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Speeding vs. law enforcement discussion

Reopened at the OP's request. Please keep this on topic and try to have respect for one another's opinions or it will be closed again. Thanks.
 
What about all of the speeding/racing that is portrayed in movies such as fast and the furious ? Don't you think that some people watching that movie will get the wrong idea?
 
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Speed trap: why fines are not the only solution

January 19, 2004

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(L-R) Assistant Commissioner (Traffic) Bob Hastings, Eric Howard from VicRoads and David Healy from the Transport Accident Commission, who oversee the speed crackdown.
Picture: Craig Sillitoe

Related:
- Sobriety for dummies
- Survival of the best-fitted
- State road toll - 1969 to 2003

Victoria's speeding sting is strict, but is it the only way to save lives? Gay Alcorn and Malcolm Schmidtke report.

Arrive alive! was barely noticed when it was launched just over two years ago in a bundle of bland Government strategies called Growing Victoria Together.

The rest are long forgotten, but the slim blue road safety manifesto was to prove more than the sum of its 17 dot points: it has launched the state into a radical experiment to slash the road toll by forcing citizens to slow down.

The Government is crowing because road fatalities have dropped since arrive alive! started - last year's toll of 334 deaths was the lowest on record.

"On all measures available to us, it is working," says Transport Minister Peter Batchelor.

But road statistics are volatile, and experts say the 16 per cent drop in deaths last year could prove to be a blip rather than a trend.

The media obsess over the daily fatality count, but the professionals worry at least as much about the number of accidents and serious injuries, and they have actually increased in the past two years.

The public rarely glimpses the complexities beyond the latest safety campaign - for instance, you actually have no greater chance of dying on the roads over the Christmas holiday period than at any other time.

Victoria's strategy relies on an intensity of surveillance by unmarked cameras never seen before in Australia.

Overwhelmingly, it is based on fining regular Joe drivers going a few kilometres over the limit. One psychologist calls it a classic "Pavlov's dog" technique: punish them, and they will learn.

Even if the strategy turns out to be as brilliantly successful as the Government hopes, experts say the state's favourite technique of forcing mass behavioural change to cut the road toll has just about reached its useful limit. And what the State Government has not told you is that other countries have achieved similar success without such punitive measures.

The speed campaign is controversial now and it caused lively debate within Government before it was implemented.

Two years on, though, we have slowed down, in the city at least.

VicRoads monitors speed and says we are now travelling, on average, three kilometres slower an hour in a 60km/h zone since arrive alive! was launched.

The talkback fever over speeding tickets - predictable when there were 1.3 million issued last year - is masking the Achilles heel of the state's road safety campaign, experts say. Our addiction to enforcement has meant that we have neglected proven, but more expensive, ways to reduce the road toll (such as fixing roadsides among the most dangerous in the world), as well as sidestepping politically sensitive measures (such as cracking down on manufacturers who import cars with fewer safety features than the same models sold in Europe).

"Victoria has taken a bigstick approach more than anywhere in the world."
IAN JOHNSTON, director, Monash University Accident Research Centre

The federal road safety action plan, for instance, estimates that safer roads - not changing driver behaviour - would have the biggest single impact on the road toll and could save more than 300 lives a year nationally.

Sensitive to the fact that the further you travel from the city, the more likely you are to die on the road, the State Government recently announced $10.7 million for country roadsides, but mundane things such as sealing shoulders on rural roads and putting guards around trees have never come close to having equal priority with enforcement.

"I'm going to say something I'll probably regret," says Ian Johnston, the director of Monash University's Accident Research Centre, which provided the research and arguments that underpin the Government's speed strategy. "It has been very convenient (for governments) to go along with the community belief that it's all about bad behaviour, because then you don't have to invest so much in infrastructure."

Victoria is different. It is the only place in the country and one of the few places in the world where photographing citizens in their cars is conducted in secret, with no warning that cameras are in use.

