The Porsche Taycan looks worse than the high performance Tesla's based on published EPA numbers but it has some advantages the EPA numbers do not show. The Taycan can maintain high power output for longer before overheating.
This makes it good for racing, probably better than the Teslas, but please do your racing on proper race tracks.
For example, Highway 1 is a beautiful drive, but it's often kind of ruined by idiots in minivans driving 5 miles below the (already low) speed limit and being too rude and self-centered to pull of into a stopping lane and let the dozens of cars behind them pass.
If, for example, on Saturdays the 1 was restricted to people with a "reasonably competent" license (indicating that you're willing and able to safely drive e.g. within stated speed limit to speed limit + 10mph), with ticketing expected for people driving too slowly, that would be awesome.
You could have further refinements along the lines of once a month the road is restricted to people with "very competent" licenses, indicating that they intend to drive high-performance vehicles at high speed.
I think the social utility of this kind of policy would be very positive. The negative externality to mediocre drivers of not being able to drive on scenic routes occasionally isn't very large, but the benefit to good drivers would be huge!
Their families would miss them, tough.
I ride a motorcycle btw.
Almost every activity you could possibly do, including being alive, has some negative risk externality to other people. E.g. if you are alive, you are more likely to spread a disease to someone else than if you are dead and buried in the ground. If you drive anywhere, you might possibly run into someone, but if you stayed at home they'd be safe.
If your philosophy is "you can never do anything that's dangerous to someone else", it's a hopelessly bad zeroth-order approximation that would completely cripple you if you actually followed it.
The risk of hurting someone in an accident due to a mistake is very different to the risk of hurting someone after you decided it's ok to race on public streets because you believe that you are such an awesome driver.
Everyone in the road has accepted a certain risk of accidents happening. If you increase everyone else's risk by racing, you are being a selfish prick.
There is no way to wave this away with "it's ok to take risk for fun" or "risk is inherent to live". You are talking about risking other people's lives for a thrill, that you could easily get differently, without risking the live of bystanders! You can literally race the lemons 500 with an investment of 500 bucks!
Source? I really doubt this is true, due to selection effects.
In any case, my original proposal was to specifically allocate road usage to different license classes at different times, which would help address your concern.
> If you increase everyone else's risk by racing, you are being a selfish prick.
Replace "racing" with "driving" and the statement doesn't meaningfully change.
> You are talking about risking other people's lives for a thrill, that you could easily get differently
Every single thing you can possibly do imposes a negative externality on someone else.
"Don't do anything ever" is an idiotic approach to address this. A much more reasonable approach is to manage risk, e.g. by sectioning off road access sometimes like I proposed.
At the end of the day, we all pay for the roads, we should all be allowed to use them.
But I have done a little speeding on scenic routes.
This is literally 95%+ of people on those roads. It'd never happen.
Most drivers are wildly incompetent.
How would you go about policing this? If there is traffic, everyone is driving under the minimum!
In the digital age with sensors and data so cheap there's also no reason we can't set speed limits based on the Xth percentile everywhere with an automatic annual adjustment.
People tend to have an aversion to automation applied to law enforcement. See the criticism of red light cameras in the US.
It's also the way civil engineers recommend speed limits be set. I think the current number they use is 85th percentile.
> The 85th percentile speed is the single most influential indicator of what is safe and reasonable, and it is used to determine the speed limit by rounding to the nearest 5 mph increment, and posting the speed limit at that speed. If there are sufficient conditions not readily apparent to the driver, as determined by a registered engineer, the posted speed limit can be lowered by 5 mph, and such a decision must be clearly documented in the E&TS.
https://dot.ca.gov/programs/safety-programs/setting-speed-li...
You are talking about "undertaking" - which needs two lanes. The P(GP?) is on about people driving slowly on a scenic route and I've had a look at the road in question and it has one lane for quite a lot of its length.
I'll asert: Accidents on an autobahn in DE do tend to be quite nasty when they happen.
(Observation: I lived in West Germany for about 10 years and my family name literally means "german")
Quite a few places are building regular intervals of "2+1 roads" for regular passing opportunities:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2%2B1_road
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero
If people know they'll shortly have a chance to pass 'easily' they may become more patient.
That's not what you get ticketed for. As long as you're overtaking the cars in the lane to your right at a reasonable speed, you can stay in your lane. If there is a gap between cars that you can safely enter, then you have to move to the right. There is a duty to let people pass if you're driving very slowly, but this is meant for a tractor driving 15 km/h, not for someone driving 5 under the speed limit.
Especially if there are two lanes, no speed limit, the right lane has heavy truck traffic going 80 and you're going 130, the Ferrari has to wait until you're done overtaking, even if that takes you until the end of the no-speedlimit section. And if the Ferrari gets pushy (e.g. honking/high-beams), they are risking not just a ticket but criminal prosecution (on top of any penalties for violating the minimum safe distance).
