People don't want that. Butts are getting bigger and people don't want to drive slow.
As a matter of fact I think forcing people to drive slower seems to cause more accidents. I mean moving away from 85th percentile engineering criteria - I mean laws making people drive slower ignoring engineering design.
That said, I'll bet even if emergency braking fails to prevent a collision, even slowing down a modest amount will pay off with significant crash energy reduction.
(energy goes up with square of velocity, so e = 1/2mv^2)
The solution is not to have laws dictating that people drive slower, but to engineer roads so that people naturally drive slower. Add some curves to roads. Add speed bumps in all residential streets and parking lots. Make roads narrower. Add more stop signs or traffic lights.
Curves to slow down? Sorry but a bunch of curves don't make you drive slower than the 100km/h / 65mph / 70mph speed limit. Germany's Autobahn has many many curves and many of those have no speed limit and you can take them easily at 150+ km/h. Seriously, buy a plane ticket and try it for yourself. It's awesome.
Stop signs are aggravating if people had to actually stop 'properly' at every single one. No wonder people do a rolling stop most of the time. Many European countries do this the right way and do not have stop signs everywhere but instead have the main road have right of way or rules. To bring up Germany as an example again: in many places where we need stops signs all around, they simply have a rule that says the person to the right is allowed to drive first.
Speed bumps do nothing, except very very locally. You can't have enough of them to actually slow down cars along any reasonably long stretch of road and adding so many that it would will get the locals to NIMBY them into oblivion. I can almost guarantee that. Like put two or three in front of that school, sure. Plaster the entire neighborhood with them? Forget it.
I'm not arguing that street design can't affect how fast people drive.
I'm saying "some curves" like the parent said won't do that magically all by itself.
And yes, I am very much arguing that putting a speed bump at the beginning of a 1 mile road will not do anything for at least 0.9 miles of that road. That's my point about "very locally". Anyone that argues differently I would call weird.
It's also funny how many things are super local. We already see people here argue about 85 or 90 with regards to Texas roads. Here in my neck of the woods they actually are gonna go from 100 to 110 km/h in some places and the radio was arguing how they can't imagine going that fast etc. Well guess what, the Autobahn is full of people going ~140 km/h (which is right smack middle between 85 and 90 mph actually) and it's absolutely normal and fine and if you go 140 and stay on the left lane people will honk at you to let them pass. One thing that comes with the Autobahn is that you always have to drive on the right-most lane available and no passing on the right is allowed. That would be insane at the allowed speeds (which in many places is unlimited).
Road traffic fatalities 2020:
Canada 1,745 for ~35 million people
Germany 2,562 for ~85 million people
US 39,007 for ~332 million people
Looks like Germany, with its unlimited speeds and no 4-way stop in sight is at ~30 deaths per million, while here it's ~50 and the US is at a whopping 117.5.
Having driven the autobahn, my theory is nobody has time to die - just a moment and they're already at their destination.
That said, I think the autobahn has pretty good engineering. None of the potholes and ripped up roads from road crews.
And none of the entitlement.
If two people want to speed, one going 70 in a 65, and one wanting to go 90 in a 65, they both are annoyed because they feel entitled to go that speed.
On the autobahn, if someone wants to go faster than you, he is allowed so you have to get out of the way, that's the rule.
I think the curves are actually part of it. But the other way around. The Autobahn in most places actually on purpose follows the landscape and has lots of curves going left and right. Not to slow people down but to keep people 'awake'.
Nothing is more boring than going in a straight line for 8 hours at a fixed 100km/h / 65 mph. The closest I personally have been to a traffic fatality was in Florida doing exactly this. So effing boring!
The most alert I have been is on the Autobahn going anywhere between 100km/h and 180km/h up and down through the hills around Kassel, going left and right. Having to slow down because someone is going "only 140km/h" on the left lane in front of you. Speeding back up. Going in a nice "tight" right turn up the hill while flooring it in 6th gear.
You don't need slower cars. Just efficient at X, Y, Z average speeds.
Cars are mostly getting bigger due to safety regulations though. The interiors are smaller than ever but the exteriors get bigger and bigger. The gap is being filled with crumple zones and airbags.
A law that prevents any FWD vehicle from going over 90 MPH, or offering significant insurance discounts, would go a long way towards reducing fatalities.
There is no reason for any casual motorist to be going 91+MPH on surface streets or highways.
How many fatalities are caused by cars traveling in excess of 90 mph? I don't know the number. I am sure it is greater than zero, but I would guess it isn't much larger than that (percentage wise)
I'm not sure why you picked 90 mph. But I think any arbitrary number is going to have an issue.
