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Do you have a source for your factual statement about what happened when speed limits were increased? I ask, because you write, "My life is about science and data," and I would have liked to see some links to some science and data in your comment. I was just Googling around with searches on open-ended questions like "effect of speed limit changes," and I found some links to official reports and scientific studies

that suggest that raising speed limits increases the rate of road fatalities, at least on highways that are not designed with the features of the Interstate Highway System highways. But perhaps you have found other studies whose methodology you would like to explain here that reach a different conclusion.

Not worth my time. You are right. 65mph is killing people by the thousands. We should go back to 55 on Monday.

Please.

Right, exactly what I said about the HN cargo cult. So, this guy refutes me with a bunch of nonsense links to studies he admits are about "highways that are not designed with the features of the Interstate Highway System highways". Really? Any moron can understand that raising the speed limit on a road not designed to handle it will result in nothing good. I've travelled on the autobahn at 180 miles per hour (under the right conditions, etc.). I have driven the Nurburgring in an overpowered 911. None of our (US) highways are even remotely designed for that. Yet the transition from 55 to 65 or even 80 isn't a problem at all for the vast majority of our roads.

So I called the guy for doing exactly what the author of the 12 foot vs. 10 foot lane author is probably doing: Using bullshit or irrelevant papers to try to support a nonsense conclusion. And you cargo cult kids down vote me. Well done.

Think.

Here you go:

http://www.motorists.org/speed-limits/55-mph-study.pdf (references inside the PDF to the source data)

I am so glad someone other than me took the time to google this and post it here. People want everything spoon fed these days. They don't even want to take a few moments to say "Let me see if this guy has a point" and do a little research before running their mouths through the keyboard. Thank you for posting this limk.

How about it folks? You are not going to take back all those down votes and nonsense counterpoint posts, are you? You are not going to apologize and say, "Sorry, you were right", are you?

Of course you are not. You probably won't even take the time to read the PDF this person posted. No, it's much easier to hate those with opposing views and smash them down as hard as you can than to make an effort to understand and learn something.

What makes it so difficult to provide evidence for your own argument? I don't understand why you think that making a contrary point and then saying it "isn't worth your time" to corroborate the claim would persuade anybody.

Why do I have to? Why does everything have to be spoon fed?

Some of the most valuable learning I have done has been through researching topics out of my own interest, sometimes spurred by and idea or a couple of words I came across somewhere. You learn very little by being spoon fed. I am not here to spoon feed anyone.

If someone wants to refute what I said, take the time to go ascertain whether or not my point is valid. Googling is pretty easy. Until you (plural you) have done that, don't spew off a bunch of irrelevant nonsense that makes you (plural) look like a fool.

The punch line here is very simple: If you ready my original comment, there's NOTHING whatsoever on there that is false. Yet it was attacked mercilessly and down-voted to hell and back. And so was nearly every single comment I had to make after that to defend myself and my position.

Shooting the messenger is a sport around here.

And then someone really smart came along and he/she decided to take a few moments to actually and see if I was full of shit or not. And a link was posted. And, guess what, it corroborated absolutely everything I said about the transition from 55 to 65.

Yet nobody apologizes and the barrage of down-votes and attacks continues because, well, the kids just don't want to be wrong. Well, fuck you all. Grow up and go learn something.

HN sucks at this.

It is ruled by what I perceive to be a petulant mob of post-adolescents who just got free from Mommy and Daddy and now have to be right all the time in the face of reality. And don't get me started about the manure-filled ideas they soaked-up in college and took to be true without any thought, consideration or validation with reality at all.

Important? Not really. HN is mostly a waste of time as a participant exactly because of this mob of post-diaper members who make discussing anything just about impossible. The sport is to find holes in your comments and savagely attack them with comments, down votes or both. It's a true mob of bully's.

