[techietaichi]

If I'm not driving 70-80 I feel like I'm walking, but 30 on a highway?! Pffffft! What a joke.

[Viktimize]

Originally Posted by E902009

You can't get rid of traffic division altogether. While you could drastically reduce speeding tickets by implementing a better speed zoning laws, you still have other violations that are legitimately dangerous to everyone else. People not slowing down for school zones, people who run red lights or stop signs, reckless driving (and there are a ton of them out there, including people who are on this board who consistently brag about drag racing others on the street). I would like to see these people heavily fined, as they're blatantly ignoring laws that could have very severe repercussions.

Absolutely! That was the main point, is that traffic enforcement should have absolutely nothing to do with revenue collection. That's why we have the CRA(or IRS down south). We don't need a revenue collection agency out collecting a speed tax. Rules of the road were designed for 2 purposes. 1. To ensure people can feel safe on the road, and 2. To maintain steady traffic flow. Ticketing based on a speed limit directly opposes those 2 purposes, because speeding has been proven time and time again to not be a factor in causation of accidents. And speed limits directly hinder smooth traffic flow.

[BrazilianBimmer]

Very informative video...nice narrator

[btbossman]

great vid!

[Thrakos]

Originally Posted by Viktimize

<snip>Ticketing based on a speed limit directly opposes those 2 purposes, because speeding has been proven time and time again to not be a factor in causation of accidents. And speed limits directly hinder smooth traffic flow.

Not entirely correct; It is a combination of inattention / driver distraction / driver impairment / inexperience and speed that cause collisions and crashes.

Remember, though, that the higher the speed, the less time you have to react. The average perception/reaction time for humans is 1.5seconds - for driving, we can break that down to 0.75s to perceive "trouble" and 0.75s to react to it; the higher the speed, the further you will have traveled in that 1.5 seconds. This of course can translate into a more severe crash/collision when something might have been avoidable all together.

(Yes, many other factors come into play (environmental / driver / vehicle condition(s)), but suffice it to say that speed is a factor... (though never the sole factor))

Your 2nd point is nonsensical. Are you suggesting that an absence of speed limits would reduce congestion?

[Viktimize]

Originally Posted by Thrakos

Not entirely correct; It is a combination of inattention / driver distraction / driver impairment / inexperience and speed that cause collisions and crashes.

Remember, though, that the higher the speed, the less time you have to react. The average perception/reaction time for humans is 1.5seconds - for driving, we can break that down to 0.75s to perceive "trouble" and 0.75s to react to it; the higher the speed, the further you will have traveled in that 1.5 seconds. This of course can translate into a more severe crash/collision when something might have been avoidable all together.

(Yes, many other factors come into play (environmental / driver / vehicle condition(s)), but suffice it to say that speed is a factor... (though never the sole factor))

Your 2nd point is nonsensical. Are you suggesting that an absence of speed limits would reduce congestion?

The statistics speak for themselves. The amount of speed induced accidents are so low they are not worth mentioning. Yes it is possible that excessive speed could be a factor in an accident. I was referring more to what is actually happening on the roads though, and in that light, speeding is not even a factor worth looking at.


The speed limit itself does cause congestion. That's a bit bold, as congestion is more a factor of people not driving in their correct lane. But if you have vehicles in both lanes, one travelling say 68km/h, and the other trying to pass at 72km/h(both drivers may think they are travelling at the 70km/h speed limit according to their speedo). Then you have vehicles behind them travelling at 75km/h. Suddenly you have a huge congestion problem.

With the absence of a speed limit(or a reasonably set speed limit that was an actual maximum and not the expected rate of travel), slower vehicles would move right, and faster vehicle would filter though and reduce congestion.

[vitriol]

Excellent video. Thanks for posting.

I'm not sure about anywhere else, but in California, speed limits are supposed to be based on empirical data that suggest what the most appropriate speed is. Any posted speed limit must be backed up by an engineering survey, which examines, among other things, the average speed at which traffic normally flows, regardless of the posted speed limit. Generally the posted speed limit should equal the 85th percentile of observed normal traffic speeds.

In other words, speed limits aren't supposed to be arbitrary; they should be based on the actual speed at which traffic tends to flow. Sadly that fact is often ignored by the courts and law enforcement agencies.

The law here also mandates that speeding tickets issued for exceeding the posted limit must be thrown out if a valid engineering study cannot be produced. Additionally, if a person requests a copy of the engineering study and is not given it within a certain period, his case must be dismissed. In Los Angeles county, the courts routinely ignore these rules, and it's necessary to make multiple appearances in court to argue one's case. And that assumes these rules are widely known, which they are not. It's a time-consuming, confusing, frustrating and intimidating process. So most people just end up paying the ticket, when legally they should not.

This is a long way of saying that the entire system is engineered to make it easy to get nabbed for speeding, and exceedingly difficult to defend one's self against the charge. Why? As the video points out, it's a massive source of revenue for local and state governments. We should all be alarmed when the government sets aside good public policy in favor of revenue collection.

Yes, excessive speed can be gravely dangerous, particularly when combined with other factors (like drinking, erratic driving, poor road conditions, etc). But posted speed limits -- at least in Calif., and apparently in BC too -- have little to do with safety.

Campaigns like the one espoused by this video -- in which a large-enough group of citizens make their voices heard -- do work. In the city of Los Angeles, "red light" cameras were once to be found everywhere. Setting aside the question of whether running red lights is dangerous, the problem with these cameras is that nearly all the revenue generated went to private companies that own the cameras! Thanks to websites like www.highwayrobbery.net, and the man who runs it, enough people in LA became outraged enough that the cameras were outlawed and decommissioned.

Anyway. Great video on an important topic.