The speed isn't the issue. It is the difference in speed between the vehicles on the road at the same time as well as other factors. Consider than the fatality rate on the autobahn is about half of the rate as US.
What emergency do you have in mind where 90mph is too slow? The average driver is far, far more likely to cause another emergency at that speed than avoid one.
I think his idea is that there are times where the safest thing to do is to accelerate out of a dangerous situation on the road. Which is sort of true, but at those speeds most cars tend not to accelerate very quickly so I don't find it particularly convincing.
Yeah, I’m really skeptical just because at that speed human reaction times are so limited. It seems like the guys who said they should have to pay for seatbelts because if they crashed into a lake it might be hard to get out without drowning - true at least once, somewhere, but orders of magnitude less common than the times where a seatbelt kept someone alive.
In lots of situations speed doesn't really limit how much time you have to react, because it's something like "someone is merging into you without noticing you" or "you and someone on the other side of an empty lane both started to merge into it".
But ya, the statistical argument of how often does accelerating out really help, vs. often is someone driving too fast the cause of the danger, seems very relevant.
I was thinking of the only time in 3 decades of driving where speeding up made sense: I was on the 405 in LA and I was behind some guy who had a stack of mattresses poorly tied onto the back of a pickup truck. The top one flew surprisingly high up and I realized that the way it had caught the wind meant that if I braked it would land pretty close to me, so I went under instead and it landed a few car lengths behind me. At 45mph, in my early 20s, driving a sporty car that worked out but at 90mph I don’t think I’d have had time to process it quickly enough. I also note that this was once a long time ago where as I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been endangered by someone going much too fast or seen the aftermath (cars in buildings, upside down on the wrong side, etc.) so I would in a heartbeat take a world where the extreme speed outliers are gone.
Does emergencies make speeding legal for usual cars? I could imagine police cars or ambulances could be exempt from the rule. Also, adjusting the insurance cost based on the speed limiter seems a balanced policy to me regardless of those freeways.
Why imagine? Police cars, ambulances and fire engines already are exempt from speed limits. But only if they actually are rushing to an emergency with lights and horns on. They are also allowed to go through red traffic lights.
Except at night to not wake you up they might not have the horn blaring then. But they also understand how much faster to go, when to have the horn enabled even at night, know to approach a red light slowly even if they have right of way and you are supposed to let them pass etc.
I believe low speed limits were raised in Texas due to the number of drowsy driver accidents that were occurring due to the amount of time it took to transit the state at the lower speed limits. Everything is a trade-off.
Clearly the experienced highway engineers in charge balancing a ton of different variables to make the Texas road network function in accordance with its design goals should have sought your advice.
Indeed, I haven't. I'm from rather farther north. I have driven reasonably long distances at reasonably high speeds though. If you ask me whether I'd have rather save 30 minutes on a 9 hour drive or have the speed limit top out at 85* I'm definitely picking the latter. If you ask me if I'd rather have people driving through a community I'm living in at 90 mph or 85 mph I'm definitely picking the latter.
* El Paso to Dallas is 635 miles, driving the whole way at 85 mph would take 25 more minutes than driving the whole way at 90mph. The reality is even further in 85 mph's favor because you aren't able to sustain 90mph the whole way and we're only going slower when we would be able to.
Also prevent tailgating (have a minimum follow distance to car ahead based on speed, and auto-brake to match that minimum distance) and prevent going faster than the lane to your left while they are at it.
The minimum follow distance alone would prevent a LOT of crashes.
It’s pretty easy to do a sustained 120 mph in a Honda Accord for several hours on I-71 through Kentucky. (Not personal experience.)
A Toyota Prius can maintain ~90 mph on I-294 around Chicago. Anything above 95 mph degraded the tire traction to an unsafe level. (Personal experience.)
I don’t do that much anymore now that my manic episodes are under control and I’m better able to recognize my judgement is impaired.
I actually have to set up a car alert for when I go above 90, because the car is so quiet and powerful that I can easily go above 90 without realizing (obviously on the highway) .
New cars have improved tremendously.
I’m not sure where you are getting your talking point, but here in Texas, there are stretches of highway where people safely pass at 90-100 mph with no issue. We have a lot of gigantic, straight, barren countryside.
How many situations are there where going over 90mph is make or break? Unless you’re Keanu Reeves driving a bus improbably, that seems like a freakishly rare situation compared to the number of crashes caused by people incorrectly thinking they could safely drive that speed – and with so much energy involved, those are usually fatal.
on many highways, it doesn't feel that fast in at least parts of America because the lanes are so wide... specially in a car (I went much faster on motorcycles)
I know, but specifically what is this emergency situation where being able to go 120 is enough but 90 is not? I’ve spent plenty of time on fast freeways and even the ambulance drivers are rarely going that fast because it’s unsafe.