Might be worth pointing out that even if traffic fines are handed out liberally in Germany, they are generally considered laughably cheap.
By fining a constant amount (instead of an income/wealth dependent one), all fines do is make something illegal for poor people.
I've driven at insane speeds in the past, I've also driven in ways that can only be described as nearly insane. I can't say I'm proud of that but I've still survived to 50 (so far). Most of the time I would describe my driving style as safe with occasional relapses 8)
I'm a Brit so I'm not familiar with Highway 1 but a quick search seems to show it is a CA road. My first virtual run on it shows three lanes on both sides, so I'll head north to SF. OK one lane. It's a provincial coastal road with adjustments.
Either get a car with a massive acceleration and overtake or enjoy the view. The speed limits are there for a good reason and I've driven a fair bit in the US (mostly FL and NY) and I don't find your limits mad. You could also lobby whoever builds roads to add another lane where you want it. On that last: in the UK we are 50 years into debating adding another lane to the A303 at some points. For some reason people are a bit wound up about the bit that goes past Stonehenge. The A303 is the super fast (lol) upgrade for the A30 (which is still there) that links London to the south west of England. It stops rather oddly at Ilminster, where it becomes the A30 again.
A relative of mine did the "compulsory purchase" of land through Hampshire, Wiltshire and Somerset for the A303, back in the day.
I live in Yeovil, Somerset, UK. To go north to say Bristol, I have two options: A37 or A372 and M5. Parts of the A37 are virtually Roman road with tarmac slapped on top 8) the A372 goes through Ilchester (formally a Roman town). Both of those roads are a bit slow but with speed limits from 30 to 60 mph. They are both delightful to drive in 3D - I love getting gears right with just the right amount of power (we have gears in our cars here 8)
Anyway, why not calm down and enjoy the view. What I've virtually seen of Highway 1 tells me that it is a road to be enjoyed and cherished and loved.
It is a CA road, and the section that the GP is talking about is specifically the coastal part between Santa Cruz and San Francisco, or south of Monterey. These areas are one lane in each direction.
> Either get a car with a massive acceleration and overtake or enjoy the view.
It is frequently impossible to overtake. Both directions of traffic tend to be fairly steady, and there's enough turns and blind spots that safely passing is not possible. The turnout sections are often too short for more than a single car to overtake the lead car, and only if its right behind the lead car -- if you're a couple cars back there's no chance.
We're not even talking about insane speeds here. Doing 50 or 55mph on the 1 in those scenic parts is wonderful. That happens to also be just about the speed limit. But far too often there will be someone either taking in the scenery a little too much, or too scared to go any faster. Then you end up in a caravan of cars all doing 35-40mph on the road, and little chance to pass. At that point, it becomes hard to 'calm down and enjoy the view' -- you're no longer driving for pleasure, you're effectively stuck in heavy traffic.
Or do you think there is an helicopter filming you from above like James Bond movies?
I think it's pretty easy for anyone who isn't highly biased to see that both approaches are enjoyable.
The best thing we can do is keep each other safe.
I'm guilty of driving fast in in the past. I'm glad i aged past it and found other sources of identity.
> The best thing we can do is keep each other safe.
This statement is nonsense and indicates pathological risk aversion.
Once the density of traffic is high enough, you no longer have the luxury of 'observing the scene' -- you need to be paying attention to the driving and the other drivers. This is the situation that tends to happen on Hwy 1. People bunch up, and so everyone is just driving in these clumps of 10-20 cars doing 5-10 below the speed limit.
Road system is as socialist system as it can get. The road that you think is paid for is being used by different people for different reasons. Highway 1 in particular is very dangerous if you drive recklessly. I would rather prefer that minivan with 5 kids to home reach safely than to let me pass. The first time I drove it in my 20 year old Camry, I was scared less. Today I cross it with breeze in my jeep.
> You could have further refinements along the lines of once a month the road is restricted to people with "very competent" licenses, indicating that they intend to drive high-performance vehicles at high speed.
None of your ideas are bad, USA is a very large country and I think it should be possible to build private roads with the kind of system you discuss. Since the heart of innovation has not done so, something tells me that the economics will not work out.
* I am an off roader and the kind of market you describe exists for off roaders. Instead of "competence" it is about vehicle's capability. Entire USA is full of back country and off roads which are open to different kind of vehicles and there is a super large community of people driving on them all the time. I think such a market for high performance fast cars does not exist.
People from out of county are already violating Covid travel restrictions.
From a risk perspective, I do prefer things like the Broadway Bomb[1]. Sure, pedestrians are maybe at a bit of risk of collision, but at least they are mostly gambling with their own lives.
We had some cases here in Germany where innocent bystanders were killed by idiots racing in the city.
Take all the risk you want - for yourself. Not for others.
You don’t own the road, you share it. You don’t get to put others lives at risk because you feel like it. If you decide it’s a risk worth taking, do it in a safe place, like a race track, so you don’t kill anyone else when you make a mistake.