Or so simple as speeding when you drive? There are many laws which do not function as they should.
2. Blending in with the crowd. If the speed limit is 55 but everybody is going 75, it is safer for you to drive at 75 in smooth traffic flow rather than go 55 and create waves of darting and merging traffic trying to go around you.
3. Speed limits are sometimes applied dishonestly in the name of safety, when the real goal is revenue generation from violators. Such a law is immoral and unjust - government abusing its monopoly cartel power - and breaking it represents civil disobedience. This is more what the ancestor posts are getting at.
In the city, speed limits are not designed for revenue or assuming most people will exceed them. They are designed because that is the safest speed to drive. They assume several things here:
1. Non-ideal conditions with many traffic lights require slower speed limits.
2. Views are often blocked by building, landscaping etc.
3. There are many types of traffic that do not conform to our "car society" but are still legal users of roads. (bicycles, pedestrians, etc.)
The 55 MPH speed limit was also not a matter of safety, but of energy savings. That's a whole different issue, however.
You can think what you want, but I can assure you that speed limits inside cities are not some sort of conspiracy. It's far more likely that most people feel they are better drivers with quicker reaction times than they actually have.
EDIT: Quick elaboration. There's a saying in architecture, "You design a parking lot for a busy Saturday, not the day after Thanksgiving." Speed limits are a compromise. You likely can go faster often (though like I said, most people are not nearly as good drivers as they think they are), but you must consider the times when you cannot go faster when designing the road (night, rush hour, rain, etc.). Speed limits are designed to find a good compromise. Remember, if this were a conspiracy, you don't have to be speeding to get a ticket, you can be pulled over for "too fast for the conditions".
The thing to remember is that speed limits are not set by politicians, they are set by engineers.
You are correct, by the way, as far as I know, that the 55mph speed limit was originally an energy conservation thing. This was during the oil crisis of the 70s, when it was federally imposed. Ever since the federal mandate was lifted, speed limits have been creeping back up, but at very different rates in different states.
To give a comparison, in France freeway speed limits are roughly 80mph in dry weather and 70mph in rain (I say roughly because they are, of course, in metric.) In Belgium, and the Netherlands it's 75mph, although The Netherlands has introduced many variable speed limits (electronic signs based on congestion) and recently bumped it up to 80mph on certain rural stretches (rural by Dutch standards). Germany, of course, has no speed limits at all on many long-distance Autobahns (about 50% of the network), although in metropolitan areas, contrary to popular mythology in the US, they often do have speed limits, which go by the charmingly long-winded name of "Geschwindigkeitsbeschränkung," often shortened in colloquial speech to "Tempolimit." The de facto speed limit on the unrestricted Autobahns is 125mph, since that's the fastest unmodified German cars will go.
So did some technocratic bunch of engineers evaluate the conditions in each of these countries and decide that somehow some subtle difference of geography that Germans are capable of safely driving a full 65 mph faster than Hawaiians?
I doubt it.
May I also remind the reader that East Germany used to have a rigorously enforced 60mph limit that was rather promptly lifted after the reunification, which was by no means an event of particular relevance to traffic engineering.
Example 2: a small town declares with pride that all streets controlled by the city finally have limits of 35MPH or slower, even though there are several roads capable of much higher speeds.
“There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any
government has is the power to crack down on criminals.
Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them.
One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes
impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”
As a young driver, speed limits on open highways -- or simply the idea that an untrained, politically-appointed bureaucrat in Washington, DC has any insight into what's optimal for drivers on I-10 in West Texas -- were my very first encounter with the idea she's referring to.
This is so untrue I don't even know where to begin. The number of accidents that could be prevented if people would just slow down is amazing. Icy, rainy, foggy... going too fast is by far the most common cause of accidents.
http://ec.europa.eu/transport/wcm/road_safety/erso/knowledge...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/road-safety/8702111/How-...