In South Australia (which has 14 speed cameras compared with more than 150 in Victoria), the Adelaide Advertiser newspaper publishes - with police co-operation - the sites of mobile cameras daily. NSW, with an aggressive camera program, still backs an "overt" rather than "covert" system. In the ACT, road safety head Robin Anderson has said the territory doesn't want secret cameras because "we would rather have people not committing the offence in the first place".

In countries such as Sweden and Britain, which boast the lowest road fatality rates in the world, speed cameras must be openly displayed, even painted bright yellow, and secretly filming drivers would be nearly as shocking as pointing a lens through the bedroom window.

Police figures obtained by The Age confirm the suspicions of indignant drivers pinged for inadvertently travelling a few kilometres an hour over the limit. Seventy-nine per cent of fines are issued to people travelling less than 10 km/h over the speed limit, no matter which zone they are in. Just 5 per cent go to the people flying between 15 and 24 km/h beyond the limit.

"Victoria has taken a big-stick approach more than anywhere in the world," says Professor Johnston. "That's part of the reason why it's created some controversy."

"Some controversy" means headlines accusing the Government of using speeding fines to boost revenue, and even hate mail for Johnston, a calmly spoken engineer and psychologist. But mostly, he and others say, Australians, and Victorians in particular, are a compliant lot. Johnston says, only half-joking: "I said in a lecture to a British parliamentary committee that we were a convict culture so we've gotten used to being beaten around the head."

Those more responsible than most for the head-beating are three earnest public servants, all males in their 50s: two engineers and a career policeman. They are utterly uninterested in "revenue raising" but in the late 1990s all of them judged, rightly or wrongly, that Victorians would cop the "big stick" again. It was VicRoads' general manager of road safety, Eric Howard, the Transport Accident Commission's general manager of road safety, David Healy, and then assistant commissioner (traffic) at the Victoria Police, Ray Shuey - a job now held by Bob Hastings - who commissioned the Monash team to come up with ways to reduce the road toll.

After big drops in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the toll in Victoria - and the rest of the country - flattened in the mid-1990s, then edged upwards until, by 2001, it was at a 10-year high of 444 deaths. That was still fewer than half the deaths of the peak in 1970, but it was a bad trend and it spiked despite intense booze bus enforcement and more speed cameras than any other state.

Monash had a plan: tackle speed hard. The centre proposed that the 60 km/h limit be abolished for one of 50 km/h, but the Government baulked, agreeing to introduce a 50 km/h zone in residential streets only. So Monash proposed a massive boost in enforcement to slow everyone down. They backed slashing the police "tolerance" for speeding before a ticket is issued, and bigger fines. Critically, they argued that the evidence suggested that the traditional placement of mobile cameras beside roads with a bad accident history should be abandoned for an "any time, anywhere" approach. Victoria had its first road toll target: a 20 per cent reduction by 2007.

Everyone talks the same language now, but when police floated the idea of reducing the "enforcement threshold", which means the grace police allow motorists travelling over the limit before they will be booked, the then chief executive at VicRoads, Colin Jordan, "went ape", according to one road safety source. "It was the end of civilisation as we know it." Mr Jordan, who left VicRoads for the RACV in mid-2001, declined to comment, but a spokeswoman pointed out that there was no reduction in the tolerance while he was at VicRoads.

The whole package was presented to the Government, which embraced it because the community was starting to worry about the road toll again.

As the measures were phased in, starting with a Transport Accident Commission "Wipe off 5" advertising campaign in August 2001, then with follow-up enforcement, the effect was instant. In the 1999-2000 financial year, 574,000 speeding fines were issued. Two years later, as the measures began, it was 907,000 fines, according to Justice Department figures. To the year to June last year, it jumped to 1,307,000 infringement notices, an unprecedented number in a state with 3.5 million registered vehicles.

