Also within our reach is automated photographic enforcement. That would be
much easier and way more realistic to implement than somehow trying to manage different speed classes based on skill or whatever.
I still just don’t see a real problem with a static speed limit, or why something graduated by skill is called for and what it would help.
Having fines graduated by ‘skill’ would just be more of a declaration that it’s okay to break the law and speed if you’re a ‘better’ driver, whatever that means. It doesn’t make that much sense to me, the better drivers are already the ones choosing not to speed. Personally, I’d rather have more enforcement so that people just didn’t speed. I honestly hope that self-driving cars eliminate aggressive driving from our roads and let people relax while they travel. Speeds are already too high in a lot of places, and people have unrealistic expectations while they drive.
The last thing I want is some clowns claiming to be better drivers expecting to be allowed to drive 100mph through traffic. The very desire to driver faster that current speed limits is solid evidence in my book of a lack of driving wisdom, which I would call a lack of skill. The choices we make to avoid bad situations are more important than our reaction times or ability to recover from them. (Just like coding!)
I don’t know if that’s what you’re suggesting, because you didn’t make it clear, but that seems to be your implication. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Your suggestion is sounding a little to me like it could be a way for richer people to pay for more licensing to get traffic advantages. Speeding tickets already favor wealthy people and hurt poorer people disproportionately. The licenses we currently have don’t measure skill, they establish only the minimum standards needed for driving a motorcycle or car or 18 wheeler, no licensing in our system is capable of distinguishing the skills of different drivers.
It’s not really the case that the law is lumping everyone into the same bucket based on skill, I think that’s a misinterpretation, a specious framing but not what the law intended nor what it communicates. The speed limit is a declaration of what the safe speed of a given road and today’s vehicles are - again, because physics.
Speed limits are affected by popular opinion, and in some places, like in the western US where the speed limits have been hiked up to 80 mph, or even 85 in Texas, these limits have been raised in some locales by law makers in spite of the Highway Patrol’s objections and evidence that accidents and fatality rates are higher with the raised limits.
> It’s also incredibly sub-optimal, given that vast variance in drivers and vehicles.
So by what metric is it sub-optimal? How do you arrive at the conclusion that it’s “incredibly” sub-optimal? What does optimal mean, and what are you suggesting? I don’t get it yet. Are you saying more skilled drivers should be allowed to driver faster than other people, or just suggesting that fines should be lower? Who, exactly, is being harmed by speed limits, what is the damage being done, and what is the alternative? There are statistics showing increased rates of death in higher speed limit areas, so you need to have a pretty convincing argument that a thousand people being stuck at 70mph are being hurt more than someone getting killed.
I just don’t see it being realistic for some people to be allowed to drive much faster than others in traffic. This would add extra tension to already tense heavy traffic commutes, how does it solve anything? I suspect the unintended consequence of increasing the speed differential would be more road rage and more road fatalities.