I've been pretty busy lately and have mostly ignored HN for probably months (don't really have a clue how long). I've picked up reading an article here and there from a quick browse of the first page but no discussions of any substance in a while. Frankly, not sure why I got into this thread. I'm on vacation, that must be why. And I actually regret it. I hate dealing with ignorant, entitled, petulant 20-somethings. And that's what HN is full of.

I'll phase myself back into read-only mode. I'll let the morons own the castle.

Of course this comment will be met with the usual dosage of savage come-backs and down votes. Have fun kids, whatever floats your boat.

Blood is running down the streets (just not literally). Traffic deaths are the top killer for kids under 15 in NYC; these aren't even people driving! They are killed by others, and often at speeds that are very, very likely to kill upon basically any collision.

If you value science and data, you can tell from a mile what an enormously stupid idea it is to have multi-ton cars roaming cities at even 20mph. Physics tells us it's deadly, everything tells us people are incompetent and unfit to drive, and the statistics bear out the very, very high expected costs.

I'd argue it can only be ignorance that would make you look at the tremendous body of evidence, both theorethically and statistically, and conclude

> People are not suicidal. They'll drive at whatever speed is safe and comfortable for them.

Something's always going to be the leading killer. If gang warfare picked up, would traffic suddenly be safer?

But that's what I'm saying? If the market is happy tomorrow, you might expect Yahoo to pick up some steam, but of course that doesn't make it any more of a viable company.

Indeed the relative comparisons are at the heart of the problem. They come so natural to humans. Everybody drives daily, how dangerous can it be? This very poster attests to the fact that he feels perfectly safe in a multi-ton steel vehicle moving at 65 mph, propelled forward by repeated explosions (well, that part is a bit hyperbole).

So while society tells you it's perfectly safe and why don't you think about those terrorists thousands of miles away, just looking at the absolute numbers for traffic related mortality tells us that the problem is very freaking huge.

> the absolute numbers for traffic related mortality tells us that the problem is very freaking huge

Certainly not. We keep track of statistics by vehicle-mile for a reason.

The most important figure to monitor though is not mortality/car-distance, but traffic mortality/population. Let me rephrase that in plain English. Care about creating a safer car driving environment, but care even much more about your loved ones surviving traffic in good health.

In addition to lowering mortality/car-distance, one can reduce traffic mortality/population in two significant ways: shifting traffic from car to safer means of transport, and lowering total car-distance. This holds true both on individual and society level.

I'm going to deliberately provocate now by comparing to a very sensitive number. Just hoping it will wake up at least someone.

Improve road infrastructure safety to Dutch standards? Prevent over four 9/11's per year (12850 deaths).

Improve transportation culture to Dutch standards? Prevent up to eight 9/11's per year (24007 deaths).

data sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_September_11...

People are not suicidal.

You don't have to be suicidal to be distractable, tired, or overconfident.

Edit: I also like how in the paragraph after you state your love of 'science and data', you promote vague, theoretical, self-reported anecdotal evidence (that isn't even part of a scientific study) as a basis for your argument.

You sound pretty smart (or at least you think you are).

If you are so interested in proving me wrong about the shift from 55 to 65 not having resulted in blood running down the streets (which is exactly what was predicted back then) go do the research yourself.

I don't think I need a research paper to know that AT WORST it made no difference at all. I was not in diapers when this happened. I had already been driving for a while. So, I went through the transition as and adult. Was exposed to all the "the sky is falling" crap and come out of the other side, years later, realizing these people were all full of it.

Had the transition been horrific the media would still be counting the dead every day just like they did for the Iraq war.

Don't believe me? Fine. Go figure it out. I don't need to waste my time on something I already know to be true.

My life is about science and data.

vs

I don't think I need a research paper to know that AT WORST it made no difference at all.

Then your life is not about science and data. If it was, you'd know that counterintutive findings happen all the time in science. For example, the Big Bang theory was famously named for the 'ridiculous example' presented by people trying to discredit that theory. Finding counterintuitive results are a major part of why we do scientific studies in the first place.