I said this in another reply and I will say it again, speed limits are designed by engineers, not by "untrained, politically-appointed bureaucrats". Of all the things you could come down on the government for, this is one of those first-world problems that just makes you look uninformed.
Your mistake is in confusing "going too fast for conditions" with "going too fast for a sign at the side of the road." The relevant laws are more complex than your beliefs. Failure to maintain appropriate speed for conditions does indeed get people killed, but it has nothing to do with "speeding."
Under the wrong conditions, even driving 10 MPH below the speed limit can be suicidally reckless. Under the right conditions, driving at twice the speed limit confers negligible incremental risk.
I said this in another reply and I will say it again, speed limits are designed by engineers, not by "untrained, politically-appointed bureaucrats"
You can say it as much as you want, but this not being Harry Potter Land, it won't make it true. Speed limits are typically set by engineers by taking the 85th percentile speed into consideration, but it's trivial to find countless examples where local and state politics have dictated lower limits for the sake of revenue-raising, misguided ideas of what makes for safe driving conditions, or both.
Incidentally, do you propose that "too fast for conditions" be the law? I find that surprising, considering how much discretionary power that would put in the hands of the government.
The fact is, if you hit a person at 35 they have a much higher chance of dying than if you hit them at 25. We encourage people to drive slowly so that they have more time to react to unexpected conditions and that if they fail to react, other people are not injured. Speeding is like dumping toxic waste into the nearby river: pure selfishness.
It is the law. The fact that you're even asking this question suggests that I'm wasting my time arguing with you.
You need to consult your state's driver's handbook, rather than asking some random guy on HN. Chances are it uses almost the same phrasing you're asking about. Failing that, have a look at the Michigan State Police's site: http://www.michigan.gov/msp/0,4643,7-123-1593_30536_25802-16... . I didn't read the whole page but it seems to do a good job explaining the difference between prima facie speed limits and "basic speed law."
I find that surprising, considering how much discretionary power that would put in the hands of the government.
Artificially-low speed limits give them that discretion now, which is sort of the whole point of my mini-rant.
Yes I know it's the law. I should have been more clear:
Do you propose it be the exclusive law.
And the point of my reply is that speed limits are not artificially low, that's simply your contention, one that you have failed to provide any proof for.
I don't know. I'm not a traffic engineer, and that's the sort of question they would be best equipped to hash out. It certainly needs to be a component of the law, or a policeman would have no legal way to stop some lunatic who drives at the posted 75 MPH limit in a foggy blizzard.
I do know that "reasonable and prudent" was the exclusive rule on Montana's highways prior to the 55 MPH Federal NMSL law in the 1970s, and that they tried returning to it for a time after the NMSL was repealed. For whatever reason, it didn't work for them, and they went back to setting specific limits.
And the point of my reply is that speed limits are not artificially low, that's simply your contention, one that you have failed to provide any proof for.
Sorry, I'm not a librarian either. I'm satisfied that my position is correct and I have the same right (or lack thereof) to state it here that you do.
As far as our disagreement is concerned, it might help if we could drill down and find out exactly where our opinions diverge. Here are the premises I'm working from:
1) To optimize safe and efficient traffic flow, speed limits should be set by traffic engineers, and not by mayors, police chiefs, legislators, or soccer moms. (My main concern is highway speed limits, as I almost never find myself exceeding posted limits in populated areas, but I assert that this is true in all cases.)
2) However, not all speed limits are set by traffic engineers. It's indisputable that some are set for political reasons, and no, I am not going to "provide citations" for something this obvious. Subjectively, as my initial post in the thread stated, I'd go so far as to say that most limits are politically influenced. An organization such as www.motorists.org would be a better place to look for cases and statistics.
3) People who have the political authority to set or influence speed limits, and who are not qualified traffic engineers, almost always want lower limits than the engineers would advise setting for the conditions at hand.