Although the Government won't reveal how much it makes from speeding fines, the average fine is $150, which would mean almost $200 million in the past financial year, up from $86 million three years ago. The impact of such an effort has burst through everywhere: tucked away in the latest Justice Department annual report was a mention that the Perin Court, which deals with unpaid driving and parking fines, saw infringements rise 33 per cent in 2001-02, attributable in part "to the Government's road safety initiatives".

Even more dramatic was the next level of severity, where sheriff's officers enforce court orders, including unpaid fines; they can seize assets, suspend licences and imprison defaulters. Last year warrants more than doubled from 197,000 to 408,000. The sheriff's office was so busy that the department had to employ 48 new officers.

Road safety is a complex speciality, dominated by psychologists and engineers who often see the world quite differently from the rest of us. Professor Claes Tingvall, a former director of the Monash research centre and the head of traffic safety at the respected Swedish National Road Administration, muses about how depressed most road safety experts are, and how contemptuous of the ordinary citizen. "Maybe it sort of comes from a frustration that we know what is right, and why the hell don't those stupid people understand?" he says. No one has all the answers. There are too many imponderables as to why a particular person died travelling from one place to another, so much educated guesswork goes into why the road toll goes up or down.

The most contentious area is the most elusive, as speed can mean many things: going fast, travelling over the speed limit or, even if below it, scooting along too quickly on a wet road on a dark night in an unfamiliar area.

More than half of Victorian motorists drive over the limit, according to one recent study, and they barely think about it. Crucial to the Government's strategy was convincing people that what they were doing was deadly. When the Wipe off 5 campaign was launched by TAC chief executive Stephen Grant, he made a stunning statement: "If every Victorian reduced their average speed by 5 km/h, last year alone 95 lives could have been saved and more than 1300 serious injuries prevented." He was saying that a small drop in average speed would have slashed the death toll by a quarter. That's more than the arrive alive! target right there.

Even Victoria's toughest critics don't deny that speed plays a role in accidents, although they are sceptical of TAC claims that 40 per cent of crashes are speed-related - those kinds of figures vary and are based on police reports after they attend an accident scene. And it is unarguable that a vehicle's speed has a huge influence on how bad the injuries are; that's basic physics. But there is an argument about whether Victoria is over the top about speed. Would it be better, and would it garner more public support, if Victoria went all-out against fast drivers instead of crushing the regular motorist who slips a bit over the limit?

One particular gripe is the police's reduction in what they call their enforcement threshold. In a 60 km/h zone, there is a legislated 3 km/h tolerance for speed cameras, so you won't be booked for going 63 km/h or under. Before March last year, police set their own enforcement threshold at 10 km/h above the speed limit in every zone so, in reality, we had a 70 km/h speed limit in a 60 zone. Police won't say what the new enforcement speed is, but it's believed to be about 3 km/h in a 60 zone.

'We've tried to say 60 means 60 and 100 means 100," says the Victoria Police's Bob Hastings. "If you're going to say the posted speed is 60 but by way of grace we'll let you travel 70 before we do anything to you, then 70 becomes the default speed ... to me, 60 is 60 and what's the problem?"

More contentious is the sales job to persuade the public that the speed enforcement campaign against small-time speeders is based on solid evidence. In TAC television advertisements, on police websites, and in the arrive alive! strategy document, a little graph always turns up. It is the "crash risk by travel speed" graph, based on 1997 research at the Road Accident Research Unit at Adelaide University. That study looked at the travel speeds of vehicles involved in crashes in metropolitan Adelaide, compared the speeds with the average on those roads and concluded: "The risk of involvement in a casualty crash doubled with each 5 km/h increase in free travelling speed above 60 km/h."

That is the study that has been used to persuade the public that the whole campaign to target small-time speeders is justifiable. John Lambert, the manager of road safety for VicRoads until the mid-1990s and now an independent consultant, read the study, saw the accompanying TAC television campaign and thought it was "just bullshit". Lambert tried to get the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to investigate the TAC for misleading advertising, but he says they politely declined.

