Sometimes Faster is Better
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- Опубликовано: 10 фев 2025
- In past episodes, I've talked about how accidents are the number one killer of children, and how car accidents represent a fairly large part of accidents in general. In response, a number of you asked me why we don't reduce the speed limits of many roads nationwide in an attempt to bring that number down. I'm glad you asked. That's the topic of this week's Healthcare triage.
Those of you who want to read more and see references can go here: theincidentalec...
I also addressed a lot of the questions in comments in an additional blog post. Go here to read it: theincidentalec...
John Green -- Executive Producer
Stan Muller -- Director, Producer
Aaron Carroll -- Writer
Mark Olsen -- Graphics
/ aaronecarroll
/ crashcoursestan
/ realjohngreen
/ olsenvideo
Everyone, this is about highways, not cities or residential roads...
Could you make a video talking about the competition between nurse practitioners (include those with Master's and Doctoral's degree) and physician. I feel like professional competition in healthcare is one of the problem we should address to improve the overall quality of patient care.
Duc Tran *?
You'd think motorists could handle this video given how ambiguous most road signs are. I thought your explanation was fairly clear. Good video and it seemed to support my personal thoughts that reducing lane changes in my own life reduces the chance I'll be in an accident.
I figure less variability means a more predictable commute. Predictable is safe.
Is that a tracker on your left arm? If so what one is it? Ty for the video
mojubjub looks like a fitbit, though I have never seen that band color before. Looks like brown or bronze.
As promised, I addressed a lot of your questions in a blog post this morning. Go here to read it:
theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/healthcare-triage-sometimes-not-always-faster-is-better-ctd/
Here is the text:
The video brought out a lot of great questions in the comments. Enough that I think it’s worth a follow-up post to address some of them. I’m paraphrasing them. Here we go:
1. There are studies showing that people who drive slower are less likely to die than people who drive faster. Doesn’t that bother you?
Well, sure. But a lot of those studies are showing that people who drive less than 30 mph are less likely to die than people going 40 mph. I’m sure people going less than 10 mph are going to die even more rarely. If we don’t drive at all, it will go down even further. I’m not disputing this fact. We accept a certain amount of risk when we drive.
But this video wasn’t about speed - it was about speed limits. The question is whether a 55 mph speed limit is always safer than a 60 or 65 mph speed limit. That’s not as clear.
2. How can you advocate for higher speed limits (of even 65 mph ) in a city?
I don’t!!! We’re talking about highways here. I said that I don’t think we should do away with regulation. Residential areas, school zones, those are a whole other story.
3. Aren’t you cherry picking by citing Lave? Doesn’t other research show that lower speed limits reduce fatalities?
I tried not to cherry pick. But you’re misinterpreting me. I take the fact that the literature is equivocal on this to mean that there are probably times when slower speed limits are better and times when faster speed limits are better. I’m not advocating for higher speed limits across the board. The point of the video was to push you to question your bias that slower is always better. Sometimes (not always), faster speed limits may be better.
4. Aren’t you advocating that people break the law here?
Nope. I’m advocating that we should sometimes change the law because people not following it is leading to a bad outcome.
4a. Isn’t that really saying that people shouldn’t be held accountable for breaking the law?
Nope. I think people should follow the law. But sometimes, in the real world, they don’t.
4b. Shouldn’t we just punish them?
This is a critical point, and worth of debate. I view this as the difference between efficacy and effectiveness. In an ideal world, everyone would do what we tell them perfectly, and we’d get the “efficacy” of speed limits. In the real world, lots of people don’t, and you see the “effectiveness” of speed limits. The effectiveness is often much less than the efficacy. If we can’t change the world to make efficacy work, we should deal with effectiveness. Sometimes, that means raising a speed limit. We’re not doing it to benefit lawbreakers. We’re doing it potentially to prevent accidents and save lives.
5. Shouldn’t we listen to engineers who tell us what the speed on a road should be?
YES! That’s exactly what I said in the Route 3 example, where engineers rated the road much higher than 55 mph. Looking back at effectiveness, it turns out that people may be, in general, pretty decent at figuring out intuitively what a safe speed on a road would be. If you set the speed limit near that number, more people drive the same speed. If you set the speed limit too far below that, you get a lot of people driving at different speeds. I’m advocating for listening to the engineers.
