If we cared about traffic violence, speeding would be a solved problem. But we don't.
At any rate, I'm not attempting to say traffic fatalities and injuries aren't a problem.
To me it's an extremely clear yes. The only reason I can see why we view this differently is just because we've all agreed this doesn't apply to choices made while driving. But I can't see why that would be the case.
On your second point, the likelihood that speeding will cause actual harm to another person is vastly lower, and certainly not an outcome expected or intended by drivers generally speaking. Seems silly to call that "violence" when we can just call it irresponsible, negligent, etc.
A pedestrian dying because of a driver's decision to speed in this way is predictable, absolutely expected. Shit I doubt my odds with a golf club at a party are anywhere near 50%. So why is one violence and the other not? I think only because we have decided it is not. But again that decision is exactly what I'm challenging. Calling it silly is not a convincing argument to me.
Nevertheless, I appreciate your point. I was thinking only of speeding on highways. Speeding is an issue and shouldn't be minimised.
I-80 is definitely a hotbed of aggressively dangerous driving and the violent use of vehicles against others that aren't driving how you want them to (and I'm a fast driver).
Have those two experiences very much back to back, I joked about how once we get robo-taxis we'll never go back. Human drivers are dangerous enough of the time -- it's not like I've ever driven on I-80 and NOT seen crazy, pants- staining driving. It's every mile or two of the whole stretch.
(Waymo feels so much more mature and pleasant than the last FSD Beta I tested.. Elon should be embarassed.)
US drivers get away with murder in terms of undertaking, tailgating, camping in fast lanes under the speed limit, not to mention driving vehicles that are in such states of disrepair that it's a miracle the drivers get anywhere.
I'm way more relaxed cruising at 160km/h in Europe than literally any stretch of the I-5.
That is a fair point, but unfortunately there is no good solution to that... otherwise we wouldn't need laws and their enforcement in the first place.
It's all about risk... if people are speeding too often and too fast that it's becoming dangerous (which I 1000% agree with), then I think more strict enforcement is warranted.
Conversely, we don't outlaw going outside just because someone could run you over... the risk is not high enough. But I think the risk of injury or death from speeding is very high.
I am quite confident that most people do not think we should be comparing the risk of speeding to just veering into oncoming traffic, phone or not.
Great, so why aren't those things ever candidates for this kind of automated enforcement? Why is it always "speeding"? In addition to the ones you listed, there are so many distractions now, too. Take a ride down any US freeway as a passenger in some kind of elevated vehicle (like a double decker bus) such that you can see down into people's cars: Probably 1/2 or more are totally out of it, distracted zombies scrolling on their phones. Nobody is calling for this to be cracked down on either.
It's always just "speeding". Like if we solve that, we're done.
But speeding-related fatalities accounted for 30% of traffic fatalities in the US for 2022. Which implies there are plenty of other issues, such that I think saying "speeding is violence" doesn't really do anything to address the problem.
I'd call that extremely dangerous...
Focussing on speeding seems to ignore that there are other serious issues that contribute to the outsized danger on US roads.
[1] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/motor-vehicle-safe...
This becomes less true in places like Germany where lane discipline is very strict. It's not rare to see extreme speed differentials on unlimited speed sections of German Autobahns, but it is rare to see crashes there.
The whole "everything is fine as long as everyone is doing the same speed" bit is a myth.
For every percent increase in speed, this leads to a 2% change in injury accidents, a 3% change in severe injury accidents and a 4% change in fatal accidents.
https://road-safety.transport.ec.europa.eu/eu-road-safety-po...
More about speed vs injury/death rates:
https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/new-crash-tests-show-modest...
https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/speedmgt/ref_mats/fhwasa1304/Res...
Why? Kinetic energy is a function of velocity squared, influencing injury severity and stopping distances.
Their conclusion is that the speed limit should be increased; there are other reasonable conclusions one might draw, but I would argue against the one that follows from your comment: that nearly every driver on the road deserves punishment.
I would be very interested in if people would then go the reasonable new speed limit or if they would continue in their speeding flocks and only travel even faster. To me it seems like their speed is mostly something they evaluate relative to the rest of the drivers and not to absolute speeds so it'd take quite a change in behavior.
As for [0], the traffic back-up proves only that the vast majority of people on that road are speeding.
My take on it is that when the speed limit doesn't match the 85th percentile speed of actual drivers, something should be changed. Sometimes, (often, in my view) it's the speed limit. Sometimes, it's the design of the road, especially in cases of neighborhood streets that are shaped like highways. Sometimes the answer may be highly-visible traffic cameras, as the advance warning and certainty of punishment will slow down almost every driver.
Driving the limit in the right lane is almost always fine.
Not really. The violence of traffic crashes increases as the speed increases.
Within an individual human context, violence usually requires intent.
There is a sense of the word that implies intent, but that is only one of the senses and another sense that means "forceful or strong" is often used in describing traits of individual humans and their behavior emotions. A violent nod is not a nod intended to cause harm. The violence of someone's emotions refers to their strength, not their intent.
If I drive at ~200km/h on my way from Berlin to Munich, am I "being violent"?
That is one of the meanings/senses of the word, but not the only one.
It is perfectly reasonable to say that driving ~200km/h is a violent speed without saying the the driver is being violent because those are two different senses of the word.
The trend of "slapping a 'violence' label after anything vaguely harmful but not actually violent" is so tiresome.