The traditional view - based on American studies of more than 20 years ago - was that the safest speed is about the speed most drivers are travelling at; the risk of an accident increased if you were going much slower, and increased even more if you were driving much faster than average.

Other studies suggested an increased risk for speeds over the limit, but nowhere near as great as the Adelaide research.

Lambert re-analysed the Adelaide figures and claimed that the traditional theory of the best speed being the average speed still applied, although his own graph also showed a dramatic jump in risk for people travelling more than 15 km/h over the limit in a 60 zone. In metropolitan areas, Lambert says, the greatest risk is at intersections, where people are turning or where they are speeding through red-light cameras, not on the stretches of road where private contractors set up mobile speed cameras.

"The question is, what is the appropriate safe speed to travel at on wide, straight sections of road without any crossroads?" Lambert asks. "It's very safe to do 70 km/h in a 60 zone, assuming it's not pouring with rain and all those things. The stats show there are few crashes there, it's just not an issue, but that's where they do all their enforcement. What they are doing is booking people who are driving very safely."

The RACV's head of public policy, Dr Ken Ogden, also doubts the Adelaide study's conclusions, although he accepts that speeding increases the risk of a crash to some extent. "The Wipe Off 5 campaign has had its day," he says. "The way the program has been rolled out to date has got up the public's nose, (and) we would like to see a bit of a refocus on the extreme and repeat offenders."

That's the view backed by the State Opposition. Liberal leader Robert Doyle was pilloried as irresponsible during the last election campaign for his support of a 10 per cent speed tolerance coupled with heavy fines for the worst speeders. But Doyle was actually presenting a conventional view - it is the Government's strategy that is radical.

Experts debate speed and crash risk for hours. Jack McLean, the Adelaide University researcher, says Lambert "starts from the conclusion that we're wrong and then claims to prove it. In fact, he doesn't prove it." His team did another study to estimate the effect of speed in the country and found similar results - for every 10 km/h over the limit, you double your risk of a crash. He agrees that if people travel much slower than the speed limit, they increase their risk, but says that the number of people driving so slowly is tiny, so it makes little difference.

The debate can seem arcane and the bottom line is that the road toll is down nationally - and more dramatically in Victoria. The road toll is about people, particularly young men, dying. It is about someone being badly brain damaged every eight days. Every four days, another Victorian becomes a quadriplegic because of a road accident.

The drop in the toll appears to be vindication for the Government's experiment. Experts caution that it is not statistically significant yet, but it is getting close. It is also too early to tell if it is the speed cameras that are the main factor, as the Government claims, or something else such as the dry weather, or improved pedestrian safety features. It is also too early to tell if the culture will really change, or slip back again if enforcement cannot be sustained.

Eric Howard, the head of road safety for VicRoads, is sure it's working and he thinks Victorians should be celebrating. "It's terribly disappointing how the debate's been hijacked by certain groups for political purposes," he says.

"We've just got to get the story out to the public what a fantastic impact this reduced speed of travel is having on road safety."

Howard and others know that average drivers are getting big fines - $125 and one demerit point for travelling less than 10 km/h over the limit - and he knows that the really dangerous drivers are going much faster than that. He tries to explain why it is necessary. There is a huge number of people going a little bit over. Add them all together, and the total risk of fatalities and serious injuries is at least as great as the havoc caused by people tearing along. He sighs: "How you get that across to the public I don't know."

The Adelaide research, he says, is "very credible", but he and others are not confident that the risk actually doubles for every 5 km/h over the limit and they want to see the Adelaide study replicated elsewhere.

The road toll is a strange, patchy thing. Up here, down there, brilliant if you look at it one way, not so good if you look at it another. The Victorian toll has dropped significantly over the past two years and, while the national rate has also decreased, Victoria has been the star.