6. What about pedestrians?
Pedestrians shouldn’t be on highways!
7. What about animals?
I have no data on that. But I have to say that almost all highway laws are about protecting humans, not animals.
8. Why do you focus on the US?
I use the US as an example. I live there, and I know its policies best.
9. Traffic cameras could fix all this!
Maybe. But they’re not in use like that in the US, and if they were, maybe the evidence here would be different. They are, in their own way, an attempt to improve efficacy, by making more people follow the law. That’s another option, but perhaps expensive. And not everyone will tolerate monitoring.
10. Don’t improvements in cars reduce fatalities and accidents? How do you know it’s not that, but instead speed limits?
We don’t. I think they’re absolutely reducing fatalities. Accidents, to a lesser extent. But these are responsible for both better outcomes with lower and higher speed limits, and people on both sides use them to bolster their claims.
Let me finish by repeating what I said in the video. Sometimes we have to question our biases for the real world. There are times when lower speed limits are better. But there may be times when higher speed limits are better. NOT ALWAYS. But sometimes.
I think you missed the point about talking about only the US. You're making claims that sounds reasonably globally applicable, yet you only look to the US for data, and your arguments and cynicism about revenue raising seem particularly rooted in the US, or even particular areas of the US.
Also, you can get out of a lot of things by hiding behind the word "sometimes". It really sounds like you're implying "a lot more than you'd think", and this seems to be the argument you're making, but then when you're pulled up on that, you say you only mean "sometimes"... Sure, sometimes people survive bullets to the head too. Doesn't make it a good policy choice.
Your point about animals would definitely not be very applicable on a hell of a lot of Australian roads - and I mean highways. Even if we care nothing for the animals, you can really easily die by just hitting a kangaroo, which are notorious for jumping toward, rather than away, from an oncoming vehicle.
And, unless I missed something, you still haven't justified the claim that increasing speed limits will lower the relative speed differences among motorists.
I my opinion (not justified by data, just my experience) people in Australia tend to speed by percentages, or absolutes, rather than judging the road for themselves. This means raising the speed limit will just make them drive faster, the people who drive the speed limit will still drive the new higher speed limit, and the people who drive whatever lower speed they're comfortable with (like stereotypical old ladies) will still drive that same low speed, increasing speed differential.
Not to mention all the vehicles that either are not capable of driving faster or are specifically speed limited seperately, like learners, people towing caravans, trucks going up hill, larger trucks and buses being limited to 100km/h or less, being limited to low gear down hills, etc.
Of course, my criticisms don't prove you wrong, and I don't intend to, I just mean to point out that this claim is reasonably common, and is usually very poorly justified. I think this is no exception.
I also happen to have the opinion that it is this kind of attitude, where you think you know better than the law because you looked up some sciencey sounding studies (sure, they're often real science), that drives people to think it's OK to speed, when they don't know the road, they don't know what speeds it was designed for, and they don't pay enough attention to the conditions. Drivers aren't required to show an incredible amount of skill before being set loose with the power to destroy entire families, I don't think they need to be encouraged, without *really* strong justification.
You also ignored the point about cars becoming safer, and the statistic of fatalities per hundred thousand miles driven not being able to show if the increased speed limits encouraged more people to risk driving.
Lots of great questions here. Worthy of a follow-up answer post on my blog. Will post a link in the morning!
As a traffic engineer, I feel I should point out that some states (California is one that comes to mind since it's where I work) don't dictate speed limits. Drivers do. Data is collected for a certain street or highway and whatever the 85th percentile of what all vehicles drive is the set speed limit (rounded to the closest speed divisible by five: 65, 55, etc). There are exceptions to the rule but I imagine this is why engineers in Massachusetts urged the speed limit to increase from 55 to 65 mph.
Quixotic1018
wow... American speed limits are low. On German motorways there are mainly three speed limits, 65 mph is the lower one. The next level is 74.4 mph and the last one... doesnt exist. You can go as fast as you want (with lots of speed difference between the cars). Most people drive between 81 an 87 mph, but once in a while (more often than you'd think) you can be overtaken by cars going 124 mph and more
BlueBite87 there is one thing I heard from every fellow German who were in the US and drove a car their: Americans can't drive
Maybe it's for the better ;-)
Martin Thurau
when German automakers were first introducing cars into the US en masse, their engineers were puzzled by the insistence of a cup holder. Why would you need a cup holder? Shouldn't you be focusing on driving?
treymedley People should focus on driving, however(and this may not be the case in Germany I've never been), driving in the US involves a large amount of time stopped; where it is perfectly safe to take a drink. Admittedly, there are a large number of people here that do drink while moving at high speed and or high traffic, but there is a legitimate reason to have a cup holder.
