GRA said:
Stoaty said:
GRA said:
We tried a national 55 mph limit, and look how well that worked (ca. 15-18% compliance).
Yes, it only saved an estimated 20,000-30,000 lives. Absolutely awful!
See: http://www.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/enforce/Speed_Forum_Presentations/Ferguson.pdf
Sure, it saved lives, and people hated it and forced the government to get rid of it. Obviously, the reduction in deaths and injuries wasn't considered worth the loss in time by the majority of the public (feel free to calculate how many extra years of people's lives were spent driving at 55 mph instead of at a higher speed), since time spent is the one thing we can't recover. Higher limits don't preclude any individual from driving slower if they chose, provided they don't impede anyone else.
And remember, that's 20K+ lives in just 4 years! To put it in perspective, Osama Bin Laden, had he been sophisticated enough to convince Congress to raise the national speed limit 10 mph more, would have killed and kept on killing many multiples more Americans than the 9/11 attacks. And to just say well, 5000 or 6000 lives / year, we just don't want to waste OUR time to save them.
Stoaty also referred to the NHTSA report, which is still compelling even ten years after it was compiled.
"The relationship between vehicle speed and crash severity is unequivocal and based on the laws of physics." Pretty obvious, but lost on a significant group. Two pages later, the Probability of Fatality graph, which shows that your probability of death increases exponentially, by a factor of 4, if not more according to an earlier study. I didn't know it was that dramatic and it is stunning. At 71 mph, it is certain death, at 60 mph, you've got a 50-50 chance. At 30 mph, you don't even have to worry about it. The report also mentioned that after the limit was raised up to 65 mph, the number of drivers exceeding 65 mph increased 48%, once again proving the obvious, that many people go 10 mph over the limit with little fear of penalty, and more ominously increasing the standard deviation in speed by 0.7 mph, which is cited as a valid factor in traffic accidents.
It is just a mathematical inevitability, at 10 seconds / mile between 65 mph and 55 mph, you're really not going to save much time over a short commute. As an extreme example, back in the day, you could drive to the store 2.5 miles away, with two or three lights, I could run there, and you'd get there maybe five minutes quicker. You've got to go very fast for a long time to save any real time, but there could be a price to pay, as the following somewhat OT story points out.
Two girls went to college about 200 miles from home. They liked to come back and visit over the weekends, so late one night they were driving back at 90 mph or so, with essentially no traffic on the road. A tire blew out, of course the driver lost control at that speed, they hit a tree, and both were killed. But that's not all. Then there were the lawsuits, against the tire manufacturer, against the driver's estate from the other girl's parents, and in the end of course essentially nothing was accomplished. But it took such a toll on the driver's mom that it both figuratively and literally killed her in the following months and years as she was devastated. These three were all fine members of society, with great potential, that were lost in this one incident. And really no matter a person's standing in the society, they shouldn't be killed in a car crash.
One other detail here that has been overlooked is the research done by RonDawg, pointing out that the HOV lane was ending a couple hundred feet ahead, and the thus absurd claim by the OP that the lane was open for "5 miles."
The debate though between GRA and wwhitney though is valid for HOV lanes, with wwhitney winning the debate with overwhelming facts and logical interpretation of the law. GRA cited 21656, which starts off with "On a two lane highway," which clearly isn't the case here or on any of the other expressways. And as much as GRA apparently wishes, citing CVC 22351, the traffic flow argument is not valid for anything over the posted speed limit, which is extremely clearly mandated in the traffic law right before it: "CVC 22350. No person shall drive a vehicle upon a highway at a speed greater than is reasonable or prudent having due regard for weather, visibility, the traffic on, and the surface and width of, the highway, and in no event at a speed which endangers the safety of persons or property. 9/20/1963,"
unless you can show there was no traffic speed survey within the five year period and what the 85th percentile speed was so that essentially a jurisdiction hadn't set up a speed trap. See this link for a pretty good example: http://www.expertlaw.com/forums/showthread.php?t=182625