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Comment by bitexploder | Hacker News Reader

Speed limits aren’t the problem.

Do you also believe the laws of physics are just an opinion? If physics is an opinion, then I believe that F = ma, which means that more of m and a means more F, which means more injuries and death.

Speed limits aren’t the problem because people ignore them and drive by feeling. The correct solution is not more enforcement but rather better design to reduce the speed that feels right. Narrower lanes, chicanes, barriers between pedestrians and vehicles, roundabouts instead of stop signs, the usual playbook that people ignore because it’s expensive.

More enforcement is what we tried with drugs, how’d that go?

I agree with you, for example, traffic calming devices (speed bumps, roundabouts, chicanes) are incredibly effective. However I think enforcement needs to be rethought, cars are essentially just computers now and they know what the speed limit is, so why don't they automatically limit the speed of cars?

If you want to race, that's fine, but don't do it on public roads. Go to a race track that's designed for that.

And also agree on drugs, we should just legalize everything IMO. Prohibition has never worked, anyone who wants to do drugs are going to do them, and we're better off helping than harming people by filling up the prisons.

I agree with you, but there are a great deal of drug use metrics that have declined over time so maybe choose a different analogy.

If you look into what those metric changes are related to, you’ll find that it’s almost entirely uncorrelated with stiffer incarceration and zero tolerance policies, which was my point.

Speeding and aggressive driving is definitely a problem.

The people doing that don’t care about the speed limit already. Set it whatever you’d like you aren’t making the road any safer or affecting these people’s speeds.

What's the point of having laws? Criminals are going to crime.

Really? That's your argument?

My argument is if people are going 50mph on your 35mph road, making it 25mph isn’t changing anything but making the bus route on that road slower.

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