In the UK, the data shows that speeding (excessive speed for the conditions above the speed limit) is the primary cause in single digit percentage of accidents. I believe there's data from 1996 and 2007 for this, will dig it out when I'm not on mobile.
If you want to spend money on accident prevention, there's much better things to target than speeding.
Preventing accidents isn't the only reason to enforce traffic laws.
When the cops don't even respect the laws, the laws are meaningless.
Would you feel safe crossing the road now?
If it's something like 15 Av NW in Ballard, it's pretty obvious that you're meant to cross at a light, even if you legally have more of a right to cross at the uncontrolled intersection one block away. It's unreasonable to expect a highway-in-all-but-name to stop for one person when marked, lit crossings exist within five blocks at all points along the road.
Even in the case of normal 2 lane roads, drivers here still act like pedestrians do not have the right to cross anywhere but a crosswalk (and some don't even respect the crosswalk), and it only gets worse with 3 and 4 lane roads because that is where the drivers tend to drive significantly over the speed limit.
And yes, I do consider it reasonable to expect cars to stop for pedestrians in all scenarios where pedestrians have the right of way. A 5 block detour to cross the street can add another 15 minutes to your quick trip...what would happen if the situation were reversed? Can you imagine the outrage that would happen if cars had to drive 15 minutes out of their way? Slowing down for 5 seconds to let someone walk across the street is a miniscule inconvenience in comparison.
Also, even if speeding is not the direct cause of an accident it increases the damage resulting from an accident.
PS: It has been estimated that hard limiting private vehicles to 40MPH would have saved over 2 Million lives in the US. Not that I am promoting such a low speed limit but people really don't understand the dangers of speed. Every year after 1945 at least 30,000 people died with a peak well over 50,000.
I think as a percentage it would be unimaginably tiny which supports the assertion that it is misplaced enforcement if safety is actually the goal.
If speed limit laws didn't exist, can you imagine lawmakers saying, "We need more money. Hey, I know! Let's charge people money for driving over a certain speed!"
1) Why aren't law enforcement more focused on getting people to slow down than writing tickets?
2) Why do traffic cops have monthly quotas for tickets?
3) In places where monthly quotas are against the law, why do 'performance revues' of traffic cops only focus on '# of tickets' as the largest performance metric? (basically a quota by another name)
4) Why is it so easy to bargain down a speeding ticket in a large city, whereas in a small town they are only willing to haggle on the points on your license (hint: because they still want you money)?
Just because they weren't conceived for a purpose doesn't mean that's not how they're used. Speed enforcement is very frequently performed by small town cops sitting on highways that are just barely in their jurisdiction. They're doing it for money, plain and simple.
See https://www.google.com/maps/preview?client=safari&q=hampton+... for proof of this.
Where I live, in Chicago, the speed limits are so low on some freeways that 91-98 percent of people are going over the speed limit, and the average speed is over 70mph. So everyone, including the police it seems, agrees that the speed limits here are not for my safety, but exist as a way for the officers to cherry pick essentially any car they want and write them a ticket.
My mother got snagged in one of these in Virginia a while back - they have a hill where the speed limit drops from 65 to 45 at the bottom of it, with a specially planted copse of trees where the police sit with their detectors. A quarter mile down the road, they have a specially built parking lot for people to get their tickets. They even provide envelopes and stamps for people to send their checks! Nice people.
I suspect that this business model is in trouble if GPS makers begin to track speed-limit information and pass that along to their users.
No, lawmakers don't say "Hey, I know! Let's charge people money for driving over a certain speed!", they instead say: "lets install these red light cameras on this intersection that doesn't see a lot of accidents.", or "this long straight stretch of highway, with few accidents, but lots of speeding should be better policed". The enforcement of laws becomes more about making money from the tickets than from concerns about safety.
I live in an area where stationary speed cameras are around every corner (Montgomery Co, Maryland). I've lived here long enough to know that there's no way the county would spend money on the equipment and man power to maintain and operate that network, just to break even for the sake of safety.