I'm from Germany where we have areas on the autobahn where you can drive as fast as you want. But the fatalities per capita is only halve of the US.
There are some factors to that besides the Speed limit.
Anyone has to go to a real teacher to learn to drive.
Trucks can only go about 50 mph.
You can and will get a ticket for staying in the left lane if the other lane is free.
Most people stick to the rule to not pass on right.
I've known a few, especially older drivers, who have gotten into a kind of feedback loop thinking that 'slower equals safer' so they start driving at 60 in 65MPH zones and you have all these cars swerving and weaving around them and zooming by so they think the entire highway is unsafe so they go EVEN SLOWER.. 50 in 65MPH zones.. and even more swerving and weaving and cars blowing by even faster happened.
It eventually got to the point where they simply afraid to go on interstates at all because they were 'much too dangerous' which is probably a good thing because they were the ones MAKING them dangerous.
I absolutely love how this show actually has references.
As someone who studies civil engineering I'd like to tell what my professor told me. If you are going higher than about 25 km/h, your brain can't comprehend the same amount of information for the same lenght of road, so you start missing things (signs, animals, etc.) which is why on faster roads you get more signs and bigger ones. He told us, that anything moving above that speed has more or less the same chance of hitting a person or thing, the only difference is that roads made for higher speeds are usually more secluded and spaceous which is why less accidents occur. (just an oversimplification)
I love being told I'm wrong so many times in so many awesome ways on this channel!
In New South Wales, Australia, the speed limit for learners is 80km/hr, while for everyone else it's 110km/hr...and driving on highways I feel like this is really dangerous??
Even for provisional drivers, the speed limit is either 90 or 100 :/ And I think THIS IS STUPID.
I totally agree. Everyday on the interstate, the person causing the biggest issue is the the person doing 5 under the speed limit, most of the time on their phone. You have a bunch of steel boxes moving at a certain speed trying to dodge one crawling along & its always going to be bad.
The amount of controversial comments on this video makes me question how many people actually have their drivers license, let alone regularly drive on freeways. Anyone that spends any amount of regular time on the 401 here in Ontario knows that next to no one drives at the posted limit of 100 kph. (62 mph) With out exaggeration the average speed is about 120 kph (75mph) I'm not talking about the occasional jackass that needs to go faster, I'm talking about the average flow of traffic. The only people you will pass doing 120 is transport trucks and the occasional person doing only 100 because, it's the law. There are still people that go faster. It's not uncommon for people to drive 130 kph (81 mph) or even 140 kph (87 mph) People go that fast because it is a safe highway built and designed to handle these speeds.
The problems that this video addresses is the speed difference between the different drivers on the roads. Speed limits artificially increase that difference on some roads which causes more accidents. Raise the limits to what the people are actually doing and the slow people can catch up with the rest of the people because fear of breaking the law is the only thing holding them back.
I don't think it'd be an issue of how many have licenses so much as how many pay any attention to speeds/the world around them. I *don't* have a license, and I know that speed limits are rarely followed (and often unsafe to follow in fast-moving traffic).
+Brandon Francey It's the same in Texas, though the posted interstate speed limit is 75 mph in most places (80-85 mph in west Texas) the average speed on a road with a 75 mph limit is 85-90 mph
+Brandon Francey lt is not fear, lt is because it makes more sense. And as for the 401 being a safe highway, with people speeding, there are accidents on there everyday.
Even if points aren't addressed or missed, I'd say the amount of discussion that springs up around things with these videos is pretty cool.
Out of curiosity, has there been any review of this evidence, with adjustments based on improved safety features in more modern vehicles?
That seems to be an important point that's being missed in this video.
That was my first though as well. Accidents vs Fatalities over time has to respect that cars are getting MUCH safer over time.
Fatalities yes. Accidents somewhat.
Healthcare Triage
Thanks for the reply - any chance of a short follow-up?
