I can't even recall witnessing insanely dangerous driving, outside of someone clearly impaired.
It speeding laws were removed (except for children zones), I doubt you'd see any difference.
To be more direct, I’m suspicious that this is just a misleading / question begging way of saying “in 73% of accidents, someone was speeding.” Which doesn’t really tell me anything unless I have already accepted the premise that speeding is usually a problem.
According to the NTSB:
> "On the highways 100 people (are killed) a day," he said. "Every two days we are killing the equivalent of a Boeing 737 crashing. [0]
Obviously, not all directly a result of “insanely dangerous” driving (including the primary topic of that article). But, my definition would include driving that results in fatal accidents.
[0] https://lite.cnn.com/en/article/h_28168226adfec28da29cec92e7...
Anyhow, there were experiments in Europe where all street signs were removed from small towns. Traffic accidents and deaths declined, contrary to all expectation.
It's not that simple. Driving on city streets, at lower speeds, has higher accident and fatality rates. Increasing the speed limit on highways actually reduced fatalities because more people would eschew the city streets for the freeways.
Personally, driving 55 was always lulling me to sleep. I was always stopping at McD's for coffee, or the rest stops so I could run a lap or so. Driving faster keeps me awake and alert.
BTW, I'm not proposing legalizing reckless driving.
That sounds wildly speculative and very much influenced by the specific metro. Most of the time in busy metros where those types of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities occur, traffic determines which route people take, not speed limit.
One thing we all seem to agree on is that most freeway speed limits are too low.
Not at all. This was discovered when the speed limits were finally raised from 55. All the predictions were for a big rise in fatalities. Fatalities declined. Looking at traffic data explained it, with the drop in city street driving transferred to the freeways.
> people would eschew the city streets for the freeways.
This is also the argument against HOV lanes or paid left lanes. Adding more congestion to highways (by restricting lanes) pushes more people towards surface streets, which, as you state, are less safe. Highways have lots of non-fatal accidents, while surface streets with lights and 4-ways tend to cause t-bones, head-ons, and have pedestrians and bikers around.
If I had a vote (which I don't) I'd say increase all the limits by 10 mph (to reflect what people are doing now) but then also fine people that are speeding (like +2mph).
Or you’ve never seen someone driving 30 miles an hour faster than the people in the lane next to them?
It wasn’t every day or every week, but I’ve seen it many times commuting into Atlanta over the years.
But sure if you removed speed limits most people would continue driving at a safe speed. The problem is small minority who choose to go 30 over. You can still make that illegal and prosecute them under reckless driving laws. But then you’re just adding even more subjectivity to traffic enforcement.
If you’re on a road without much traffic, what feels safe is subjective. It depends on what you’re used to and the car you’re driving.
I have, and those driver(s) were clearly impaired - drunk or high. I did not propose removal of reckless or impaired driving laws. There are also laws against creating a hazard while driving, which would apply to driving 30mph faster than the adjacent traffic.
You could remove every driving law and just replace it with a single sentence—use common sense and don’t endanger other people by being reckless.
But eventually after the 400th time someone does it, it starts to makes sense to add an optimization to the system that says “on this stretch of road driving faster than 100 mph is automatically reckless.”
Inability to keep the car straight on a 4 lane freeway when there's no traffic means drunk or high.
High speed recklessness to me is overdriving your ability to see ahead and react. This varies considerably even on the same stretch of road due to lighting, weather, traffic, etc. 60mph can be way too slow on a fine sunny day with no traffic, and insanely reckless on an icy day in high winds.
I’m not talking about people who physically can’t keep the car straight. I’m talking about people who are driving significantly faster than everyone else and trying to get through traffic by rapidly switching lanes.
> High speed recklessness to me is overdriving your ability to see ahead and react. This varies considerably even on the same stretch of road due to lighting, weather, traffic, etc.
Yes it does. It also varies by car and driver, which makes it difficult judge/enforce at scale.
It’s easier to create a heuristic that says in good weather, on this stretch of road, 85mph is too fast.
Studies show that consistently enforced speed limits reduce accidents and fatalities. They may not be optimal, but it looks like they are safer than the alternatives.
Indeed, least in real life. I've seen some dashcam videos from the USA on youtube though, idk if the sample size is just that much larger but I'm amazed at how prevalent that seems compared to German dashcam videos.
> Or you’ve never seen someone driving 30 miles an hour faster than the people in the lane next to them?
Hmm so like 50km/h if I'm not mistaken. Sure I've seen it, this is the land of unlimited speed highways after all, and on dashcams it's hilarious: someone (surprise!) didn't see them coming off in the distance, pulls out to overtake a truck, and the 200km/h guy has to break dangerously and swears like an old sailor. Gee didn't see that coming....again. So that's rather stupid indeed. Also completely normal and accepted in Germany unfortunately. Probably not legal in a "dangerous driving" sense, but perfectly legal for a speed limit camera.
> The problem is small minority who choose to go 30 over.
I know some of this "small minority". The only thing that gives them pause is the risk of losing their license or when they perceive danger to those around them (like in small streets in a town center). A speed sign would have to be posted at limits well below what you want them to drive, or the punishment for small (say 10-20 km/h) infractions would have to be draconian for repeat offenders. I'm not seeing that in any country near me so I'm not sure how realistic that is (but I'm no walking encyclopedia so maybe this exists, would be interesting to see if it works to punish only/mostly the intended group).