A reflection about speeding

[supercowpowers]

Speed magnifies the forces delivered to an object when there is a collision. The more speed, the greater the forces.

Yet, it would feasible to build vehicles to better absord this energy.

My point was simply that it is easier to blame the drivers, than the car makers. Go figure!

So it's OK to hit stuff as long as your vehicle will protect you? Wow.

I don't drive at a speed I think I'd survive a crash from. I drive a speed that gives me time to react to what I can see and to maintain control with performance left over for evasive maneuvers like having to brake during a turn.

We blame drivers because it shouldn't be acceptable to crash. It's wasteful, and not everyone on or near the road has the protection of a vehicle around them.

[Someone]

Speed magnifies the forces delivered to an object when there is a collision. The more speed, the greater the forces.

Yet, it would feasible to build vehicles to better absord this energy.

My point was simply that it is easier to blame the drivers, than the car makers. Go figure!

So it's OK to hit stuff as long as your vehicle will protect you? Wow.

I don't drive at a speed I think I'd survive a crash from. I drive a speed that gives me time to react to what I can see and to maintain control with performance left over for evasive maneuvers like having to brake during a turn.

We blame drivers because it shouldn't be acceptable to crash. It's wasteful, and not everyone on or near the road has the protection of a vehicle around them.

Decided to delete my post.

[swarga]

Speed doesn't kill you. Alcohol doesn't kill you. Distractions don't kill you. Bad weather doesn't kill you. Other motorists don't kill you either. What is it then that will kill you?

Actually, it is sloth that will kill you. Consider the following scenario:

Mr. Safe N. Slow is driving slowly and (he believes) safely down a two-lane rural road with no passing zones. The posted limit is 55, but our protagonist is driving at a nice, safe 45 MPH, oblivious to the line of 20 cars stacked up behind him, drivers pounding their steering wheels in frustration. He refuses to use the turnouts or pull off the road, and the center stripe is a solid double yellow, so legally none of the stuck drivers can pass.

Finally, one of the stuck drivers gets fed up. He nips out across the double yellow center-line and begins to pass Mr. Slow. At that moment, a farm tractor pulls out of a driveway directly into the path of the passing car; they collide, killing the driver.

Mr. Slow, still completely oblivious, continues to putter along to his destination. If you ask Mr. Slow, he'll smugly brag about what a safe driver he is, proudly pointing to the fact that he has had no tickets or accidents for over 40 years. Meanwhile, an innocent driver is dead due to his sloth.

So yeah, it's not Speed that kills - it's Sloth.

[Someone]

Speed doesn't kill you. Alcohol doesn't kill you. Distractions don't kill you. Bad weather doesn't kill you. Other motorists don't kill you either. What is it then that will kill you?

Actually, it is sloth that will kill you. Consider the following scenario:

Mr. Safe N. Slow is driving slowly and (he believes) safely down a two-lane rural road with no passing zones. The posted limit is 55, but our protagonist is driving at a nice, safe 45 MPH, oblivious to the line of 20 cars stacked up behind him, drivers pounding their steering wheels in frustration. He refuses to use the turnouts or pull off the road, and the center stripe is a solid double yellow, so legally none of the stuck drivers can pass.

Finally, one of the stuck drivers gets fed up. He nips out across the double yellow center-line and begins to pass Mr. Slow. At that moment, a farm tractor pulls out of a driveway directly into the path of the passing car; they collide, killing the driver.

Mr. Slow, still completely oblivious, continues to putter along to his destination. If you ask Mr. Slow, he'll smugly brag about what a safe driver he is, proudly pointing to the fact that he has had no tickets or accidents for over 40 years. Meanwhile, an innocent driver is dead due to his sloth.

So yeah, it's not Speed that kills - it's Sloth.

Decided to delete my post.

[ivirovets]

Very True someone. The Long Island parkways were built when LI was just a leisurely vacation spot for rich people. They are not major commuter roads, and the death rates are very high due to the sharp corners and extremely short on ramps. Search "blood alley long island" on wikipedia.

[switch626]

Speed magnifies the forces delivered to an object when there is a collision. The more speed, the greater the forces.

Yet, it would feasible to build vehicles to better absord this energy.

My point was simply that it is easier to blame the drivers, than the car makers. Go figure!

To me, this idea makes no sense. The logic of blaming the car manufacturer for the accident or the gun maker for a shooting. This line of thinking may be profitable in court, but has little to do with the bigger picture. Do these products play a role in fatal accidents? Of course they do, but they are usually not to blame for the situation that kils someone.