But serious injuries from road accidents are actually increasing - in the year to September 2003, there were 6658 serious injuries in Victoria, more than 4500 of them in Melbourne. That was fewer than the year before, but more than there were in the bad old days of 2000-01 when there were 6550 serious injuries, defined as those needing hospital treatment.

The fact that fewer people are dying on the roads is mostly due to an improvement in the city (there were 43 fewer deaths in Melbourne last year compared with 2002). The country road toll was down slightly, but is on a long upward slant since at least 1999 and is now above where it was when arrive alive! started.

VicRoads' Eric Howard stares at a graph showing the toll in the country, which has 28 per cent of the population but 40 per cent of the road deaths. "See how we're not back to the starting point yet," he says, referring to the place on the graph when arrive alive! began. "Melbourne is masking a real problem ... we don't understand (why) is the truthful answer. It's a great worry for us."

In Melbourne, the success story, the numbers of drivers killed dipped slightly, but it was the drop in pedestrian and motorcyclist deaths that really made the difference. VicRoads, the TAC, the police and the Monash academics believe the strategy is working because, if people are slowing down in Melbourne, drivers are seeing pedestrians before they hit them.

If they do hit them, they are doing so at slower speeds and the child on the road or the drunk wandering on the street survives.

In the country, speed cameras can play a part, but the roads are too long, and the traffic too sparse, to really make a difference. The strategy of forcing behavioural change on drivers might well be at the end of its usefulness, especially in rural areas.

While Australia, and especially Victoria, boasts about its success in reducing the road toll since the 1970s, the truth is that every other motorised Western country has seen its road toll slip down steadily from about the same time, at slightly different rates. Australia's death rate went from 26.6 deaths for every 100,000 people a year to 8.9. Canada dropped from 26 to 9.5, New Zealand from 20 to 11.8 and Sweden from 14.3 to 6.2. Britain is 6.1, Germany is 8.5 and the United States is 14.8.

None of them used the "big stick" as much as Victoria, but whatever they did - superior roads and airbags in the US; safer cars and lower residential speed limits and an intense focus on roadside safety in Sweden and much of Europe - worked more or less.

In Canada, provinces such as British Columbia have actually removed their speed cameras after a public revolt.

Facing growing resentment in Britain, the Government there is considering reducing the penalties for minor speeding while boosting fines for the big speeders.

According to Ian Johnston from the Accident Research Centre, the international experience shows that anything works to get the road toll down, as long as what is done is based on evidence and is rigorously implemented. There's nothing much more Victoria can do to force its citizens to change their behaviour.

We're at the end of it, he says, and it is time to do something novel: put real effort and money into making roads and cars safer so that, no matter how the driver behaves, he or she has a chance of living if they make a mistake.

Johnston wants all the money raised from speeding put back into measures such as sealing rural roadsides, so that when a vehicle runs slightly off the road the driver can regain control.

"You're not going to solve the rural problem with the big stick. It's got to be solved by road infrastructure investment," he says.

"We know what to do, and it is going to cost money."

For more information, visit these websites:

# ARRIVE ALIVE


Its all a total load of shit, I ride a motorcycle and me worrying about speed cameras instead of riding to the conditions puts my life in danger every time I go out there.
By sticking to the limit strictly it forces me to be in amounst cars and without room to respond to rode conditions and having to worry about dickheads in 2 tonnes of steal watching in car dvds, changing radio stations, talking or texting on their mobile, eating or doing some other generally dumb ass thing changing lanes into me, not noticing if I have to hit the brakes hard etc etc.
I stay safe b staying the hell away from cars, speed is not the biggest risk to my safety, other road users are
 
Its all a total load of shit, I ride a motorcycle and me worrying about speed cameras instead of riding to the conditions puts my life in danger every time I go out there.

I don't get this. It's really not hard in a car or on a motorbike to judge roughly what speed you're going and adjust your acceleration accordingly. Perhaps adopt a slightly more calmer driving style and give other road users a little bit more room (to avoid the obvious 'danger' they pose) and you will have absolutely no need to even think of the speed cameras! Given the extreme psychological pressure this apparently puts on you, it will inevitably make the road a lot safer for you.