Good point, also more cars means worse traffic thus slower speeds, independently of the actual speed limit.
lower speed limit = more time on the road
I'm glad you made this, it's a great topic. I'm even more excited for next weeks episode.
What about stricter safety laws with seat belts, and improved safety features in cars contributing to the lower rates of fatality and injury? The benefit of being properly strapped into a safer car can be underestimated.
Also what about better designed infrastructure like RT 3? I live in an area where older roads have accidents more frequently, even though they have the same speed limit as the state thruways.
This it the first Healthcare Triage that I've been disappointed by. All that research is on data thats 20 years old before the introduction of the speed cameras, which can police speed limits way more effectively. Speed cameras can reduce serious injuries by 30-40%.
Edit: As Aaron replied, I went to the trouble of digging a paper, so it doesn't seem like I'm just being indignant. This is a review on the new average speed cameras: eprints.qut.edu.au/58119/2/58119.pdf
Sorry about that. Can't please everyone all of the time!
Don't worry, I really do look forward to it every week :)
Healthcare Triage I'd actually really appreciate a higher quality followup that takes into account all the reasonable points people are making against this video. You're normally really good at looking at the big picture, but it really doesn't seem so for this one.
I'll do so on my blog. I'm not ignoring you.
Well the video did not adjust for other variables such as police cameras. i see your point
Ah, well ... we have no speed limit in Germany. :)
We have regulated speed limits for certain areas though, for example, in towns it's almost always 50 km/h or lower.
äh wir haben fast überall Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzungen inzwischen. Sogar viele Autobahnen sind eingeschränkt
Stimmt, die Städte waren ja auch nur ein Beispiel.
Aber wir haben keine generelle Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung. Wenn es keine allgemeine Regelung, wie bei Ortschaften, oder ein Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzungsschild gibt, dann darfst du so schnell fahren wie du willst.
Das ist in den meisten anderen Staaten nicht so, ich habe sogar schonmal gehört dass wir die einzigen sind.
BooksAndFlicks Ich hab gemerkt das wenn ich in NRW fahre dass da überall Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzungen auf den Autobahnen sind, aber wenn ich Bayern fahre, sind fast keine. Ich glaub das hängt damit zusammen, dass in NRW fast nur Autobahnen sind die sich ständig kreuzen und in Städten enden etc (zumindest kommt mir das so vor) und man z.B. in Bayern teilweise einfach km und km grade aus fährt. Ich hätts super gefunden wenn er die Daten verglichen hätten zwischen den USA und z.B. Deutschland wo man größten teils noch so schnell fahren kann wie man will...
TheChemicalMuffin
Wer weiß, ob es da große Studien gibt. Wäre aber mal interessant.
Ich wohne in NRW und mir fällt auch auf, dass hier oft Begrenzungen sind. Allerdings ist man auch viel im Stadtgebiet wo das teilweise allein wegen der Lärmbelästigung ist. Außerdem häufen sich da natürlich die Abfahrten.
I’m a civil engineer who designs roadways for a living. This is a relatively accurate summary of studies related to traffic and accidents. People tend to drive relatively close to the design speed of a highway purely on instinct. The vast majority of people don’t drive staring at their speedometer 100% of the time, they have other things to worry about (like actually driving their vehicle and paying attention to what’s going on around them). You do occasionally get a lunatic who drives like a mad-man barreling down the road or a grandmother driving 25 mph below the posted speed. Both of those are extremely dangerous. In general, a big goal of designing a highway is to narrow the overall range of speeds driven so that there isn’t a huge gradient and everyone is driving a roughly consistent speed. Artificially lowering the speed throws a wrench in this, making it less safe for everyone involved and also worsening traffic in general and making highways less efficient.
It was good that you considered not only traffic fatalities, but also (in one statistic, at least) traffic *injuries*. It may be important to recognize that accident survivability has probably improved over time, due to better designed crumple zones, air bags, etc. A further suggestion is to consider the number of *accidents*--which is the most inclusive statistic. Linking traffic accident rates to lane-changing is an enlightening observation. Thanks.
What people don't get is that if the speed limit is higher, then the number of accidents won't increase, so much as the risk of dying _from_ an accident, and even then not much. The real issue is that in the US we don't enforce car distance spacing at all. In Germany, even though they don't have speed limits, this is exactly why they have far less car accidents than in the US, since they strictly enforce this.
