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Comment by ZoomerCretin | Hacker News Reader

Considering the effects of driving at these speeds, I'd say the legal absurdity is the other 49 states not having similar punishments for people who drive at these incredibly dangerous speeds. An enormous amount of people die or acquire permanent, life-altering disabilities at the hands of people who were speeding and crashed.

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This kind of absolute thinking is not helpful. The US is a HUGE place. Each location has different driving conditions, types of roads, driving habits etc...

Affluence also factors in significantly both on a community level and personal level.

Driving 80mph through a small town with significant environmental debris on the roads where everyone is driving trucks from the 60s? That should be a felony.

Driving 80mph on a clean, straight highway where everyone is driving a relatively modern car? There should be _no problem_.

Separately, IMO, vehicle should factor in at the judgement level of law enforcement. My car can stop from 60mph in <100ft, will pull >1g on skidpad, has a full bevvy of features to alert me of surrounding conditions and will intervene in certain dangerous scenarios. The idea that such a vehicle should be equally treated as a 1992 unmaintained civic is ridiculous. Yes, the laws should be consistent in a given area, but the application of those laws should be just not blindly applied. There's clearly a boundary to be crossed, but my car going 10mph over is SIGNIFICANTLY less dangerous to the public than that hoopty going the speed limit.

> but my car going 10mph over is SIGNIFICANTLY less dangerous to the public than that hoopty going the speed limit

To the driving public, specifically. Pedestrians and cyclists will still be goop on your windshield 50 feet into your 100 foot braking.

There are typically two kinds of roads these speeds are reached in the US:

1. Expressways, where pedestrians and cyclists are not allowed. They are walled off with specific entrances and exits.

2. Country highways, where pedestrians and cyclists are nearly unheard of, and are typically very easy to spot from a distance and adjust accordingly.

There is a third area where these speeds are sometimes reached in urban areas that Strong Towns calls "stroads", and these have a whole host of problems. Going 10mph over the speed limit in these areas probably doesn't make a huge difference, because the are already so pedestrian and cyclist unfriendly to begin with. Not Just Bikes has a great video about them here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM

It's not uncommon to see people go 20 over on country roads (including mountain roads) in Virginia. That means 55 in a 35, or 60 in a 40. Those roads don't have great visibility, and I've had more than a couple of unnecessarily close calls because of recklessly speeding drivers.

Edit: The upstream thread even has an article where the author describes doing 93 on a 55 backroad in VA and subsequently getting arrested[1].

[1]: https://jalopnik.com/never-speed-in-virginia-lessons-from-my...

Sure, but that isn't what we're talking about.

The comment that this thread branched off of is about the relative difference in danger of 10mph with a modern vehicle, not 20, 30, or 40mph. I don't think I agree with that user's overall point, but I also didn't think your response to it was particularly on point either.

I think our transportation infrastructure needs a massive overhaul to be more pedestrian, bike, and even motor-vehicle friendly, but I think speeds limits are such a poor answer to that problem that arguing about +10mph is merely a distraction.

That was my point. There's A LOT less distance covered by one car than the other, and the speed in that time as well.

An old pickup trick will still be going 35mph at 100ft. I will be completely stopped.

The severity of injury at 80ft for the two is quite different as well.

Of course... I'd never be driving at 60mph if there was a chance of pedestrians. However, the 30-0 difference is even more staggering between older mass market vehicles and modern sportscars.

Of which there are none on the roads where people want to go particularly fast.

I take it you've never cycled in Virginia. I have (on "slow" roads no less) and I've had no less than a dozen people buzz me at over 20 miles above the speed limit.

(There is no such thing as a road where people "don't want" to go fast, because "fast" is disjointed in meaning: there's the legal speed that drivers regularly and unsafely exceed, and there's the "fast" speed at which drivers perceive how unsafe they're being.)

You are making an argument for different places having different speed limits. Yes places should match their limits to the local conditions, but people should still get in trouble for breaking the law.

The person I responded to only talked about punishments for "these speeds", and that is why I responded specifically to begin a discussion about the nuance of speed limits across areas.

There should be punishments for exceeding reasonable limits. There should not be punishments for "these speeds" as they exist in Virgina compared to another location. Heck, even just across virginia it doesn't make sense to have a single set of speed limits.

With you on "driving to the conditions". Although just because your vehicle can stop quickly doesn't mean that unmaintained civic can do the same when you go flying past and then hard brake.

My one hope for self driving vehicles is that it normalizes efficient traffic flow.

To add to the other comment, your idea ignores the history of speed limits and how they aren’t just for safety. For example how the highways were reduced to 55mph during the 70s oil crisis as an indirect way to ration gasoline. Or how small towns will lower sections of road for the specific purpose of creating a revenue-generating speed trap.

Virginia is ranked 35th in deaths per 100 million miles (0.96), and it's not as if people don't drive either, as it's ranked 12th in miles driven. Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, New York all log more miles driven and less people dead per million miles.

So it doesn't really seem like Virginia's insanely restricting laws are actually helping.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/fatal-car-a...

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