Had the transition been horrific the media would still be counting the dead every day

Shall I start counting the logical fallacies you're throwing out (as a 'lives science' guy, no less)? Why does something have to be carnage, sorry, 'blood running down the streets', to be 'worse'? This is how sensantionalist tabloid journalists talk, not reasoned scientists.

(or at least you think you are)

Ironically, I've had a partial scientific test done which indicates that yes, I am smart, regardless of whether or not I personally think so. Being smart is nice, but it's not everything. I was on track for 140ish - not a genius, but above average. But, given that you 'value science and data', you should probably be made aware of me having done a partial WAIS-R by a properly trained professional. It's not perfect, but it was independently run and it's better than self-reported anecdotal hypothetical 'data'.

I don't need to waste my time on something I already know to be true.

I'm wasn't trying to convince you one way or the other; I was just trying to remind you that danger isn't just from people being intentionally suicidal in the traffic control world.

I'm also calling you on your amazing lack of good scientific process, given you call yourself a 'science and data' person, and that you're trying to convince others. Throwing out a strong, opposing opinion ridiculing the initial point, then countering criticism with "I have nothing to prove!" is just poor form in general, let alone in science.

I wasn't making fun of you. I assumed you are smart and I said so.

I didn't come up with "blood running down the streets" politicians were actually saying such things back then to try to justify their position against raising the speed limit from 55 to 65. I don't know the true motivation behind them making such claims. My best guess is that the Federal Government exerted pressure by means of threatening to remove funding or some such thing. Pure conjecture on my part at this point.

My point is that plenty of people are mercilessly voting my comments down yet nobody is taking the time to learn a little history and research what I am saying. I don't need to because I was there and remember the idiocy of the entire thing. For about a year or so media outlets tried their best to push the "speed kills" and "65 is bad" agenda but reality somehow chose to defy them. Blood did not run dow the highway as politicians predicted. Not even close. And so after about a year or so they all stopped talking about it because everyone realized what the politicians were pushing was nonsense. We actually had less accidents with the increase in speed limit.

Anyhow, as i said elsewhere, HN is a cargo cult club. If i had come here fully aligned with the crowd and proclaimed how 10 foot wide lanes would save lives I'd collect a bunch of little votes and make all of you happy. Instead an asshole who dares to not be in line with y'all and for that I am personna non gratta. And that's sad. This isn't a place where opposing points of view are welcome at all.

I get it. I haven't been reading HN for probably a year. Now I remmber why I stopped.

Did you read the article?

It's talking about the effect of wide lanes on urban and suburban streets. You're talking about what happens on open highway. Completely different animals. He acknowledges as much, and that wider highway lanes are safer.

I did (friggin verbose!). My point is that people come out of the woodwork with "the sky is falling" messages all the time. More often than not they are full of crap and the opposite is true.

I'm not a kid any more. I am not easily impressed. I've seen too much of this over the years. Particularly around elections.

Living in Los Angeles I see people crossing the street ALL THE TIME without even looking for traffic. I mean, they just continue walking off the sidewalk as if cars did not even exist. Having traveled to many parts of the world and all corners of the US this has always been rather perplexing to me. It is somewhat unique to California, I think. To see people with such low apparent common sense is jaw dropping. Anywhere else in the world they'd be flattened in a microsecond. In Amsterdam you'd have 15 bikes pile on top of you. Unbelievable.

My point is that there are a ton of factors behind how people get hurt or die on and around roads. Someone else was far more eloquent than I care to be right now about how studies can be total garbage. He or she was far more gentle and politically correct than I am interested in being any more. Crap in Crap Out. Bias in Bias Out. That's what a lot of these studies are.

One can scaffold a bunch of bad conclusions and paragraphs from a bunch of crap studies and build a seemingly solid foundation for the conclusion that if we had less men wearing ties the mortality rate while riding bikes in Manhattan would go down. In other words, more crap out.