Where I'm from, most driving isn't done on big highways; it's done on residential and urban roads. Could you do a video on speed limits there? It seems like there's gonna be a pretty big difference, considering there's more likely to be distractions and instances where you'll need to stop suddenly, unlike on a rural highway.
I for one rarely look at my speedometer at all unless I think there is a cop nearby. I am paying attention to other things like the position of other cars, potential hazards etc. I drive whatever speed it feels comfortable to drive. Sometimes that is fast, others slow. Depends on many factors, none of which are the posted speed limit.
I think cops on the side of the road checking peoples speed creates a dangerous situation where those who are speeding start slowing up which can cause a ripple effect and create panic and more variability and potentially more accidents.
I agree with you completely, Cliff Roth! Thanks for sharing.
No problem! Healthcare Triage is one of my favorite channels.
Having been in several accidents, none of which I was found to be at fault, I am hyper alert as to what my fellow drivers may be doing. Put it very simply, I DO NOT TRUST YOU. If you come up to a stop sign or stop light at a high rate of speed, I am not going to assume you are going to stop and stay stopped. I am going to assume you don't see me and that you will pull out in front of me, and I am going to adjust my driving accordingly. If I see your wheels start to turn, I am going to assume you are about to T-bone me, and I will take evasive action. If you look like you may be drifting over into my lane, I am going to assume that is what you are going to do and not wait for your turn signal which you probably won't use. In short, I have to think for you, because I don't know what you are going to do, but I do know what has happened to me when I have guessed wrongly about what you are about to do. The last was on February 14th of this year. I was making a left turn onto a side street when something about the car waiting at the stop sign caught my eye, oh, oh, I don't feel right about this. I had the right of way, I was not going fast, as a matter of fact I was going slow and watching him, when I made my turn, he all of a sudden floored it into my car and hit me square in the driver's side. I was looking straight at him going what the FUCK do you think you are doing--BAM! Oh, I am so sorry, I am so sorry ma'am I didn't see you, I thought I was stepping on the brake and instead it was the gas. I told him, I do not want to talk to you at all! Go talk to the cops, I am really, really pissed, I do not care what you have to say, you talk to them, don't talk to me, I do not want to talk to you. My car is probably totaled (it was) with all the inconvenience and expense that implies and I am lucky that I and my passenger didn't get injured, which we could have been. So no, I am majorly pissed off at you. If you did not see me, then maybe you shouldn't be driving. Period. (And as far as being sorry, Michigan is a no-fault state. What I got from his insurance company--not from him--was enough to haul my car off to the salvage yard and make a very small down payment on another used vehicle. His car, on the other hand, was damaged but still was drivable.) I've had people pull out of a parking lot right in front of me when I was doing the speed limit in a 55 mph zone and could not stop. Again, so sorry, I am so sorry. I didn't see you. Or someone making too sharp a left turn at high speed and hitting me almost head-on because they misjudged how much room they needed. Oh, I am so sorry, I did not see you. I'm sitting there waiting for the light to change, minding my own business, as a matter of fact, probably even farther back than I legally needed to be, and BAM! Here we go again. The cop that time said, I don't even have to ask you if you were wearing your seat belt because if you weren't you would have gone through the windshield. So, watching my speedometer is not very high on my priorities, I'm afraid, especially in traffic.
There are two factors outside of traffic that will affect how fast I got on a given road: my vehicle and the road itself. If the road is narrow, twisty, and with bumpy pavement and I'm in something like a light truck or passenger van, I'm going to be driving slow. It does not feel safe to pursue highway speeds. However, on a highway it feels much safer to go those speeds. But a lot of highways have artificially slow speed limits, that is, the speed limit is 10 or even 20 mph slower than what feels safe to do. I've been driving for 14 years now and I've always been a speeder, and never been in an accident. I try to not take risks. When I speed, I'm doing it because there isn't traffic around, the road conditions are good, and my vehicle is up to it. The only risk I feel like I'm taking is getting a speeding ticket. When there's more traffic, the weather gets worse, road narrows etc. I slow down.
An interesting aspect is the survivability of a crash at increasing speeds. Your odds of walking away or surviving drop pretty quickly (depending on the accident circumstances).
Fascinating. I wonder if making semis go slower in the right lane has the same effect.
I kind of don't like that the video was not very clear in its exact meaning, but after reading your blog post, I completely agree with you. I just wish that your video had more clearly asserted that speed limits on highways should be based on the design of the road rather than some legislative maximum.
