Isn't the correct answer to this, lobbying for higher speed limits? Rather than chastizing obedience to current rules.

epolanski 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In Italy several cities lowered the maximum speed from 50 to 30 km/h.

There was a huge fight over it, car drivers in those cities were mad. Plenty of politicians opposed it.

One year later stats were super clear: streets got way safer and the number of fatal accidents dropped to near 0. Time to traverse cities didn't change much, as it was already limited mostly by traffic and lights.

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HDThoreaun 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think this ignores the argument the high speed limit people make which basically boils down to "sure some people will die or get injured but its worth it because driving faster is fun"

	▲	kulahan 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I’m absolutely sure people are just interested in shorter commute times rather than higher max speeds. That makes this an easy sell to citizens

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sagarm 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I believe you, but do you have a citation?

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TimTheTinker 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes, agreed. Though speed limits higher than 75 are not something I will ever support.*

* Unless we're talking about removing a speed limit altogether and regulating unsafe driving using other criteria.

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benlivengood 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Autonomous vehicles following proper signalling before lane changes can be safe at arbitrary speeds (see Autobahns working at all). Humans, we should limit passing speed to roughly ~5 mph delta between adjacent lanes and leave it at that.

Humans with adequate following distance in the entire lane can probably manage 10 mph delta. I routinely travel dozens of miles very safely at ~80 with the flow of traffic (including the cops), and been stressed out at 55 in the carpool lane through stop and go traffic in the right-hand lanes due to on ramps/offramps.

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jjav 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What happens at 76mph?

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TimTheTinker 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Same thing that happens at 77mph :)

I think 75 is memorable and roughly in the region where the tradeoff between increased kinetic energy and decreased time to arrival per additional unit of velocity becomes untenable.

	▲	The_President 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> the tradeoff between increased kinetic energy and decreased time to arrival per additional unit of velocity becomes untenable Sounds like a warning page out of the back of a 94 Geo Metro owner's manual.