We have far more important things to worry about than to devote billions of dollars to repainting all of our streets. Take that money and use it to lift people out of poverty. Maybe we can do a study that shows how not spending money in bullshit projects supported by a maze of bullshit studies and, instead, using that money to truly support the education and growth of the economically disadvantaged might reduce mortality rates when the clueless cross the streets in Los Angeles?

Sorry for the tone. I find that as I get older I am far less tolerant of bullshit the might have tantalized me when I was a twenty-something. It's amazing what a few decades of perspective can reveal to you about people, politics, business and society. Not grumpy, just a realist. I think.

In NC, it's the law to stop for pedestrians in a crosswalk.

That said, I'm not sure how the chicken/egg situation worked out but I'm appalled by how pedestrians walk across the street. They just go without looking up from their phones.

The crosswalk by my work has added giant signs and flashing lights and you still see people blow thru at 40+ (speed limit is 25). I'm not sure if I'd be alive if I didn't look both ways before crossing. On the other hand, judging by how mad people are when they stop and you don't cross because someone else isn't stopping, it might not have been much of a gain.

Have you considered alerting the police to the most frequent times that people are blowing through it at those speeds so they can catch the people doing it? That's an incredibly unsafe experience, especially if you're meant to cross at a cross-walk (jay-walking is something different, of course, depending on local laws).

You should certainly look both ways at a cross-walk anyway, again because multi-ton vehicle; but, they should also follow those signs that say "stop here for crosswalk"

Even if people are not suicidal, they are incredibly bad at determining what is actually safe vs what they feel is safe. Very famously 93% of American drivers reported themselves above average in driving ability - math tells us that is impossible. How many times have you heard someome say they can drive just fine drunk? You've got people terrified of a hypothetical terrorist attack, yet will think nothing of texting and driving.

Yet you can somehow concluded that "if I'm not hearing about it (on the news no less!) it doesn't exist?"

I read the papers in the OP and the paper someone linked for you (you're the lazy one, not everyone else) and I still agree with the OP. I suspect you didn't read the papers in the OP because you're not talking about the same things the OP is. The raising the speed limit example is completely irrelevant to the OP's point - we should make certain urban roads narrower because that makes them more friendly to pedestrians and cyclists without making them more dangerous. You can bitch all you want but until you start discussing the article in a reasonable way you're going to get downvoted. Perhaps if HN pisses you off so much you should find a different community to participate in?

I love how HN continues to prove to be a place where only cargo cult mentality is rewarded. Anything outside of that is mercilessly down-voted by the 22 year olds that permeate this mono-cultural society.

It's OK, it's just funny. You still have a few years of reality before you actually get out of the cave and stop seeing the world through shadows on the walls, some of which were painted by your professors in college.

Tolerance is something most people love to talk about just to sound "right" and fit in. In practice intolerance and prejudice are far more common with people who preach it --and behave otherwise-- than in those who do not but rather choose to simply practice it.

Just the way it is.

On HN you can't have a viewpoint significantly opposite that of the underlying HN culture. You just can't.

Sure you can!

HN is generally more pro automobile so your stance is not "controversial" by the ethos here. I believe posts are getting downvoted because they are needlessly attacking. Your logical flaws don't help either.

Well, let's just say I disagree with you. There are no logical issues with my original comment about how a lot of these "the sky is falling" articles are nonsense supported nonsense often in support of underlying political motives. Can't say that's never happened before.

On the attack aspect. Look, HN is characterized by some really dumb back and forth discussions full of senseless nit-picking. I call these "programmer arguments" because it is often impossible to argue with some programmers because they are really good about arguing endlessly about utterly irrelevant minutiae. Like the comments in this thread that got into the idea that there's an argument to be made about drivers being more careful when they see bikers not wearing helmets. And the nonsense back and forth continues.

