most drivers are fine but some of the 20-30 lot will swerve all over the road to try to block overtaking.

These aren’t super narrow, you can get a tractor or hgv down the whole road, and even at some passing places get one past another.

Why?

One of my principles is that we gain control of an uncontrollable environment by relinquishing control to that environment. It may not be obvious, but icy roads are an uncontrollable environment. Hence, the rally driver gains control by relinquishing control, allowing the car to have an imaginary and symbolic role in her success (all hail Michelle Mouton). Think of the best Scandinavian WRC champ. In the real world, abandoning driving is advisable for many, or if continuing to drive in obviously unsafe conditions, controlling what can be controlled by lowering speed, etc.

This may seem improvisational, as some of it is indeed. However, these control schemes may be orchestrated as well. How? By ranking tires by performance in the worst winter conditions on Tire Rack before making a choice. Do that and everyone wins.