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Comment by KindAndFriendly | Hacker News Reader

Just like the gun debate in the US, the speed limit debate in Germany has at its core nothing to do with rational arguments. It is about perceived restriction, limiting personal freedom, and potentially taking away a right people are used to.

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With the only tiny difference being that guns in the US kill orders of magnitude more people than driving on the Autobahn (~50000 vs ~300 annually).

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/02/03/what-the-da...

https://www.zukunft-mobilitaet.net/172160/analyse/tempolimit...

How is

> limiting personal freedom, and potentially potentially taking away a right people are used to

not a rational concern? Sure you might personally be of a different opinion, but to claim these things can’t be the subject of a rational argument is absurd.

It's not absurd because even presenting facts like: driving fast is more dangerous, induce fear in many other drivers, cause more pollution including noise pollution, is wasteful (less efficient fuel/component wear wise) meets resistance.

The rational argument would be: "I know more people will die in accidents, more will get cancer, more will live with uncomfortable noise levels and more will travel stressed and in fear but I value this less than my freedom to go 200+km/h.

You about never hear that though because supporting high or no speed limits goes hand in hand with delusional thinking about dangers and harms of driving.

Regarding the article, nothing I was going to say involved "perceived restriction, limiting personal freedom, and potentially taking away a right people are used to."

I guess you know best, "just like the gun debate".

You could say the same of the abortion debate. Or the free speech debate. Or the…

It's perfectly legitimate and necessary to argue about rights

there's also that niggling issue of the 2nd amendment and it's current interpretation under the eyes of the judicial system.

Those sound like rational concerns to me.

maybe rational, but purely subjective. "Restricting freedom" - the "freedom" to reach your destination in an arbitrary speed? what kind of freedom is this? esp if we talk about a difference of what, 10 minutes over 2 hours of driving time? "potentially potentially taking away a right people are used to" it wasn't really a right (=set in law), it just was not forbidden, just like a lot of other things that get restricted all the time. the argument "but this was allowed before" is not really a good objective argument.

I'm not sure you're articulating your argument very well. I get what you're after, but no, restricting freedom is not purely subjective. For example, "I can do this today, and I can't do this tomorrow", is a pretty objective evaluation. You're really making an argument about balancing interests or prioritizing some concerns over others. There's an assumption implied in your argument that you personally would consider an appeal to general safety more compelling than any appeal to fahrvergnügen, for instance. How we each weight these (prioritize them) is what's subjective. Your attack on the opposing view relies on simplifying and devaluing it. This is rhetoric to persuade but is no form of "objective truth".

For 260 km of Autobahn driving, 130 kph results in 2 hours for that distance. Even a mere 160 kph (~100 mph) saves 22.5 minutes rather than the 10 minutes you're suggesting.

It's rare that you actually are able to go that fast for prolonged periods of time. For one, lots of stretches of the Autobahn have a speed limit. Secondly, there's also other traffic, traffic jams, construction sites, ...

More rational or less rational than the pro-limit concerns?

I think what you mean to ask is whether the concern is more or less important to [some audience] than the pro-limit concerns. For this issue, there are rational arguments on both sides, but which side one finds more compelling isn't a criticism of whether it's more rational so much as being a reflection of what one prioritizes/fears.

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