Seriously though (that was only half sarcastic btw, the simple way to avoid such worry and give you more time to react to other road user's idoicy is to slow up a bit), I agree with the driving to the conditions thing. Sometimes speed limits are a bit ridiculous and sometimes doing the speed limit would be ridiculous. Being indignant about them without considering the other side of the coin does you no credit though.

However, a couple of points that I think are critical to this discussion:
-Speed limits are the best device we have. They are the easiest and most practicable way of ensuring that road users drive in a relatively appropriate manner. I know of no other method to ensure that a) people stick to a speed that is relatively appropriate to the road and conditions and b) traffic moves at generally the same speed (which has already been pointed out to be a key factor).

-Speed exponentially increases reaction distance. This is what a lot of people seem not to get imho. A massive, massive part of braking distance is reaction time. Not how good the car is, not how much force your brake calipers can generate.

Example:

60kph is 16.7m/s.

80 kph is 22.2m/s.

A reasonable estimate of reaction time in a car is about .3s... add the additional time for your foot to go to the brake pedal plus the time to depress the brake and hit either the ABS or threshold brake, say 1s. (Bear in mind this is a low end estimate, most calculations of this use 1.5s because we're not all fucking superman no matter how good we think we are)

at 80kph you've travelled and extra 5.5m.

Now for the clincher:

Kinetic energy of a moving body is equal to half the mass multiplied by the velocity squared. That energy has to be dissipated by your brakes. So not only does going 20kph faster increase your reaction distance by 5.5m, it increases the energy to be dissipated by a factor of 1.7 (hurrah the power of math!). And thus your stopping distance increases by 70% as a rough estimate. So a speed increase of 33% results in a stopping distance increase in excess of 70% (extra reaction + extra energy).

So that was long and boring. But an amazing amount of people seem to think that they can stop faster than everyone else, or that they can stop in the same distance doing 60 or 80. Or that cos their tyres are new or that they 'drive to the conditions' this means they can stop just as well in the wet. FAIL.

I speed. I'm aware of this. And I do think, quite unjustifiably, that i'm a better driver than 90% of the people out there. But I do know as an indisputable, mathematically and logically verifiable FACT, that going faster increases the risk to me and everyone else out there. Simply by the virtue of the fact that speed exponentially increases my stopping distance if something unexpected happens. And I don't think anyone ever expects an accident.

One last thing i'd like to add. Remember how the energy to be dissipated in stopping distance is proportional to the square of the velocity? That applies to when you hit someone/something. So the car, wall or pedestrian has to absorb that extra amount of impulse you generate by going faster. But be more bitter about how other road users are far more dangerous than speed.
 
This is rally frustrating. No one is disputing the exponential increase in reaction time with increased speed. I majored in mathematics. I am not disputing the math involved. I never said that braking distance or reaction time are in a linear relationship to speed.

What I don't understand is this need to brake from 80 MPH to 0 MPH on a highway. Why would that happen? To avoid a car or accident, it will usually suffice to slow down a little, or maneuver around the obstacle, or some combination of both.

Also, we're still waiting for some one to provide some estimate of how many crashes / deaths happen on the large multi-lane highways that were caused by speeding. My contention is that very few are but, we cannot really know because the data is distorted and skewed.
 
i also do not understand this comment - can you explain how worrying about speed cameras endangers you?

alasdair

I think I know what he means. I discussed this at length in my blog post about this topic (written before I started this thread, and linked to in post 7 or something like that).

Because I am so concerned with spotting cops and checking my speedometer, I am paying less attention to the cars around me and to my driving.

Cruise control is not a good solution because it makes a boring and repetitive task even more boring and repetitive, and increases the risk of highway trance. In general I think cruise control takes people's minds off their driving and results in inattentiveness. People with Cruise control on tend to linger too long in the vicinity of another car unnecessarily.
 
