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Comment by leipert | Hacker News Reader

Because we don’t need to increase performance, if we think if performance as horse powers and speed. Cars are fast enough, even too fast for private vehicles.

Living in Germany it is quite ridiculous that we don’t have speed limits on certain parts of the Autobahn, nobody needs to drive 200 km/h. You won’t get faster from A to B, it’s dangerous, it’s stressful, you need more energy. If you want to race, go on a race track. I assume it even costs us more to maintain roads so that you are able to drive more than 140 km/h.

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Nobody needs to have sex more than a few times in their lives. You wanna limit the sex lives as well?

Basically, your morality is all wrong. The point of life (for humans, at least) isn't to do what we need - that's only the lowest, most basic level of Maslow's pyramid. It's self-actualization, which essentially means fulfilling autonomously chosen goals. You might see no reason to drive 200km/h, but others might - why limit them? The only potential reason is safety, but hey, people enjoy plenty of extreme(-ly dangerous) sports, so clearly there are reasons to trade off safety as well.

In addition, an appeal to safety doesn't actually make sense in this instance - why would 120km/h be better than 200km/h? I mean, it's slightly safer but still incredibly unsafe! If we prioritized safety over all else, we'd all be driving at most 30km/h! So clearly "safety" isn't a good, objective reason - at best, it's a subjective, arbitrary threshold, but then we ought to recognize that diifferent people will make different tradeoffs regarding safety.

If it's your hobby and like driving 200 km/h, sure please do, on a separate track where it is as safe as possible. But driving it on _public_ roads is inherently dangerous to others. Our society has all kind of rules around protection of others. There are laws and rules around food safety, gun safety, distribution of drugs, hunting, using heavy equipment, operating boats and planes. Often you need a license to do these things.

Noone trains for driving at high speeds in driving school. Also a lot of folks do not understand the relationship between velocity and the time you need to come to a stop. So 120km/h is way better than 200km/h. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3D7XYQExt0

> If it's your hobby and like driving 200 km/h

This is just so wrong. Have you actually ever done that? For example between Jena and Chemnitz, when traffic is light it is so incredibly safe and relaxing.

Don’t confuse fast driving with reckless driving. No speed limits will stop reckless drivers. Even so, it’s totally possible to drive recklessly at 140 kph. Just go figure around Leverkusen literally every day.

I chose a dangerous sport on my own. The car speeding with 200km/h into your car, will have an impact on your life even if you stick to 120km/h

See my edit, it addresses your point: "speeding with 120km/h will have an impact even if you stick to 60km/h".

“Because we don’t need to increase performance, if we think if performance as horse powers and speed. Cars are fast enough, even too fast for private vehicles.”

This is like trying to sell people on veganism by arguing that food doesn’t need to taste good.

The great thing about Autobahns is freedom.

If I travel in Spain, the speed limit is 120km/h. Now they have removed the 20 kms/h extra you could do for overtaking other cars. It is ludicrous.

Everybody goes over the limit, and hence everybody goes against the law, and everybody could be fined with 300 euros, like my father 1 month ago.

In cities, they are putting limits under 30km/h.

Politicians love the fines because it is an extra tax of an extra billion euros nobody controls.

The great thing isn't freedom, it's that the huge speed differences between cars help a lot with keeping drivers focused. People drive instead of just waiting out the time until their exit pops up on the nav. This effect has quite a bit of inertia so that even the speed-limited parts benefit from it so that a blanket speed limit would likely make the already limited sections less safe, after adapting to the relative ease of blanket speed limits. Chances are that overall safety would still increase, but I'm not sure of that (short term it would definitely increase, but that effect could quickly erode as people get used to it).

Reducing the speed limit saves lives and reduces overall traffic as people switch to alternative modes of transport.

Do you object to seatbelt laws under the premise of "Freedom"? What about car safety standards? Isn't it more "Free" if we can make whatever car I want and sell it to whomever wants to buy it, even if it kills millions every year?

The truth is that we need to look at improving society holistically, which means implementing and designing society in a way that benefits humankind over the long term. Civilization isn't very "Free" but it's a trade off we make to live in a fair and progressive society, and allows us to combat things like covid, natural disasters, growing populations and other challenges that face the human race.

i naively support the argument for speed limits concerning safety and emissions.

at the same time i know that the freedom to drive fast does not really impact crash or efficiancy metrics very much and having been to countries with universal speed limits i can confirm that it is an agonizing drive if everybody is going slow (120kph) to the point that i wonder if the resulting boredom is causing a lot more accidents.

> Living in Germany it is quite ridiculous that we don’t have speed limits on certain parts of the Autobahn, nobody needs to drive 200 km/h.

Why? Did you ever have to drive 1000 km for work in one day?

"Nobody needs to..." - always such a pathetic argument

Agreed. It's a variation on the old "Stop having fun!" complaint that people who lead lives of quiet desperation trot out every so often.

Guess we should all eat the most environmentally friendly food too. No one needs to ever eat meat or almonds or anything of the sort because it’s just not efficient.

While we’re at it, let’s get rid of heating past 60 F. You can always wear a sweater or a thicker blanket. It’s not like it’ll be a great inconvenience like not having any heating would be, you’ll still be able to do all the necessary tasks.

Your argument is “people don’t deserve to enjoy anything.”

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