I found this very entertaining. However he also forgot to include anticipated delays from speeding tickets. I'm sure there are other things that should have been factored in as well, such as sometimes increased waits at lights because you arrived earlier at it, so 25 or 65 would make no difference in how long it takes to get to the ither side of the light.
Speeding Slows You Down (By a Lot)
101–110 of 133 posts
Re: Speeding Slows You Down (By a Lot)
#102The safest driving speed on busy roads is the speed everyone else is going. If everyone would drive this way, overtaking accidents (often very serious injury-wise) would be eliminated. This means slow drivers are just as dangerous as fast drivers, and also points to why self-driving cars would greatly reduce highway accidents. Assuming they'd all be monitoring each other's speeds, they could coordinate like swarms of…
In my country (the UK), the penalties for driving dangerously due to being too slow are usually greater than the penalties for speeding. Being unreasonably slow could make other drivers more likely to overtake and have a head-on collision, or hit other cars when re-merging back onto their side.
Single-track country roads are the most problematic, though, as everyone has a different idea of what the safe speed is - and the limit is as high as 60 miles/hour! I wouldn't be against simply reducing the national speed limit for roads without markings to 30, so that at least then people could be reasonably expected to drive at that speed, rather than at an unspecified speed anywhere up to 60.
Re: Speeding Slows You Down (By a Lot)
#103Why would you add the lost life expectancy to the length of the trip? That doesn’t make any mathematical sense to me. Edit (this might be wrong, see Edit 2 below -- I'm leaving this as is because otherwise, some of the responses don't make sense): I noticed that the calculation is wrong even within the article's own logic. Supposedly, this calculates "the expected length of the trip (including dead time) at different…
Even if you don't want to treat increased expected loss of life as the same as time saved, it does seem like this could be a good way of (ahem) driving home how much you're risking by driving faster.
Re: Speeding Slows You Down (By a Lot)
#104Note that there are some types of accidents whose probability goes down the faster you go. An example would be getting hit head on by someone who veered out of the opposite lane into yours. The probability of being in that kind of accident goes up as the number of cars that you pass in the opposite direction goes up. Without loss of generality we can assume that there are no entrances or exits on the other lane betwe…
The closing speed between you and the swerver is almost certainly positively correlated with collision rate. Given that the base rate of even seeing someone swerve into opposing traffic is so low, I'd expect that effect to dominate. Even if not, severity of injury definitely strongly positively correlates with collision speed.
and also assumes reaction time speeds up proportionally with speed. it's the opposite
Re: Speeding Slows You Down (By a Lot)
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Of course, you should always be in the right lanes except for passing. First, I should note that I 100% agree. However, as the highways have become more crowded, it has become less practical to actually adhere to this. If I'm going 70MPH (the prevailing speed on the NYS highways where the legal speed limit is 65MPH tends to be somewhere between 70 and 78MPH), and there are a half-dozen cars going 60MPH in the right…
The way I like to think about is this: If I see a maniac looming in my rearview mirror, where do I want that driver to be? Surely not bottled up behind me, where they can cause all kinds of trouble. I want them out in front of me, where I can keep an eye on them and where I control the distance between us. Furthermore, I would like to put this nutjob in front of me as quickly and as cleanly as possible. Fortunately t…
Exactly. Cars who want to go faster than me: I want them ahead of me.
For the same reason, I want cars who wish to go more slowly than I do to be behind me.
Re: Speeding Slows You Down (By a Lot)
#106While the methods in this post may not be a super accurate depiction of reality.. I did find it entertaining. Additionally I agree generally with the point the post is making. It is shocking to me that we accept so whole heartedly the risk associated with driving when, comparatively, it is shockingly unsafe relative to other modes of transportation. In the US somewhere around 41,000 people die per year from traffic a…
i just spent three hours on the bus today and i would much rather have spent an hour in a car instead, though my risk of dying would surely be higher there are a lot of places within 100 km of my house that i'd enjoy visiting but where public transport doesn't go. if i had a car, i could go there easily. if that means shortening my life expectancy by 20 minutes, that seems like a worthwhile tradeoff. the risk i'd be…
Bus, specifically, has the worst UX of both worlds. You still get the unreliability of being on road (so still getting/contributing traffic jams) and the suffocation of train (due to being crowded public transportation). I mostly avoid it in favor of trains or cars, or even motorbikes since it's ubiquitous in my country, unless that's literally the only option I can get.
Re: Speeding Slows You Down (By a Lot)
#107While the methods in this post may not be a super accurate depiction of reality.. I did find it entertaining. Additionally I agree generally with the point the post is making. It is shocking to me that we accept so whole heartedly the risk associated with driving when, comparatively, it is shockingly unsafe relative to other modes of transportation. In the US somewhere around 41,000 people die per year from traffic a…
> If you accidentally kill somebody on a bike you’re likely to serve prison time for manslaughter.
In the US, I’d bet heavily against this outcome (provided you were sober).
Re: Speeding Slows You Down (By a Lot)
#108It is funny how much people correlate speed with death rate
Better correlate death rate with Time spent on the road
Re: Speeding Slows You Down (By a Lot)
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a total lack of "lane discipline" (as Clarkson would say) in the US. In fact I'd argue that it's not a lack of discipline, but just a lack of understanding of how you should drive on a highway. People tend to migrate to the "fast" lanes (the left), so you naturally end up with people either passing on the right or tailgating them. Of course, you should always be in the right lanes except for passing. I do won…
> Of course, you should always be in the right lanes except for passing. I used to adhere to this but it does not work in practice. Right lanes have the highest churn-- people getting off, people getting on. If you're not planning to do either, you have no business being on that side of the road. This idea about left lanes only being for passing only ever works when you're overtaking a tractor doing 15mph on a countr…
I couldn't disagree more strongly :). I always adhere by "keep right except to pass" and it works fine. I also move into the left lane preemptively while approaching an on ramp to give any traffic entering the highway room to merge. I'll be honest, I usually set my cruise control about 10% over the speed limit, because I find I can minimize the number of times I have to change speed this way. Decelerating only to accelerate again wastes fuel so I do whatever I can to maintain a constant speed, but I also want to get there ASAP. So 10% over seems to be the sweet spot--sometimes I'm overtaking, sometimes I'm being overtaken, but I rarely have to disengage cruise.
EDIT: I also drive with two hands on the wheel, don't listen to the radio, and don't play with my phone.
Re: Speeding Slows You Down (By a Lot)
#110While the methods in this post may not be a super accurate depiction of reality.. I did find it entertaining. Additionally I agree generally with the point the post is making. It is shocking to me that we accept so whole heartedly the risk associated with driving when, comparatively, it is shockingly unsafe relative to other modes of transportation. In the US somewhere around 41,000 people die per year from traffic a…
I think that analysis captures why people drive very well actually. Let's assume trains are 32x safer in US as well: Car: 2 hour 32 minutes driving door to door + 37 minutes of death = 3 hour 9 minutes Train: 2 hour 37 minutes on train + 1 minute of death + 30 minute early arrive buffer + 30 minutes public transport to departure + 30 minutes public transport to destination = 4 hours 8 minutes Trains already lose, unl…
for any random trip it is far more likely that the car will be a better choice, but likely trip choice is a power law with most trips focusing on few routes.
This to say that the purpose of trains is not to be better than cars at what car do, but rather to allow as many people as possible not to need a car for most trips.
Depending on how trips are distributed this can be anywhere from easy to impossible.