So yeah, I have grown quite intolerant to nonsense over the last five years or so. I've been really busy and have not read HN in a while. I just came back and see a bunch of the same thing and this intolerant cargo cult.

HN is at it's best when the discussions are contained to technology, startups, software or hardware development and related topics. There's a lot of expertise and value here when it comes to these topics.

The minute HN discussions deviate from that world it all derails. I have this vision -right or wrong- of a bunch of real-life ignorant 22 year olds brainwashed by their college professors desperately trying to play adult with their comments here. I'd be funny if it wasn't so stupid. They have little life experience yet have categorical opinions about everything and are incredibly intolerant of anything outside this cargo cult mentality.

Progress isn't made by those who swim with the current. You have to be willing to swim hard against it if you want to change the world, or at least your little corner of it. Going against the flow is not easy, as evidenced here. It would be called bullying in the real world. Or at least bigoted intolerant behavior.

Here's the good part: Despite what is said or done here, reality is as it is. And this they will eventually learn the hard way on the street, not here. I remember having a conversation about taxation with a 22 year old engineer who worked for me at one of my companies 15 years ago. He had swallowed-up the liberal coolaid whole. Nothing I could say could convince him he was wrong. Ten years later he called me up one day to thank me for what he learned from me (mostly in terms of engineering). He also mentioned he now understood the issues I used to point out regarding taxation. Why? Because he launched his own business and got the experience of now having to hold that cat by the tail.

HN is broken. Keep it to science, tech and startups and all is well. Everything else derails into nonsense kiddie bickering almost instantly.

"My life is about science" - but you refuse to post a link to any science.

That, and weirdly aggressive tone, is why you're being downvoted.

Just asking but do you honestly not know that?

Honestly know what?

I am not refusing to post anything. I plant a seed. I know the answer. Anyone can google it just as well as I might be able to. Why does everything have to be spoon fed?

So someone finally was interested enough to research my claims and post a link. Here it is:

http://www.motorists.org/speed-limits/55-mph-study.pdf

The article starts with this:

"In 1995 the Republican Congress repealed the 55-mile-per-hour federal speed limit law. At the time, the highway safety lobby and consumer advocacy groups made apocalyptic pre- dictions about 6,400 increased deaths and a million additional injuries if posted speed limits were raised. Ralph Nader even said that “history will never forgive Congress for this assault on the sanctity of human life.”

"...a million additional injuries..."

All bullshit as 20 years of history has proven.

So why the tone? Because this HN trait infuriates me.

Someone posts a factually accurate viewpoint that goes against the "HN culture" and they are mercilessly attacked here. It's bullying at it's best. The difference is that while most people just crumble and leave, I don't. And I am not shy about calling bullshit when I see it.

As to my choice to be short and to the point and even use colorful language. Well, I'd much rather listen to a man who presents facts with straight, even sometimes abrasive, speech out of the need to make an impression than waste any time listening to well-crafted, intellectually brilliant sounding, well articulated, refined, non-colorful, non-offensive language that is full of lies and manipulations...you know, like politicians or those on HN who take the time to write great sounding posts with lot's of links and research that, when you get right down to it, are hardly worth a handful of manure.

So there, someone, not me, was smart and inquisitive enough to ask: I wonder if this guy might have a point? And he or she posted a link to a pretty good PDF.

It echos exactly what I said: politicians, misinformed activists and even government agencies painted apocalyptic i ages of what would happen if the speed limit was raised. It was all nonsense. The exact opposite happened. And that is likely the case with this dumb 12 foot vs. 10 foot lane issue.

Of course, none of the HN down-vote kiddies are going to read this and say "Wow, this guy was right!", apologize and learn something.

No, instead they'll find some other justification for their hatred-driven down vote assault and move on to he next guy who dares to stand up for a truth that happens to go counter tho what makes HN kiddies feel good about themselves.

People, grow up.

Whoever peed in your Cheerios this morning clearly didn't know who they were messing with.