I like how a large amount of people seemed to completely ignore that list bit of the video about letting go of the preconceived biases and insist that slower is always safer, in all cases all the time(and the few people that seemed to gather that you implied the opposite, that faster is always better in all cases). But that is really not surprising, as very few people will change their ideas about anything, regardless of subject matter, when presented by logical arguments or evidence.
If you want to see this fact in action come to Thailand and drive here for a while. Because of the massive gaps between vehicle speeds you can never expect a lane to actually be open at any given time and what ensues is a constant swaying in and out motion where cars are constantly changing lanes to avoiding slower traffic. To make matters worse cars regularly enter roads without yielding and cause even more drastic differences in speeds as they accelerate.
Guys, he is only suggesting that it is safer to increase your speed if most of the drivers around you are going faster than you, even if you are going the speed limit and they are speeding. Yes, it seems unfair that you should be forced to break the law because everyone else is, but usually police officers will only ticket speeders on the highway if they are going faster than the flow of traffic, meaning they have to be frequently passing other cars, which is very dangerous. Besides, even if you are ticketed, it's better than getting into an accident.
YES! FINALLY TORT REFORM! I've been waiting for this one :)
That an overall speed limit increase reduces variance in motorist speed, and thus number of collisions, is a fascinating point. It's strange that the increase in severity of collision isn't a larger factor in fatality rates. Insufficient reaction time, lessened traction, higher force of impact...
This is all highway based? I'm more concerned about urban / sub-urban areas where pedestrians etc are in danger.
Fair enough. Not the point of this video, though.
Faster driving is (for the most part) only an issue when people do not drive with care - ie not under the influence of substances, not distracted by phones (hands free or otherwise), not keeping far enough from the car in front. Britain has started to combat this by reducing speed limits in very busy/residential areas to 20mph so as to reduce the stopping distances of cars and reduce the injury caused anyone hit - my sister was on the bus which caused the accident which started this "revolution", and I can definitely see the point. If a child runs out and is hit at a lower speed, it is more likely to survive. No changing lanes in areas like that though - I've been driving years and I'm still super twitchy about changing lanes on a motorway when it's busy
Very insightful. I've never looked at it that way.
A good comparison would be to the unrestricted German Autobahn, which has a fatality rate comparatively low to highways in other European countries, and 1/3 lower than the US. Despite an average speed of 100-120 mph for cars.
there was one state which completely repealed its speed limits for a short time (i think it was montana), they saw a decline in traffic accidents during that time.
Yeah Route 3! I mostly drive it in NH (limit is still 55), and most people will go 70 in NH.
I live in Michigan and what I don't understand is why the speed limit on freeways is 70 for cars and 65 for semis. This creates a dangerous situation in my opinion. Especially when you are on a crowded two-lane Interstate that really should be three lanes (I-94, I'm looking at you!) and you have two semis going 65 and one is trying to pass another. It backs up traffic. Yes, I've heard over and over that the Interstates are safer than other highways, but give me a choice, I'm going to take the back road every time.
Speed doesn't kill. It's the sudden deceleration.
Lots of nay-sayers in the comments here missed a crucial point in the video: speed limits don't significantly impact driving speeds except to artificially slow a small portion of drivers.
It's true. In NH some of our posted limits are 10mph higher than the average speed (I drive on a 50mph road to work and the average speed is certainly about 40mph).
People drive at the speed that feel comfortable at. If you completely removed speed limit signs on a road you wouldn't have vehicles' speeds randomly distributed between 0mph and infinity mph. You would have a consensus.
The speed differential totally makes sense to me. In Houston, if you don't go the speed of traffic, you're dead. It just feels less safe if you go slower than the people around you.
I remember a guy in Columbus, Ohio fighting a speeding ticket on those grounds. Although he was speeding, he was merely keeping up with traffic & felt that slowing down would be more dangerous. They let him go.
Great video, but there was a (small) consideration omitted. Not all vehicles are limited by the speed limit: some are mechanically limited. I can't speak for the US, but in Australia semi-trailers are often limited to around 90km/h for safety reasons. This is also somewhat of an issue for vehicles carrying heavy loads, and older vehicles. Raising speed limits would therefore increase the speed differential between these vehicles and others.
