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Comment by kennywinker | Hacker News Reader

Jesus christ, 140kph?!? That’s fast. Max speed limit where i live is 120kph and that feels too fast for most roads.

It's really not, especially on a highway. Makes me sad to read about more and more speed restrictions - there is nothing wrong with those in areas there cars and pedestrians cross, but seeing a highway with a 110 (or sometimes even 80) speed limit just feels stupid. Sometimes I'm happy to live in a place with relatively modest speeding fines (also, you have to speed A LOT to loose your license over it, it's a very rare occasion).

I feel like you live somewhere where highways are flat and straight. I don’t.

It was increased from 130km/h in the 21st century.

What's surprising/weird/hilarious is the traffic fatality rate before and after the change:

https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/Poland/mortality_traffic_ac...

I'll let you google when that was so as not to spoil it.

It looks like it changed in 2011? The trend was already decidedly downward from 2000 to 2011, so it’s hard to say what if any impact raising the speed limit had. Xkcd 552

Yes - the interesting bit is that this downward trend was stronger than the effect of this legislation.

Truth be told a lot of this has to do with most fatalities being that of pedestrians. Personally I witnessed two such accidents, fortunately minor ones. Both times it was a pedestrian crossing on their green, but the car turning right also having green.

For Americans, 120 kph is ~75mph and 140kph is ~85mph. I think there is a single road in the US with an 85 speed limit, and only some states use 75-80.

I’ve definitely driven 85mph on the I10 in texas. The roads are flat and straight, so it almost makes sense - but you have basically zero margin for error at those speeds. If I recall, the road fatality numbers for texas aren’t exactly good.

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