Their reasoning about the dangers of low speed limits make a lot of sense when you're looking at highways, but I don't think they'd necessarily apply to city or residential streets where there are frequent red lights, pedestrians, etc. Of course, the right thing to do there is probably to configure the roads so that people drive more slowly naturally by narrowing lanes, having trees on the side of the road, etc.
It doesn't even make any sense regarding highways. Ignoring their embarrassingly flawed standard for setting speed limits based on a percentile of speed limited traffic, there are so many other factors that go into the danger of traffic that are wholly and totally separate from speed. I would argue that the speed is exponentially less significant than the skill and training and experience of the drivers.
Take a comparison of the USA with Germany (where there are even roads that don't have a posted speed limit, which foreigners misunderstand for unlimited speed allowed). The USA's per capita automobile death rate is over twice as high as Germany's, in spite of speed limits in general being lower in Germany and there being far more and more generous roads in the USA. That's even with Germany being far more populated than the USA.
So you might say, well, Americans drive more. Statistically speaking though, you would think that more driving on wider, bigger roads and in less densely populated areas would lead to less accidents and not more. And then when you look at the statistics of automobile deaths per miles driven you get a 55% higher death rate in the USA than in Germany. There seems to be rather tenuous correlation between traffic danger and speed, at best.
The problem is horrible drivers, not speed. We should have a far more rigorous system of driving qualification and recertification. But who are we kidding, speed limits and enforcement have nothing whatsoever to do with safety.
Divest the conflict of interest between governmental coffers and speeding tickets and then you can maybe start having a case that the motivations are somehow related to safety. But that's a whole different issue called unfettered government corruption and graft.
> The USA's per capita automobile death rate is over twice as high as Germany's, in spite of speed limits in general being lower in Germany and there being far more and more generous roads in the USA. [...] Statistically speaking though, you would think that more driving on wider, bigger roads and in less densely populated areas would lead to less accidents and not more.
The relationship between forgiving roads and safety does not necessarily run in the direction you assume. People generally drive at a speed that feels safe, so a road that feels safe will have faster speeds. Faster speeds don't necessarily lead to more crashes, but they definitely lead to a higher rate of serious injuries and fatalities.
Given a difference in fatality rate between two developed countries, I'd definitely look at factors like traffic engineering before jumping to the conclusion that, say, Americans are just worse drivers than Germans.
I agree completely that traffic engineering is much better in Germany and makes a huge difference. Roads are better sign posted, on ramps are very generous.
As I mentioned elsewhere in Germany you are also not allowed to overtake on the right on the Autobahn. So there is a huge push for slow drivers to stay on the right and cars are nicely sorted by speed. Therefore you need to relatively rarely change lanes whereas in the US people will constantly change lanes on freeways especially in busy places like LA. That not only leads to higher risks and makes driving more aggravating, but also slows everyone down. It happens quite frequently here that I will be on a 3 lane freeway and there are three slow cars next to each other. That would be unthinkable. I believe that this allows the German Autobahn to serve more cars than freeways in the US while having in average fewer lanes. I always have this metaphor in my head where I think of it similarly to a Ethernet cable that can now submit more data because the protocol allows for fewer collisions etc.
I have been driving 8 years in Germany and then 9 years in the US.
In my experience, driving on US freeways requires less lane changes than on German autobahns. This is mostly due to the facts that in the US everybody is driving about the same speed; in Germany, as mentioned above, if you want to drive faster than the trucks but not fast enough to stay always left, you are constantly switching lanes to overtake people in the second lane. If you want to drive a speed that is lower than the 'general' second lane speed, you even need to go in and out from the truck-lane.
Furthermore, since it is OK to overtake on the right in the US you don't need to change lanes if your lane now goes a little faster than the lane on the left. Even though you shouldn't stay left for a prolonged time if you are [much] slower than the rest (even in the US), it is OK to be overtaken on the right.
Though, I am faster on German freeways (driving around 160-170km/h), I enjoy driving in the US more as it is generally more relaxed.
I somewhat doubt that the German autobahn rules are better with dealing with medium-high-traffic situations than US rules. Would be interesting to see actual data on this claim.
Given the large differences in standards, training, and attitudes about driving in the US vs. Germany. I would say calling American drivers as a whole, shittier, than German drivers is a not too far off assessment.
The data in the Wikipedia article you cite can also be sorted by road fatalities by 1 billion vehicle/kms. This accounts for variance in population, auto ownership, and amount of driving.
Country and traffic fatalities per 1b veh/kms.
United Arab Emirates 310
Brazil 55.9
Slovakia 24.5
South Korea 22.8
Bulgaria 19.1
Estonia 17.5
Cyprus 16.7
Czech Republic 15.7
Malaysia 13.8
Spain 8.5
New Zealand 8.3
Japan 8.3
Belgium 7.7
United States of America 7.6
Slovenia 7.6
Austria 6.9
France 6.3
Canada 6.1
Switzerland 5.6
Israel 5.2
Australia 5.2
Germany 4.9
Netherlands 4.9
Malta 4.9
Finland 4.7
United Kingdom 4.3
Iceland 3.8
Sweden 3.7
Ireland 3.4
Denmark 3.4
Norway 3.3
As usual, everyone in the Nordics is home counting bullion, so nothing going on there. But among the more vibrant quarters the U.S. doesn't seem especially dangerous.