Sure, they're common in Canada and the US but in some other countries they lead to years of civil disobedience, protests and eventual scrapping by newly elected governments : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skye_Bridge#Toll_controversy
Speed fines have the semi-respectibility claim of trying to reduce accidents/dangers on the road (with some validity).
Not that I support his claim, just refuting yours.
Possibly because a civil society, favoring the preservation of a measure of basic autonomy, does not implement every measure for tracking, enforcing, circumscribing, and monitoring the people.
The utilitarian argument for them is very strong.
Once we have it, it would also be of great utility to investigate kidnappings and terrorism. And serious and violent crime. And vehicle thefts. And drug trafficking. And driving without a license, insurance, or tax. And lying about your address to get your kid into a good school.
And who could object, when we're already storing proof of what really happened, to that proof being used to vindicate the innocent in a divorce hearing, or an employment tribunal?
As faithful believers in the free market, what better way to fight congestion and encourage the use of public transport than a tax that only applies on congested roads, and only at peak hours of the day? What luck, the infrastructure is already in place.
No doubt the system will be expensive to design and operate. It would help defray the costs if we release citizens' travel records to some carefully vetted partners, such as academic researchers, urban planning consultants, insurance companies, marketing companies and credit rating agencies.
That sort of defeats the point of speeding. Why endanger your lives and the lives of the others if you even don't get faster to your destination as you make additional stops to "defeat" anti-speeding systems?
A camera records the traffic, a computer extract the plates. Then later you have the same setup, and they can then calculate your average speed between the two. The French name is "radar tronçon".
If you're around DC, there are a bunch of automated speed detectors built into the highways, and it's the same story: People slow down for the trap, and then speed up afterwards.
If you're from out of town, you're pretty well screwed because you'll be following some guy who will, out of the blue, slow down for no apparent reason.
Definition of a speed trap: http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d17/vc40802.htm
Speed traps are prohibited: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d17/vc40801.htm
They are very common in Australia. It takes a photo of your license plate, then another 10km (or whatever) down the freeway. If the two photos are less than x seconds apart, you get a speeding ticket.
1: I only have second-hand/anecdotal knowledge that these departments are funded by fines. Still, I believe my point remains.
If fines and or punishments are used primarily as a deterrent, then why not just have huge punishments all over the place?
Do you see how that's immoral? Fines should be used as punishment, not deterrence (punishment is a form of deterrence, but is merely a side effect). If I decide to litter, it's because I think "this is not that big of a crime. I'm not harming people very much." It's not anyones natural moral instinct to think, "I would do this, but the penalty is to high" - we're conditioned to think that. But as is all to often, a lot of times people are not even aware that their actions may be illegal, or may not be aware the consequences are vastly harsher than the crime. Do you know what the penalty is for driving with one bad headlight? me neither. I hope its reasonable, especially when I make the decision to do it, but I base the decision off the fact that driving without a headlight does not seem that egregious of a crime.
So shouldn't our punishment system be base off the same thing that people use to guide their decisions? The results of our actions?
The answer is yes. I don't want to live in the world you are imagining. Even if there is no litter on the ground and no one speeds.
If you say, just inform everyone of the laws really really well so they know beforehand when making a decision, that is utterly impossible. Foreigners exist. People are busy. All laws are not even totally known to the lawmakers. It is an impossible task.
Back to your point: If the goal was to stop speeding, they would make it physically impossible to speed. Either by really pervasive robotic enforcement, or governors in cars. But they don't do that, they want the money.
Still, the punishment should reflect the crime, even in the robotic police world.
That's not entirely true, it depends on your insurance. It's an offence to drive a car without insurance, and an offence to allow someone who is uninsured to drive your car. Some insurance policies do not extend the insurance you took out to driving other peoples cars. However, some fully comprehensive policies do have third party insurance while you are driving someone else's car with their permission. In that case it's fully legal to drive.
Now, automated tagging of morons who stare at their phone while driving? Bring it on. Those fuckers are a plague.
[1] The Mass Pike (I-90); which is a toll highway that is marked 65 MPH, on which traffic averages 75 MPH, and 80 MPH is well under the speed the highway can safely support (given attentive drivers).
