The Cannonball Run record has been broken seven times in five weeks

I pitched an idea for punishment for this behavior a while back (I'm in Portland, where street racing is a major issue right now), and got downvoted like crazy for it, but I'll try again here. Each time they are caught, surgically remove one finger. Either they'll take the hint that people want them to stop, or if they keep it up they won't be able to grip the steering wheel. Win-win.

Nope. But I'm 100% confident I'm above the bottom tier.

Using cars at all isn’t the best we can possibly do.

> Very few people work at full productivity while driving their cars.

Very few people work at all while driving their cars; their commute is outside of their paid working hours. What is the economic cost of commuting time? This is a serious question. You’re not paid for non-work hours, so by choosing to live far away from your job, or work far away from where you live, you’re choosing to trade away your own free time, and choosing to pay more in gas (often, but not always, in return for lower rent/mortgage). There is no loss to the economy in terms of the time spent.

So what — exactly — is optimized economically by having higher speed limits? Where — exactly — would more money come from if the speed limits were raised for some people? And are you proposing to have the speed classes only apply while commuting to work, or at all times? What would be the justification for doing it at all times?

It would help if you’d elaborate on your proposal with real numbers. Do you want to drive at a higher speed than you can right now, or do you want people you believe to be unskilled to have to slow down compared to today? How fast do you want to drive? How much faster will your commute be? 50mph roads probably aren’t as common as 65mph highways. What do you imagine the actual speeds to be on the highway in your system?

Your calculus, as presented so far, is completely ignoring:

1- the economic costs of safety, or lack of it. Every crash can cost those involved tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it goes up when there’s serious hospital time involved. See the term “expected value” in statistics. You have to account for the risks and probabilities of a negative outcome in order to even know if your proposal can pay off.

2- the fact that drivers in a lower speed class would need to be able to react to the faster drivers; in effect they would need to be as skilled in order to share the same roads safely.

3- traffic, not the speed limit, is the limiting speed factor almost everywhere that long commutes exist.

But hey, if you’re proposing that we make new, separate roads for the multi-speed-class system, maybe I’m for it. Everyone who thinks they’re better drivers and wants to ignore the risks can go drive together on their own road.

> So between 1994 and 1996 all roads and vehicles became substantially safe?

No, but both the US interstates and the cars have together become substantially safer over the last 50 years.

I’m curious why you’ve dismissed the Highway Patrol? You’re not objective either, why are you ignoring the people who actually have to respond every time some idiot in a fast car who thinks he has “skill” loses traction and hits someone else or wraps himself around a telephone pole?

>> Using cars at all isn’t the best we can possibly do. > Granted. But any solutions to that are several orders of magnitude more expensive.

Strong disagree. Right now - the state of Covid work-from-home - is partial evidence. Other countries and some US cities like New York offer more evidence. Try to estimate the amount of private money spent on cars and car maintenance annually by all citizens, and guesstimate what we could buy in shared transportation resources, with the same amount of money. It would be extraordinarily difficult to change America's habits, but I don't buy that it would be more expensive. I'd argue the opposite, we are currently spending way more money than necessary in return for fictional ideas of personal freedom.

> I'd say ranges of 70 - 100 mph

Well, we're already there in much of the west, we already match speed limits on the Autobahn. In urban cities, I can't think of a highway I've ever commuted on in the east coast or west where it's possible to safely sustain > 70mph for long stretches, and I've never, in decades, had the opportunity to do that while commuting. Raising the speed limit simply wouldn't change that.

The radius of turns, and weather conditions are confounding factors for your wish. You're advocating speeds that don't leave adequate reaction times for unforseen situations, crap in the road, motorcycles, large trucks, or any number of things that regularly occur in the real world.

> Given the above, you'd arrive in 70% of the time at 100 mph, no?

Extremely unlikely, you're jumping to an invalid conclusion that raising the speed limit on the highway by a percentage would yield a proportional average travel reduction. To achieve that average, you typically have to peak much higher. You're not accounting for the off-freeway portion of your trip. And you'd have to perfectly sustain top speed the whole time, which is most places and in most traffic not possible, unless you're making assumptions you haven't explained yet.

I'm still not seeing the money. You've made a hand-wavy purely theoretical argument with logical gaps that somehow more money would appear in my pocket if only I could drive faster. How would that happen? What makes you think that people wouldn't respond by moving 30% further away for even cheaper housing (which would then rise in price due to increased demand)?

> I look at traffic as a failure of transportation policy.

Why? There are more cars on the road every year, that will automatically yield more traffic. And it's just as much a failure of transportation infrastructure, which was intentionally crippled by the lobbying of automakers in the US. It's also a failure of urban planning. We wouldn't have to commute if we lived closer. How would increasing speed limits as a policy fix traffic?

> Because they're substantially funded by speeding fines?

I believe that claim is false in most states. Can you provide a source please? The Highway Patrol in most states is primarily funded by taxes, and tickets in metropolitan areas are normally a small minority of their general fund. Often the revenue from fines goes to other city & state projects, and not back to the Highway Patrol.

Your theory fails to adequately explain why the Highway patrol is constantly begging people to slow down and be safe, posting signs about limits, being as obvious as possible about their speed monitoring, and not enforcing anywhere near as much as they could. You may want to take a few minutes to read the annual Highway Patrol report for your state and a few others. They are dominated by a focus on safety.

You're already trying to sell me a bridge with a gap in it. Call me completely unconvinced, let's agree to disagree.

>>> Using cars at all isn’t the best we can possibly do. >> Granted. But any solutions to that are several orders of magnitude more expensive.

> Strong disagree. Right now - the state of Covid work-from-home - is partial evidence. Other countries and some US cities like New York offer more evidence.

I'm not sure 25% unemployment and one of the densest American cities are applicable counterexamples.

> The radius of turns, and weather conditions are confounding factors for your wish. You're advocating speeds that don't leave adequate reaction times for unforseen situations, crap in the road, motorcycles, large trucks, or any number of things that regularly occur in the real world.

See earlier points about variability in vehicle performance, driver skill, and reaction times.

>> Given the above, you'd arrive in 70% of the time at 100 mph, no? > Extremely unlikely, you're jumping to an invalid conclusion that raising the speed limit on the highway by a percentage would yield a proportional average travel reduction. To achieve that average, you typically have to peak much higher. You're not accounting for the off-freeway portion of your trip.

I was assuming both of us could apply Amdahl's law.

> I'm still not seeing the money. You've made a hand-wavy purely theoretical argument with logical gaps that somehow more money would appear in my pocket if only I could drive faster. How would that happen? What makes you think that people wouldn't respond by moving 30% further away for even cheaper housing

You seem to be focused on individual money, as opposed to costs / benefits to the economy, in aggregate.

> Your theory fails to adequately explain why the Highway patrol is constantly begging people to slow down and be safe, posting signs about limits, being as obvious as possible about their speed monitoring, and not enforcing anywhere near as much as they could.

I believe we have very different views of law enforcement, and their motivations as a branch of executive government.

> Call me completely unconvinced, let's agree to disagree.

Probably for the best. This doesn't feel like a good faith debate at this point.