Few years ago, back when I was young and restless, the following happened to me.


I left town in my sports car and I couldnt help but notice this ugly van with a big fat beardy man inside.

So I speed on the highway to my destination, shift cars left & right and being generaly an public danger.

I arrived to my destination, stressed out and exhausted. 2 traffic lights later I see the big fat beardy man pulling beside me..


Lesson: speed like a crazy idiot and arrive 2 minutes earlier to get caught at a traffic light by a guy who followed the speed limit and didnt endanger himself or others


Case closed.
 
^ that's a pretty good point.

unless you are driving long distances (and i can relate as i just drove from california to new york :) ), the incremental improvement in travel time just doesn't seem worth the risk of driving at higher speed to me.

if your commute is, say, 15 miles, the difference between driving at 55 and 85 is 5 minutes.

alasdair
 
yeah I agree that speeding isn't really worth it but I also completely agree with fjones. everyone is saying the same argument over and over, that speed increases damage, but nobody is arguing this. that is an obvious fact. but really, speeding alone isn't what's dangerous, it's driving reckless or just not knowing how to drive that's dangerous.

I was going 75 today in a 65 and a cop was sitting on the side looking for people to pull over but he didn't pull me over. why? because it's not that dangerous and they know it. but if i had been in a 55 zone he probably would have pulled me over. how is going 75 safe on one road but not the other? it's not, they'd just be able to make more money if it's 20 over rather than 10.
 
Few years ago, back when I was young and restless, the following happened to me.


I left town in my sports car and I couldnt help but notice this ugly van with a big fat beardy man inside.

So I speed on the highway to my destination, shift cars left & right and being generaly an public danger.

I arrived to my destination, stressed out and exhausted. 2 traffic lights later I see the big fat beardy man pulling beside me..


Lesson: speed like a crazy idiot and arrive 2 minutes earlier to get caught at a traffic light by a guy who followed the speed limit and didnt endanger himself or others


Case closed.

Case closed?

Are you insane? I am not talking about roads with traffic lights. Did you miss the entire conversation? How do you just show up after not posting for weeks in this thread, give a completely unrelated anecdote, and then say "case closed?"

?????????????????????????????

Seriously, ??????????????????

I already said weaving in and out of lanes is a bad idea. I made it very clear that I am talking about highways. It is rather weak on your part to intentionally miss the point and then make a remark like "case closed."

I think you do a great job in ecstasy discussion and are an excellent moderator there, but in this case, I am disappointed.
 
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^ that's a pretty good point.

unless you are driving long distances (and i can relate as i just drove from california to new york :) ), the incremental improvement in travel time just doesn't seem worth the risk of driving at higher speed to me.

if your commute is, say, 15 miles, the difference between driving at 55 and 85 is 5 minutes.

alasdair

Yes, he did make a good point. IF THE THREAD WERE ENTITLED, "Does speeding save time on a 5 minute trip in an area with traffic lights."

But since that is not what the thread is about, I will have to say, no, he most certainly did not make a good point. Making factually accurate statements of no relevance does NOT constitute "making a good point."

For example, "Albert Pujols is really good at baseball." Did I just make "a good point?" Hardly.
 
yeah I agree that speeding isn't really worth it but I also completely agree with fjones. everyone is saying the same argument over and over, that speed increases damage, but nobody is arguing this. that is an obvious fact. but really, speeding alone isn't what's dangerous, it's driving reckless or just not knowing how to drive that's dangerous.

I was going 75 today in a 65 and a cop was sitting on the side looking for people to pull over but he didn't pull me over. why? because it's not that dangerous and they know it. but if i had been in a 55 zone he probably would have pulled me over. how is going 75 safe on one road but not the other? it's not, they'd just be able to make more money if it's 20 over rather than 10.


You make a good point. I wish to preemptively respond to comments I know people are going to make in reply to what you said.