The United Arab Emirates at 310 seems like an outlier but if you search for areb drift on youtube you can get a hang of what is really going on.
I live in Brasil, which, unsurprisingly ranks pretty high as well. Bad roads and unsafe vehicles explain part of the problem; but what I think accounts for the gist of it is something I haven't seen commented here: people speed because they want to be faster than other people. The speed limit merely makes this easier by limiting risk averse or society minded people.
I stoped driving long distances a year ago because it was stressing me out and because a car here is too expensive (compared to bus for long distances and taxi for short ones).
What I noticed in myself and in drivers around me was that traffic was regarded as a competition. Being faster was better. If someone was faster than you you'd be passive-aggressive towards him/her (mostly him). Brasil ranks 2nd (to last) on this list because of the way we view cars: they are really expensive, even in an expensive country such as ours. They are regarded as a life milestone, one of the main goal in our lives. They become a way of posing yourself as superior to the masses. This results in a more competitive traffic. Closing people off, tailgating and speeding (50% more than the limit - above this you risk losing your license and get fined for about $500) are the bread and butter of a good sum of our drivers. Our national speed limit is 120kmph (75mph).
Why do most people speed slightly? Is it because of the time they will save? I bet most don't even look at their watches while doing so. For a fixed distance, the speed x time is a hyperbole, which means diminishing returns for greater speeds for distances greater than the value of your speed. I posit that the gain is not time, but a better position at an acceptable risk in a competitive game we call transit.
In New Zealand, the posted speed limit is often too high for the road. If you drive the speed limit, YOU WILL CRASH AND DIE - frequently taking another car with you.
This is because:
1) Very few divided highways
2) Blanket speed limit of 100kph on open roads
3) Fun road obstacles - hairpin turns, single lane bridges, blind corners and no shoulder drops down cliffs.
Wow, I was thinking just that. It's the only place i've seen posting a 100km/h limit on a narrow, barely two lane winding road, hugging a cliff. It was almost like a dare. The speed I felt safe at was no more than 50 km/h
Interesting to see Germany with 4.9 below the US with 7.6. In Germany, long stretches of quite a few Autobahns do not have a speed-limit at all. There are, of course, other differences between driving in the US and in Germany.
source: I have been driving in both countries for more than 8 years; moved to the US little more than 8 years ago.
Per-capita is a bad way of measuring auto-fatalities.
The US is very spread out and requires a lot of driving. For example, just driving from SF to LA requires more driving than Cologne to Berlin.
Per mile driven is much better, and it narrows the US gap with other countries substantially. (The US is slightly lower than Japan, slightly higher than France.)
Per mile is much better, but also not that good. There are a lot of variables here. How much of driving is at freeway speeds versus how much at lower speeds (where even worse accidents are less likely to cause fatalities)? How good is trauma care in that country (which can turn what would be a fatality in country A into an injury in country B -- and note that part of how "good" trauma care is has to do with how remote from a hospital traffic accidents are)? How modern are vehicles in that country, and what percentage are what kinds of vehicles (air-bag equipped modern cars are much safer than older cars, which are in turn much safer than motorcycles)? What kind of intersection traffic control is there? How good are the roads?
It depends what you're trying to measure, no? I agree that for the point being made it's not ideal, but I think it's separately noteworthy that in the US, poor planning and more car-dependent lifestyles lead to a higher rate of traffic fatalities because of how much more Americans end up having to drive.
I don't think you're disagreeing with the article's premise. Your "horrible drivers" can include people who either drive far too fast or far too slow, thus creating a speed differential. Lt. Megge's idea concedes that you can't get the fast drivers to slow down, but maybe you can get the slow drivers to speed up.
(Aside, I agree 100% about more rigorous licensing. I spend 3 hrs on the highway each day; easily 80% of the drivers I see are utterly incompetent: texting, driving slow in the left lane, passing on the right, lights off at night, falling asleep, etc. Heck, I saw one driver eating out of a bowl with both hands.)
People who drive slow in the left lane are a problem, people who pass on the right are also a problem. Both these problems can exist independently. (Frustrated drivers don't have to pass on the right; on three-lane highways, people sometimes pass in the rightmost lane when the leftmost lane is free.)
Part of the idea behind the 85th percentile speed idea talked about in the article is that drivers understand the dangers around them and slow down accordingly. If there are a lot of pedestrians around, most drivers will slow down a lot. Not all of them, but that's why you ignore that last 15%.
The one thing the article doesn't mention though is a phenomena of traffic queuing at speed, which happens with average speed cameras. It supposedly increases the chances of collisions, because everyone is going at the same speed, not paying enough attention (because little is changing) and not maintaining enough stopping distance. I don't have citation for this unfortunately. Maybe someone else has a link to the study.