I like to think of it in terms of a comment that I found while reading NTSB reports on aiplane accidents. Catastrophic accidents are usually a culmination of a series of smaller failures.Each is a contibuting factor that compliments the effect of the other factors. It's not the speed, or the design of the car, or an impaired driver, or the location of the accident. It is instead that a driver was in a speeding in a particular car in a particular place, and was hit in a certain way by an impaired driver, etc. These things add up to a catastrophic failure.

The reason I bristle a little at remarks like the original post and some supporrting comments is that this takes an attitude of no responsibility by the driver. When we decide to speed or not to, we willingly accept the possible outcomes of that decision. We are free to decide to obey or not obey certain rules of the road. To blame the car or car maker for the outcome of our decisions is one step away from saying that we should not be free to choose to drive the car (since we aren't responsible for our decision anyway).

This reminds me of the kind of logic that comes from smoking a fat doobie! It is flawed logic, that I would rather avoid. As for me, I would prefer to choose my freedom. If I screw up and die as a result of my actions, at least I was able to choose. Even if in doing so I chose the consequences, let the chips fall where they may.

[Raoul Duke]

Speed doesn't kill you. Alcohol doesn't kill you. Distractions don't kill you. Bad weather doesn't kill you. Other motorists don't kill you either. What is it then that will kill you?

Actually, it is sloth that will kill you. Consider the following scenario:

Mr. Safe N. Slow is driving slowly and (he believes) safely down a two-lane rural road with no passing zones. The posted limit is 55, but our protagonist is driving at a nice, safe 45 MPH, oblivious to the line of 20 cars stacked up behind him, drivers pounding their steering wheels in frustration. He refuses to use the turnouts or pull off the road, and the center stripe is a solid double yellow, so legally none of the stuck drivers can pass.

Finally, one of the stuck drivers gets fed up. He nips out across the double yellow center-line and begins to pass Mr. Slow. At that moment, a farm tractor pulls out of a driveway directly into the path of the passing car; they collide, killing the driver.

Mr. Slow, still completely oblivious, continues to putter along to his destination. If you ask Mr. Slow, he'll smugly brag about what a safe driver he is, proudly pointing to the fact that he has had no tickets or accidents for over 40 years. Meanwhile, an innocent driver is dead due to his sloth.

So yeah, it's not Speed that kills - it's Sloth.

That's a BS scenario to blame on sloth. The fault is clearly lies with the driver who crossed the line, violating traffic laws and common sense, to pass a slower vehicle.

[MarshVegas]

no, what kills people is lack of training. When you ask someone what happened during a crash they often say something like, "oh the car did this. Or the car did that. Or it just went out of control."

well a car doesn't just "go out of control." we have the safest cars on the road right now that have ever existed.

• crumple zones
• front air bags
• curtain air bags
• knee airbags
• seatbelt air bags
• thorax air bags
• pre-tensioning seatbelts
• active handling systems
• traction control
• anti-lock brakes
• collision detection systems
• active braking systems that apply the brakes before a crash
• adaptive cruise control
• lane departure prevention systems
• blind spot alerts
• cross-traffic alert
• reverse object detection sensors
• backup cameras
• hid headlights
• adaptive headlights
• anti-whiplash head rests
• completely padded interiors
• vehicle safety superstructures
• tire pressure monitoring systems

these are just some of the features available or standard on a modern car today.

Not to mention that tire technology, suspension technology and braking technology are the best they have ever been. Yet every year we still lose over 43,000 people to car crashes. This does not include the 100,000+ people that are injured, maimed or paralyzed every year from car crashes. To put this in perspective only about 8,000 people die every year from gun shots in the us.

The roads are safer for the most part than they have ever been. Crash barriers, impact absorbers, lights, reflective technology, adaptive road signs, etc., are on just about every road in america. Yet people are still dying.

What is the single constant throughout all of this?

The driver.

I teach high performance and advanced driving and i can tell you first hand that i have seen the driver's education books that are still in use today. They teach things that are flat out wrong. They teach people to do things that are contrary to the laws of physics. They teach people outdated driving techniques that should have been left to rot with the ford pinto. The copyrights in the "drive right" book that i saw at stonewall jackson high school in manassas had copyright updates going back to the 1950's in it. They are still teaching this crap to people.

Did you know that in va you don't even have to know how to parallel park to get your driver's license? I would venture to guess that most of the people on this board make the same mistakes that everyone else on the road makes.

Until we make massive reforms to driver education then speed limits will be set artificially low, cars will be more expensive, roads will cost more to make, insurance costs will be inflated and fatalities and injuries will remain where they are.