From these I conclude that it cannot be the case that speed limits are always set at the optimal point for safe and efficient traffic flow. Experience as a driver suggests that speed limits are not commonly set at artificially high values. That leaves only one conclusion: that at least some speed limits are set artificially low.
Which specific assertion(s) do you disagree with, and why? I'd invite you to show this reply to your friends in traffic engineering as well, so we could see what areas they would agree/disagree with.
Only if you assume the driver has perfect knowledge of the nearby pedestrians, the road surface, what other road users are going to do before they do it, arbitrarily fast reaction speeds and flawless judgement. Oh, and brand new brakes.
Shit happens. Speeding makes it much worse when it does.
Statistics repeatedly fail to bear out your assertion. Promised increases in death rates that accompany increased highway speed limits essentially never materialize.
Modeling drivers as ideal gas particles whose collision rate is proportional to speed is simply wrong.
> Statistics repeatedly fail to bear out your assertion.
Except they don't: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s1108.p...
More interestingly: http://www.trb.org/Main/Blurbs/157220.aspx
I'll leave off the usual pedestrian fatality statistics here, because you seem not to be interested in that, and it's shooting fish in a barrel.
> Promised increases in death rates that accompany increased highway speed limits essentially never materialize.
From the second link's abstract:
...a speed limit increase from 55 to 65 mi/h on the average section would
be associated with a 24% increase in the probability of an occupant being
fatally injured, once a crash has occurred.
> Modeling drivers as ideal gas particles whose collision rate is proportional to speed is simply wrong.
Don't do that, then. It's not directly proportional to speed, but there is a positive correlation. If you're going to convince me that speed limits are pointless and irrelevant, you're going to need to explain away some pretty basic physics.
The reason this isn't a particularly great comparison is that driver training, car design and even the German attitude to driving are all built around the potential for high speeds.
Always good advice.
When the speed limit went up on
four stretches of road between Nephi and
Cedar City, accidents went down by 20 percent,
according to the three-year study by UDOT.
As a side note, when claiming statistics support your point of view, please cite those statistics. Keeps everyone honest. Thanks.
I grew up in Maine, I-95 while I was younger had a completely baseless speed limit of 65mph. North of Augusta there is an average of about 20 miles between exits and very few travelers, there is no reason what-so-ever to impose a 65mph speed limit.
I now live in Boston and I-95 north to Maine travels though New Hampshire (for a whopping ~10 miles). Everyone knows that you follow the letter of the law in regards to the speed limit in New Hampshire. Why? I assure you it has nothing to do with safety, just as the $2 toll has nothing to do with maintaining 10 miles of highway. The state farms income from that highway in the form of tolls and tickets.
I'll give you speed limits make sense in cities, but given the fact that I've lived in Boston for 6 years now and seen about 3 people pulled over for speeding in that time, it doesn't really appear to be much enforced. Highways on the other hand have absurdly low speed limits and are farmed for ticket income regularly.
>Example 2: a small town declares with pride that all streets controlled by the city finally have limits of 35MPH or slower, even though there are several roads capable of much higher speeds.
Other relevat comments that set the discussion:
>Or so simple as speeding when you drive? There are many laws which do not function as they should.
and
>By itself, speeding is a victimless crime: if you hit something or someone with your car, you were doing something wrong besides just speeding. The main idea behind speed limits is to "make criminals," in Rand's words. They are a tool that gives law enforcement a valid reason to pull over virtually anybody and everybody on the road. At the end of the day, the result is less respect for traffic laws and police in general, but more revenue for police departments, municipalities, and insurance companies.
So yes, it sounds to me like we're not limiting this to highways, but rather to the governments right to set things like speed limits and whether those limits are effective. Now, if you think that there should be a right to set speed limits in town but not on highways, we need to establish that.
You, yourself, included non-highways in this discussion. I respect your decision to exclude them but clearly you are limiting the scope of the discussion from what you personally set it at.
