> You want to drive fast go to a track, on the public roadways follow the damn law.
The "jerks with fast cars" group that you're targeting is breaking the same laws that 99% of other drivers break. In some ways, other drivers are worse.
Nobody obeys posted speed limits, except on side streets. Very few people pay enough attention to their driving; they're mostly talking on cell phones or daydreaming or talking to a passenger. Jerks with fast cars, at least, are focused on driving. Collisions at those speeds may not be survivable, but I don't want to get into any collision at highway speeds; their driving patterns are more predictable, and I prefer them over distracted or ADHD drivers who make quick lane changes without proper awareness.
Yeah. I don't generally care too much if somebody's going a bit fast, so long as they aren't driving erratically. What does cause a lot of swearing and the occasional close call:
- People merging on or off the highway at unsafe speeds (usually, too slow), without looking and picking a spot in traffic to merge into;
- People "being polite" at intersections;
- People not using their turn signals;
- People cutting in traffic, swerving, cutting off other cars, tailgating, or otherwise driving too aggressively;
- People trying to beat the light;
- People talking on the damn phone -- I don't care who you are, you can't do that and pay full attention to the road at the same time;
- People daydreaming, hanging out with their passengers, otherwise not paying attention to traffic both ahead and behind them.
Fast drivers are almost the least offensive nuisance on the road.
Sure those other guys are in the wrong too. My point is that killing someone because you didn't want to take a cab home is horrific but so to is killing someone because it's fun to drive fast, to shave 15 minutes off a four hour trip, because you just have to know right now who won the packers game, or because the kids are bickering in the back seat. The resulting injury and death aren't the result of accidents but crimes. Crimes rather more serious than possessing a few grams of cocaine base I might add.
> ...but so to is killing someone because it's fun to drive fast...
How often do you think this happens?
The NHTSA has a talking points primer for prosecutors with a few numbers on unsafe driving. The numbers are outdated, but they give us something to work with: 13,000 people were injured or killed between 1990 and 1997 because of aggressive driving -- a broad category that includes not just speeding, but also tailgating, lane changing, and improper passing.
That's 2,000 people per year for that period, and since that period, the number of vehicular fatalities has fallen off of a cliff: "The 32,367 traffic fatalities in 2011 were the lowest in 62 years" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in...).
Every single time I have looked, I have been unable to find any evidence whatsoever that doing 85mph on the freeway in safe conditions significantly increases the chances of injuring yourself or others vs. doing 70 in the same conditions.
Yet speeding is this one traffic behavior that people really seem to get riled up about.
I have a suspicion that the actual reasons for this are that speeders tend to be unrepentant, and that it's a flagrant breaking of the law -- it's visible and people notice it more than possibly any other driving habit. Those things together seem to trigger some people's moral crusader button.
I won't quite go so far as to defend speeding. I'm never the fastest driver on the road (anymore). But if someone really wants to get going about the dangers of speeding, I'll be happy to point out all of the other driving behaviors that are at least as dangerous -- probably at least one or two of which the person themselves is guilty of, as we all are.
Remember to properly keep apart the annoyances vs. the dangers in your head. People being overly "polite" in intersections are merely annoying. People on the phone are going to commit negligent homicide.
As a driver, it's easy to mentally group all the frustrations on the road together, when some are just annoying and some are potentially lethal.
>Jerks with fast cars, at least, are focused on driving.
Maybe they are, maybe they aren't, but I doubt speed is a good predictor of attention or skill. Poor drivers have a greater risk of causing an accident than skilled drivers at all speeds. We still punish skilled drivers the same as poor drivers because it's hard to differentiate between them. Take a driver of unknown skill who's driving 1 standard deviation above the speed limit. He could be above-average, and be just as safe as an average driver going the speed limit. He could also be below-average and believe he's safe - but would actually need to go one standard deviation slower than the speed limit to match the safety limit of the skilled driver. So, we punish them both the same, because we can't know.
The "jerks with fast cars" group that you're targeting is breaking the same laws that 99% of other drivers break. In some ways, other drivers are worse.
Nobody obeys posted speed limits, except on side streets. Very few people pay enough attention to their driving; they're mostly talking on cell phones or daydreaming or talking to a passenger. Jerks with fast cars, at least, are focused on driving. Collisions at those speeds may not be survivable, but I don't want to get into any collision at highway speeds; their driving patterns are more predictable, and I prefer them over distracted or ADHD drivers who make quick lane changes without proper awareness.