Good god man, since when is that a given? The situation worsens with each passing day.
For example, in NZ, there is a speed camera half-way down Ngauranga gorge in Wellington - a place where there is a blind turn down a steep slope and where the limit goes from 100kph down to 80kph.
This is of course in context of freeways - residential streets etc do require a hard speed limit.
There are lots of expressions of this fundamental reason, such as people throwing a fit about automated license plate reading in the name of privacy. But our all boils down to the fact that a person turns into a sociopathic scofflaw as soon as he gets behind the wheel.
It's different on residential streets, but on freeways I think the way Germany handles it is better. Speeding tickets (and most traffic violations really) are not about safety or curbing behavior they're about generating revenue for the town/city.
His explanation IIRC was that 1. once people broke the limit it didnt matter how much and 2. when speed limits felt more correct more people respected them.
I'd love to know if anyone has any pointers to research on this as around here speed limits are weird. (80 in places where you obviously can't even drive 80 and 80 on the highway, -four lanes)
My (unscientific) theory is that with higher speed limits, you get more traffic waves, and people try to change lanes more often, causing delays.
If the speed limit on LA freeways was only 25mph, I would hope that people would chill out and the traffic would flow more smoothly, resulting in a faster average speed than at present.
Initial "tests" with lighter traffic conditions proved that the system helped stabilize closing speeds and volume, but in the actually troublesome heavier traffic conditions the state has been unable to figure out when and where to deploy the pace vehicles effectively.
Also, changing the speed limits on roads have been studied and it doesn't make a humongous difference. The government usually sets the speed limit at slightly lower than the average speed people actually drive.
Actually, blanket arguments like "speeding is extremely dangerous" are ludicrous. "Speeding" is exceeding a semi-arbitrary speed threshold. If that threshold is, say, 70 mph I'm OK at 70 but if I go to 71 I am being "extremely dangerous"? 71 is speeding in that case, after all.
> A third of crashes (including fatal crashes) involve speeding,
If a third or more of all drivers speed, that statistic is meaningless.
> the faster you are driving the more likely you are to die or fatally injure another.
Indeed, and that statement has nothing to do with speeding. It is a continuum from 0 to whatever the top speed of a given vehicle is. This statement is equally valid when you are under the speed limit.
> Also, changing the speed limits on roads have been studied and it doesn't make a humongous difference. The government usually sets the speed limit at slightly lower than the average speed people actually drive.
I have seen that happen before, but in my experience that is the exception rather than the rule.
"The government usually sets the speed limit at slightly lower than the average speed people actually drive."
I don't think you've ever driven on a US interstate.
If there's a sidewalk or any t-junctions, that's about 20mph tops. Anything faster, and you can't stop in time, plus in a collision, kinetic energy goes as the square of the speed.
For local trips, with stoplights that slow you down anyway, driving slower adds only a few extra minutes to your journey time. Personally, I'm not seeing the need to be so hurried all the time.
http://www.rospa.com/roadsafety/adviceandinformation/driving... http://blog.americansafetycouncil.com/why-speeding-is-danger...
I think the main difference is the price, especially since 2 point systems turn into n-point systems if you have a lot of intersections.
a person turns into a sociopathic scofflaw as soon as he
gets behind the wheel
That is an ideological position, and I could easily apply the same blanket label of absolute sociopathy to law enforcement, and I'd be just as wrong.
But there's a difference between a mechanized, automatic law enforcement system and a law enforcment system that is implemented as a practice performed by living human beings. The human version is prone to imperfections and corruption, yes. But mechanized, automated law enforcement really COULD express a perfect ideology and attempt to enforce it perfectly, with an unforgiving brutality, which could not otherwise be accomplished with the complicity of human beings. Please understand that difference.
If you think placing a human being behind the machinery of an automobile is automatically bad, think about what it might mean to place a human being behind the machinery of a fully automated law enforcement system, with that same lens of blanket sociopathy.
Every single one of those things has a law attached. People either forget or think that the law doesn't apply to them.
People who speed, hang out in the left lane, run red lights, don't signal their turns and lane changes, and so on are a danger to themselves and others.