And of course the scope matter, the relevant facts change(i.e. the politically influenced decision to lower speed limits to 55 MPH) when you change the scope. This isn't a matter substance, it's a matter of deciding what we are all talking about. If you want to just talk about highways, you should do that, but clearly not everyone else feels we are talking exclusivly about highways or they wouldn't have brought it into the discussion.
The right answer is that you're a monster in BOTH scenarios, and you should never fucking speed.
Where speed limits are set arbitrarily or cannot be set at a consistently appropriate level, there is no moral consequence of exceeding them.
Thought experiment: A geriatric, possible senile driver runs his car into a traffic barrier at 5mph on a busy road. In my infinite wisdom I declare that 5mph is clearly too fast for geriatric, possible senile old men and set the speed limit to 3mph. Is it then immoral for you to exceed 3mph on this road?
How about 4mph? 5? Etc. up to arbitrary speed limit.
You're conflating driving at a certain speed with driving at a speed which is unsafe, which is purely a question of degree. 10mph may be marginally more dangerous than 5, but that doesn't make it immoral to drive at 10mph.
Therefore, if you drive at a speed which is unsafe and likely to result in your scenario above, you are morally responsible for your actions. But there is nothing immoral per se about an expert driver, in clear conditions, exceeding a speed limit while maintaining control of the vehicle and being aware of their surroundings.
Why must libertarians so egregiously misdefine common terms? Why are they so wilfully self-delusional?
Try keeping your kid home from public school without obtaining permission to withdraw them, and see what happens.
When an industry receives a government subsidy, how is that 'cracking down on criminals'?
Try not paying your share of the tax money that the government is turning over to the industry, and see what happens.
Perhaps we should ask the street-sweepers how effective they are at 'cracking down on criminals'?
Street maintenance is not an exercise of "power."
What about firefighters and paramedics, how are they turning the common citizen into a criminal?
Fire/paramedic services are not exercises of "power."
Permission is actually not that hard to get. Try talking to someone who home-schools their kids. As for 'see what happens', are you suggesting that the parents get jailed? Could you please cite some references? Because otherwise you're just using weasel words, leaving it 'out there' for the imagination, rather than actually specifying what happens.
I have to say also that it's a neat trick of yours to turn the entire educational system into a 'system to create criminals' simply because you think it's hard to homeschool.
Try not paying your share of the tax money that the government is turning over to the industry, and see what happens.
Uh... taxation is separate to subsidies. I know that libertarians try and turn everything into an argument about tax, but saying 'subsidies are an exercise of power making people criminals because... tax!' is just being childish. Rand's comment is saying that the government can only act through punishment, and clearly it does other things as well.
Hey, embassy staff helping out a citizen who has run into trouble in a foreign country... well, that's the evil of the government coming to the fore... because... tax!
Hey, government interpreters translating materials for new immigrants so they know their rights and responsibilities... well... that's the evil of the government coming to the fore... because... tax!
Hey, government-provided lawyers to represent you if you can't afford one... well... evil tax!
Street maintenance is not an exercise of "power."
It is a power the government has - which proves Rand's comment incorrect. Rand didn't say "Governments exercising power can only make criminals", she said "the only power a government has is to crack down on criminals".
Fire/paramedic services are not exercises of "power."
Ditto.
Libertarian arguments rely on the government being turned into a fantasy boogyman. All governments have problems, but how do you expect a pragmatic solution to them if you don't actually care about using truthful definitions?
Not when I was driving there, it wasn't. (This is called "showing my age," for the benefit of those who haven't had the opportunity to catch themselves doing that yet.)
Governments have many powers besides cracking down on criminals
What are some examples, apart from foreign policy where the basis of power is ultimately military?
Cleaning streets, putting out fires, educating, infrastructure...
As someone who's spent some time in places with no government I will say there are many examples, but punishing criminals is one I've become fond of.
Hint: try printing your own, and see how that goes.
The money supply is elastic and can't strictly be controlled by anyone. The government will artifically increase it by printing currency or loaning money, however, which has essentially the same effect.