SOME roads might have reasons for lower speed limits. But many do not. Some roads have a 10 MPH drop in speed limit despite NO change in the road or conditions. One town in Virginia uses this as a large source of income for the town.

Also, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, NJ turnpike, and Ohio turnpike all have long stretches where they are long, flat, and straight, with few entrances or exits. There is no reason they can't have 80 MPH speed limits.
 
I think what Fjones is trying to say is that he is more concerned with speeding on highways and not local roads
 
This has got to be the longest argument that has come to no conclusion i have ever read. Is speeding dangerous? Yes and no, depending on variables. That's it.
 
Were you expecting a "conclusion?" There is no more likely to be a conclusion here than in any debate, whether it be abortion, gun control, drug policy, or the death penalty. I thought we were DISCUSSING the issue. I didn't realize a conclusion was expected or required.

I wish I could change the title of the thread, I didn't realize people would take it so literally.

The entire debate has centered on highway speeding. So, I think it is inappropriate for someone to come in and make a statement about weaving in and out of traffic on NON-highway roads and then declare "checkmate" or "case closed" as though he has made some grand point.

ZZyZx committed two logical fallacies in his post.

1) missing the point
2) Hasty generalization

He cited a sample size of ONE occurrence to make his point. Now, he had missed the point entirely anyway, but, assuming we try to address his point, since when does an anecdotal reference to ONE occurrence conclusively prove his point to where he can say "case closed?"

I mean, really, how would ZZyzx react if someone came into his forum and said, "I took ecstasy once, and it was HORRIBLE! Therefore, all ecstasy pills are horrible, CASE CLOSED!"

I think he would be unhappy.

So, to recap --

Yes, SOMETIMES weaving in and out of lanes will not save you time. Sometimes though, aggressive driving will save LOTS of time. It all depends.

But hat is beside the point, since I have already stated

1) We are talking about HIGHWAY speeding, and
2) I have already said that I agree that weaving in and out of lanes is dangerous and shouldn't be done.
 
Were you expecting a "conclusion?" There is no more likely to be a conclusion here than in any debate, whether it be abortion, gun control, drug policy, or the death penalty. I thought we were DISCUSSING the issue. I didn't realize a conclusion was expected or required.

I wish I could change the title of the thread, I didn't realize people would take it so literally.

The entire debate has centered on highway speeding. So, I think it is inappropriate for someone to come in and make a statement about weaving in and out of traffic on NON-highway roads and then declare "checkmate" or "case closed" as though he has made some grand point.

ZZyZx committed two logical fallacies in his post.

1) missing the point
2) Hasty generalization

He cited a sample size of ONE occurrence to make his point. Now, he had missed the point entirely anyway, but, assuming we try to address his point, since when does an anecdotal reference to ONE occurrence conclusively prove his point to where he can say "case closed?"

I mean, really, how would ZZyzx react if someone came into his forum and said, "I took ecstasy once, and it was HORRIBLE! Therefore, all ecstasy pills are horrible, CASE CLOSED!"

I think he would be unhappy.

So, to recap --

Yes, SOMETIMES weaving in and out of lanes will not save you time. Sometimes though, aggressive driving will save LOTS of time. It all depends.

But hat is beside the point, since I have already stated

1) We are talking about HIGHWAY speeding, and
2) I have already said that I agree that weaving in and out of lanes is dangerous and shouldn't be done.

Usually when a question is asked, one comes to a conclusion. I realise this is a debate, but i don't think I'm the only one who thinks this has gone past the rational argument, is speeding on a highway dangerous?

I thought that at any debate there comes a conclusion? If some people disagree, they disagree, if they agree they agree. Then surely that is a conclusion? There have been lots of opinions suggested and everyone seem to be in agreement with what you are stating, so then why the negative attitude to everyone who says something that you do not deem appropriate. You seem to have a problem with the fact that the speed limits are not to your liking in certain area's, yes? So then what are we now debating?
 
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