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Comment by standardUser | Hacker News Reader

There are so many things we could do in the US to reduce the tens of thousands of road deaths every year. The odd thing is, we seem to be choosing to do none of them. I think the problem is that a meaningful number of assholes, I mean Americans, truly think they have a right to zip down freeways at 100mph, swerving form one lane to the next with no blinker. We see it every day. As far as I'm concerned, driving like that is akin to a violent crime and should come with a prison sentence.

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Speed is not the issue. Weaving in and out, tailgating and other similar behaviors are.

Just came back from Germany and drove on the no speed limit part of the autobahn. It was orderly and I felt perfectly safe with family going equivalent of 120mph. No one cutting you off, unless passing, no sitting in left lane. Getting passed at that speed like you are standing still takes a bit getting used to, but again, it’s very predictable. Did not witness any accidents in 2 weeks of driving. It can be done, just need proper rules, penalties for breaking them that are actually enforced and of course good roads (didn’t see any pot holes either).

> Speed is not the issue.

Speed substantially increases the severity of collisions when they do happen. A non-fatal collision at 70mph might be a fatal one at 80mph.

A truism, which is not very useful. The strategy of reducing speed to reduce collisions/severity compared to reducing dangerous behavior that leads to collisions is like the failed war on drugs.

I’ve been hit a few times in US and always it’s a distracted driver going fast and not following any rules. Speed limit didn’t slow them one bit. Not even in a school zone. Training, enforcement and more training is in my view a better answer. Not perfect, but better.

You can't train people to not get distracted, you can only train people to try to avoid distractions like phones or arguments in the car. But regardless how much you try there will always be distracted drivers on the roads.

Being distracted behind the wheel has a lot of cultural aspects - in US driving is viewed as almost a right, else where it is a hard earned and expensive privilege. People tend to value what they had to work hard for. Of course there will be those who don’t, but increasing the barrier to entry to operating dangerous machinery might be a good thing. Look at licensing approaches around the world and you will see places with higher barriers having a bit more order on the streets.

Slowing traffic is a component in Sweden's very successful "Vision Zero" to eliminate pedestrian fatalities. Not the most important component, but an important component.

I was commenting on freeway style roads. Pedestrians shouldn’t be on an „autobahn”. City streets are a different matter all together.

It’s not the fact that people pretend they don’t know that speed kills, the problem in America is that people don’t care unless an immediate family member is killed by someone else.

The problem here is the problem of casinos, people here buy into the illusion of control.

Not that I'm a fan of cars in general, but I 100% agree with everything you've said here, there's no good reason for the absurdly low speed limits on major freeways, especially since the average speed of traffic is often 20mph over, making it actively unsafe to do the speed limit. Though I will say some of the potholes we've got on 880 are unsafe at any speed.

Unless pot holes are fixed, increasing speed limits will just make them more dangerous.

> Not that I'm a fan of cars in general

I, too, prefer socialist trains over the individuated, elitist inefficiency of cars. https://youtu.be/9-Jy-yBboCM

Sounds like you've driven in the only part of Germany where people behave. My experience is it's as bad as everywhere else in neighboring countries with the tiny difference that the lanes are a bit wider than in most places. I usually don't drive in the left lanes and I still get the impression people want to check what I'm transporting in the back all the time.

The German autobahn is not orderly, every 5 minutes someone with more than 230 kph drives on the left lane and wants to kick you out of it when you dont get out of it asap. If you want a good example go to the Netherlands, i've never had issues there in several decades.

You shouldn't be in the left lane if you aren't passing someone. If you are slowly passing people then you need to speed up to overtake more quickly.

Doesn't matter which lane you drive yourself, you see it regardless and it sucks.

The point is that people in the left lane should not need to be "kicked out" because they should always be looking for the first opportunity to get out of the left lane, not travelling there

This is mentioned all the time but the cost to get a driver's license in Germany is incredible high. And even after spending a lot of money on training, most native Germans fail the exam the first time. Then, like you said - there are rules and very stiff penalties in place for after you get your license.

Americans would simply not put up with this.

Realistically, most freeways are built for 100mph, and it’s weird the US doesn’t just allow that like Germany does.

