Speeding Slows You Down (By a Lot)
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Speeding Slows You Down (By a Lot)
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Re: Speeding Slows You Down (By a Lot)
#2[deleted]
Re: Speeding Slows You Down (By a Lot)
#3Why 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 speeds", and does so by adding the expected loss of lifetime to the total trip length.
However, you're surely not always going to die exactly at the end of the trip. In fact, you can be expected to die at the half-way point on average, meaning this "total time" in case of death is only half the trip length plus the loss of life expectancy. If you plug this into the equation, the speed that minimizes the travel time dramatically shifts to around 100 mph.
And more absurdly, near the end of your life, when your mathematical life expectancy might be measured in hours, it's "faster" according to this logic to just kill yourself and get it over with than to undertake any long trips at all. I wouldn't recommend following this line of reasoning.
Edit 2: The above line of reasoning might be wrong, I think I made an error and the calculation is correct within the article's premises. In that case, I take that part back. I still don't agree that adding loss of life expectancy to travel time is a reasonable way to look at things.
Re: Speeding Slows You Down (By a Lot)
#4[deleted]
[flagged]
Re: Speeding Slows You Down (By a Lot)
#5Why 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…
Agreed, risk of injury does not factor into how long the trip would take given faster speeds. This article is an exercise in narrative nonsense.
Re: Speeding Slows You Down (By a Lot)
#6These numbers poke only a narrow solution. The optimal fastest way is to have the destination speed to you.
Re: Speeding Slows You Down (By a Lot)
#7Re: Speeding Slows You Down (By a Lot)
#8Re: Speeding Slows You Down (By a Lot)
#9Well I guess if you die, then your trip took infinite time (you never arrive), so it does tend to push up your probability weighted average. But it's a push.
Re: Speeding Slows You Down (By a Lot)
#10Note 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 between your starting point and ending point, because if there are we can simply treat you trip as a sum of separate trips between each pair of consecutive entrances/exits.
The number of cars you pass going the opposite way is the sum of the number that were on the road between your start and end point when you started and the number than enter the road while you are traveling.
The number already on the road does not depend on your speed. The number that enter while you are traveling does, going down the faster you travel.
Hence the faster you go the lower your chances of getting hit by a lane crosser.