If i had my way everyone would have to go back to driver's education for a re-certification every five years. At this recertification you would have to prove mastery of accident avoidance, threshold braking, understeer correction and oversteer correction maneuvers. You would have to pass a written test, not multiple choice about basic vehicle dynamics, motoring courtesy, basic vehicle maintenance and basic traffic law.

Those obtaining their licenses for the first time would go through a four phase licensing program. Phase 1 would be all classroom instruction and hands-on basic vehicle maintenance. Phase 2 would be classroom instruction and hands on basic driving, with limited on-road out of class driving for daylight hours only with no passengers. Phase 3 would be more classroom instruction, accident avoidance and handling maneuvers, and limited on-road out of class driving from dawn to dusk with no passengers. Phase 4 would finish classroom instruction and testing of vehicle driving mastery, with limited driving from 4am - 11pm, with no passengers.

There would be two classes of licenses: Regular and advanced. A regular license would entitle you to drive at the psl with annual vehicle safety inspections. An advanced license would require testing every two years for all elements of driving mastery, both written and on-road. Advanced licensees would get a special license and tag, their vehicle would be safety inspected twice a year, but the tag would allow them unlimited access to the left lane, and a 30 percent increase in the psl in all 45 - 70 mph zones during fair weather, with strict enforcement. Advanced license holders would have reduced fines for exceeding the limit, but too many violations would get their advanced status revoked.

Only cars that could brake from 70-0 in less than a certain distance would be eligible for an advanced tag, and only a very limited number of trucks or suvs would be eligible.

If you are a regular license holder and are caught driving with an advanced tag, you'd be looking at instant suspension and vehicle towing.

With a regular license you would only be able to use the left lane for passing or turning left. Camping out in the left lane would be a hefty fine. Advanced licensees who didn't yield to overtaking drivers would be subject to the same fines. Overtaking drivers who don't follow at a safe distance when the overtaken driver cannot move would be subject to hefty fines as well.

If this country would adopt a system like this deaths and injuries from traffic crashes would drop to half or more of their current level. The .gov could make more money off of licensing and training, reduce cost of vehicle development, reduce consumer costs of insurance and reduce medical costs. Driving would be safer, traffic would be reduced, and lives would be saved.

But the problem with our society today is that nobody wants to accept personal responsibility for their actions. So people would rather continue to point the blame for deaths and injuries related to car crashes onto things like the car, the road or speed, rather than where the blame belongs. With the drivers.

of coarse! You teach drivers ed. Job security

[swarga]

That's a BS scenario to blame on sloth. The fault is clearly lies with the driver who crossed the line, violating traffic laws and common sense, to pass a slower vehicle.

Right, because everyone is a robot driver with infinite patience, and can tolerate an unlimited amount of BS from asshole drivers.

Now wake up from your fantasy. Drivers are human beings; it's in our nature to get pissed off at injustice and unfairness. And sometimes when people get sufficiently pissed off, they make poor judgment calls like passing in a no-passing zone. Trying to blame a human driver for getting fed up with being stuck behind Mr. Magoo is like trying to blame a little kid for darting out into the street while chasing a soccer ball; it's human nature and nothing you say is going to change it.

Just as responsible people drive more carefully in residential neighborhoods where kids play, Sloths should either drive at the normal speed of traffic or get the **** off the road before they kill someone.

[Raoul Duke]

That's a BS scenario to blame on sloth. The fault is clearly lies with the driver who crossed the line, violating traffic laws and common sense, to pass a slower vehicle.

Right, because everyone is a robot driver with infinite patience, and can tolerate an unlimited amount of BS from asshole drivers.

Now wake up from your fantasy. Drivers are human beings; it's in our nature to get pissed off at injustice and unfairness. And sometimes when people get sufficiently pissed off, they make poor judgment calls like passing in a no-passing zone. Trying to blame a human driver for getting fed up with being stuck behind Mr. Magoo is like trying to blame a little kid for darting out into the street while chasing a soccer ball; it's human nature and nothing you say is going to change it.

Just as responsible people drive more carefully in residential neighborhoods where kids play, Sloths should either drive at the normal speed of traffic or get the **** off the road before they kill someone.

Now you are playing the transfer the blame game. Blame everything/everyone else but the person at fault. I know its frustrating stuck behind someone puttering along well below the speed limit, but that never justifies or excuses the driver making a bad decision. The decision to cross the line and make an unsafe pass is squarely on the shoulders of the driver executing the manuever. You even acknowledged that when you said that when the driver gets pissed off they make poor judgement calls.

Don't make the mistake of comparing an adult driver with a child playing in the street. There is a world of difference between the two. The adult has years of experience and reasoning skills that a child doesn't yet posses.

Anyway, the original point I made, which seems to have gotten lost, is that speed magnifies the effects of any mishap.