If you have a turbocharged v4 I a light vehicle it’s pretty dang easy to drive 100+ mph. If you’re paying attention, the road conditions are good, and you’re not aggressively tailgating or passing people, it’s relatively safe.
The problem is it doesn’t take much to become unsafe and physics is not very forgiving of bad judgement.
> The problem is it doesn’t take much to become unsafe and physics is not very forgiving of bad judgement.
This is pretty much it. All it takes is a pothole (you'll barely see it coming at that speed) or something else, like a deer or small animal. And oops, it's over.
tailgating at 100mph? I don't think that's what it's called... probably "reckless driving" or "aggressive driving" if you need to pass cars dangerously
Entirely depends on your definition of utility. For some of us it's a simple binary function: "will it get me from home to work in less than X minutes"
"Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" applies here. Good luck convincing people to give up their big cars. Or to double their trip length by driving half the speed.
This is something that law makers can actually achieve.
Significantly reducing the maximum speed of passenger vehicles would cause millions of Americans to suddenly have untenable commute times.
There are a handful of cities here with mass transit systems that aren't an absolute joke. Everyone who lives outside those cities relies on a car. What you're describing would be political suicide.
I can't see why the insurance industry hasn't done more to "get people to give up their big cars" - SUVs, in particular. They clearly have the actuarial data showing how much damage those do.
If they have the data and you don’t, why do you assume you’re in the right? Insurance isn’t interested in damage, they’re interested in liability, which is much more closely tied to personal injury than property damage. And it’d be impossible to claim SUV’s don’t help protect the individual most at risk of costing the insurance company money.
That's an interesting point, it could be they have a perverse incentive if their insured are well-protected and thus make smaller claims - but I'd think doing more damage to other vehicles would tend to cancel that out?
That might require some sort of collusion to accomplish. If only one company increases rates for SUV drivers, said drivers will just switch to a lower priced competitor.
Cars, at least American cars are so large because people want them that way. Yes there are some safety laws that require at some size and weight increases. But not much. My 2019 car isn't significantly larger or heavier than my 1992. It is larger and heavier(it also has some additional creature comforts) but the differences are fairly small.
One of the issues, is the same reason crowded rooms get nosier. As cars get larger people want even larger cars, to see over and around and feel safer.
Subcompacts sold today are much larger and heavier than what they used to be. Here are the lightest cars I could find for sale in North America in 2024 in 15 minutes of searching:
Honda Fit 1,070–1,280 kg (2,359–2,822 lb)
Mazda Miata 1,058 kg (2,332 lb)
Mitsubishi Mirage 955 kg (2,106 lb)
Many of the old standbys (Scion, Fiat 500, Mini, etc) have disappeared, or gone electric (which is fine, but they're quite heavy).
Safety standards have driven a lot of that. Air bags, impact beams, high hood line for pedestrian safety, rollover protection, ABS, etc all add weight, which disproportionately impacts small cars. An SUV with a V8 doesn't care, but it's a pretty significant thing to add a few hundred pounds to what used to be a 1500 lb subcompact. It requires a bigger engine to keep performance acceptable, and now you need bigger brakes for the extra power, a better suspension for the higher center of mass, and it all just snowballs.
And that's where consumer choice comes in: people look at a "subcompact", and find that they're heavy, inefficient, and expensive, which are exactly the opposite of what they want in a subcompact car. Once you've already made those concessions, you might as well buy something bigger.
Only in that massive marketing was done to promote large vehicle classes (both minivans and SUVs) over traditional passenger cars because of loopholes in safety and efficiency laws which made them either exempt or less-constrained by them, and—while some of those laws caught up—the resulting cultural impact was sticky.
It is a combination of factors: fuel standards (CAFE), consumers favoring larger cars, SUVs being safer than sedans in frontal collisions, limited choice for smaller cars as companies stop making them due to dropping demand, and yes, safety laws in part too.
Environmental laws too. small pickups don’t exist any more because they can’t meet the MPG requirements for their body size. Giant 3/4 Tons on the other hand? Take two.
Huh? I thought it's pretty clear that it comes from light trucks having different emission standards than regular cars, which makes them more profitable for auto makers.
Cars are large today because people buy them. Bigger seems to indicate prosperity and better value. People don't passionately buy modest vehicles (except maybe cars like the fiat 500 or mini cooper)
Personally I think this has an unfortunate effect on small pickup trucks. Think of toyota's "pickup" which was renamed tacoma and then got bigger every year.
Not to mention all these electronics make the car much more expensive and harder to repair.