What the US really needs (also like Germany), is to make it much more difficult to get a license, and make it much easier to lose one for bad driving. Unfortunately that’s a political nonstarter since decades of poor zoning policy have resulted in nearly everything requiring a car to get to.

> make it much more difficult to get a license

While I agree, getting a licence in most of places in Europe is pretty difficult, but driving culture is nowhere close to German.

> The odd thing is, we seem to be choosing to do none of them.

9/11 killed a month's worth of road fatalities, and in response we invaded two countries.

I guess it's understandable: if we invaded two random countries every month we'd soon run out of countries.

You can always retreat and then invade again! /s

Smart roads and car speed limits are obvious solution and is being worked towards in Europe.

Despite vivid imagination, there is 0 reasons for you go 10-20% over speed limit, ever.

Why should you endanger everyone when you are in emergency? Why overtake someone if they are driving within 10% of speed limit?

If you want experience speed - get trained and go to a racetrack.

There's no reason why your car (and road agency) shouldn't exactly know speed limit and state of every single road. We live in a global realtime SAR imaging sat coverage and global sat internet coverage. We can track every single car in the world and you say we can't make a realtime database of speed limits? Get outta here, decel.

I'm not sure about there, but here in Vancouver, I try to drive as much as possible at the posted speed limit, because I have family and I want them to be alive (and they need me to be alive).

At least 80% of the cars pass me constantly and I constantly see drivers pissed off at me driving slowly. I have no solution, I feel unsafe going slower but I also don't want to go faster, it stresses me (tickets, losing driving license etc.), but I also don't want to endanger anybody.

If you have suggestions, great. I'll keep going at the posted speed limit.

That’s already illegal. The problem is enforcement. Ever since the pandemic and the “defund the police” nonsense I’ve hardly seen the highway patrol on the roads at all, much less pulling anyone over.

Actually defunding the police turned out to be something that didn't happen, at least from the democrats (who are still blamed for it). The main defunding was from the republican leadership in the house who insisted on reducing the budget or multiple federal law enforcement agencies, such as FBI and ATF. The republicans defunded the police.

But the effective outcome of all the sound and fury is that police enforcement seems way way down. I can't understand why they allow so many drivers to go around with expired license plates and worse (no plates, hand written plates, etc). They just don't stop them any more. There was a claim that laws about safe pursuit were a reason to not stop them, then they reversed the laws, still happening). I'm very ticked about it.

What does the Congress have to do with police forces? What do FBI and ATF have to do with traffic enforcement? Actual police (one that enforces traffic laws) had actually been defunded and by democrats:

1. LA https://apnews.com/article/3ad962eb78e30975354f6036c6451022#....

2. NYC https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/01/us/new-york-budget-nypd-1-bil...

3. Austin https://www.npr.org/2021/10/24/1048790508/officials-in-austi...

4. Seattle https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-h...

5. Portland https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/protests/defunding-po...

I could go on.

You may be surprised to learn that we did not in fact defund the police. :thonking_face_emoji:

Seattle sure did. And it sucks.

We lost 70% of the officers to other jurisdictions that don't hate them.

You don’t need police to enforce speed laws. You just need cameras, which have the advantages of being cheaper and safer.

There are two kinds of speed camera systems. One uses two cameras in short succession to measure instantaneous speed. You can dodge this by slowing down right before it.

The second uses the same concept but puts the cameras a mile or so apart to measure duration over that distance. This is harder to game.

Speed laws aren't the thing we need to enforce. Reckless driving is

You need traffic police to enforce reckless driving kaws

This feels so true. I don't see enforcement across any of the portions of the US I travel. I rarely if ever see cars pulled over. It is a contrast to what I felt growing up.

You don't need highway patrol at all for enforcement, we have cameras and radar. Just send them a ticket in the mail and impound their car after that (the same as Austria and Switzerland). We don't enforce it because we don't want to.

Which states defunded their police departments?

Don't matter, as police officers migrate to places that don't hate them.

The Democrat stronghold cities have less police now than three years ago.

there's a difference between hating and wanting to rein in out of control criminal organizations

Is it really the freeway that's the problem? They go fast down residential streets, or driving while texting, and eating. I've literally seen someone reading a book while driving before.

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