Been on a driving safety kick lately. There's lots of alpha on the table. My most important rules for myself: minimize driving, avoid rush hours.
Edit: forgot to add. I was one of the first vehicles to the scene of somebody who plowed head-on into a boulder while driving about 60mph. Killed 4 people. I was able to find the police report later and it turns out the driver was updating her Instagram in the moments leading up to the crash. That sort of thing leaves an impression on you when you see it first hand.
* It's common to see Nissans in the wild with body damage
* It's culturally known or at least assumed that Nissan will finance a vehicle for basically anyone, no matter how bad their credit is
* Nissans regularly engage in aggressive driver behaviors and driving patterns
Why it is so many problematic drivers are attracted to Nissans (and other "budget" brands, like Kia and Hyundai which also feature regularly on the sub) seems to come down largely to... well, people who make good choices in life don't generally sign an 84-month loan that will end with them having spent $70,000 on a car that costed $27,000. There's an air of classism to the entire thing, however it's difficult to disagree with based on what's shown.
Obviously that's all extremely prone to confirmation bias and all manner of prejudices so to be clear, I'm not saying I agree, I'm just saying it's interesting how Nissan as a brand is so widely associated with poor people who allegedly make bad decisions, financial, and in their driving. It's also worth noting (and probably what's anchoring this impression is) that Nissans are, in spite of their awful financing, cheap. As are Kias and Hyandais, so more people own them at scale, and therefore more bad drivers also own them at scale. Once the narrative is in the wild, there's little that will arrest it from being "confirmed" by people and passed along as understood fact.
They also have a ton of bumper stickers, too.
Leaves an impression.
By the next day the road had been swept clean. I searched and searched for info on the crash online and in police reports. No info.
There’s other metrics as well - sticker density on pickup trucks, the cheapest BMW, etc. It’s not about shaming poor people, it’s early identification of recklessness and bad driving.
It's certainly true that a given accident would be more severe if speeds are higher. That's just physics.
However, in at least some circumstances, accidents are more likely to occur at slower speeds. In your example, rush hour has both more accidents and slower speeds. But also, there's a well-documented effect of a "risk thermostat", where people tend to balance risk such that they exhibit less care when other things would be making things safer. Thus, when speeds are slower, people perceive greater safety and are (maybe subconsciously) more willing to engage in offsetting risks such as playing with their phones or just daydreaming, just because they can. The result is that slower speeds can lead to a greater quantity of accidents (even if those accidents are of lower severity because they were slower).
What remains to be proven is how those two effects offset each other. It's not clear whether the "greater severity" or "more accidents" effect dominates the overall picture.