For anyone not paying attention if the speed limit is at a speed that everyone is comfortable driving (which frankly is relatively high on highways and not for dumb reasons) you'd have less lane changing because people would not feel restrained.
I personally am an extremely patient man and so I stay in the same lane basically from work to home (and vice versa). But I live in LA where everyone is going about 80-85 regardless of speed limit signs.
Its when people aren't doing that that folks start lane changing and it is lane changing that causes accidents. 80 thought a school zone is a bad idea, but 55 on I-5 would never make sense. It's a long stretch of road where, if not lane changing, you should always be aware and able to react presuming you keep distance from the car ahead of you.
The latter being almost always true when everyone is at speed, speaking from experience during my 45 minute commute twice a day.
I think a huge portion of what makes slower speeds feel safer is that when a collision does occur at higher speeds, it's much more disastrous.
Hey, Massachusetts, my home state!
So I live in Northern Massachusetts, so I'm not familiar with that stretch of Route 3. But I know that Route 3 runs from Orleans on the Mid Cape in the south up to the Tyngsborough/Nashua line in the north. Did this legislation only affect the part running from Boston to Plymouth?
The unaddressed issue is, by the principles of physics, whether or not driving faster leads to more devastating accidents when they do occur. Instead, the focus is on the dangers of driving in variable speed highway traffic.
Perhaps an episode on drinking ages and health implications? I believe it's a similar story, with federal funds linked to having the legal age set to 21.
I love these videos. Though maybe you could do a healthcare triage on nausea and why it makes me feel ill when you keep jumping from left to right!
How much of the difference in fatality rates year to year can be attributed to changes in safety features in cars, such as better seat belts and airbags?
Lots. But that's fatalities, not accidents.
It's weird that you say the state police fought the speed limit increase on Rt 3 so that they could make more money writing tickets. I've gone through several speed traps on that stretch of road driving 75 and haven't gotten a second look.
One safety problem with speed limits is that it forces people that don't want a fine to pay more attention to their speedometer than to the road in front of them.
I agree actually - since I got a new car I've noticed I pay attention to it less now that it is analog as opposed to digital. It was very easy to become fixated on the number flickering in front of you. It never distracted me completely but I definitely checked it at least every time I checked my mirrors
The main point that I got from this video was that people need to pay more attention to the speed of the other drivers than what a stupid sign says, which is what I was taught in driving school. It sometimes feels like people forget that they are riding in a missile instead of a magic carriage, we all need to try and pay attention to our surroundings.
The thing I don't like is when this is brought up in a policy debate. They always bring in total fatalities, not just on the highway. There should be a clear distinction between the two as the majority of fatal accidents happen on rural roads that have less access to emergency vehicles and are traveled less.
The highway is meant to get us somewhere directly fast. They are designed for higher speeds and for some highways in the US, a car can safely travel its length going over 200 MPH because they have 3 main design features that limit risk. Wide lanes, long corners, and an even surface. However, this design can also be a danger if its set too low. The driver becomes distracted and either speeds because the perceived speed feels slow or attempts to operate other devices that are not the vehicle.
In California on highways the 2 most dangerous things are unlicensed drivers, and poorly maintained vehicles.
Time to introduce my mom to "Healthcare Triage" :D
(Because she keeps complaining I drive too fast when I drive at trafic speed)
GregTom2 this right here is why this video was a bad idea. You're going to use this poorly justified video to justify that YOU should drive whatever speed every other idiot on the road is driving, without going and looking up what speed the road was engineered for, without considering the conditions, without considering that there are many many flaws in the arguments presented in the video, etc.
Jeez. Can't you take a joke? Clearly the persona making the initial comment didn't have "safety" in mind but rather convenience. I guess irony doesn't go through very well with text but c'mon
GregTom2 Fair enough. I think it's pretty easy to imagine that people would say what you said and mean it. I've certainly seen enough people present similar arguments as this video, with similar flaws, to justify why they do drive over the speed limit / with the traffic.
I'd love to see a video comparing various kinds of rehab. A literature review of AA vs CBT and non-12 step would be fascinating.
For highway safety, as you say in the video, speed isn't what's relevant. What's relevant is keeping the deviation between speeds low. That does mean that sometimes raising speed limits lowers accident rates, but accident rates aren't lower because traveling faster is safer. It's because other people were already traveling faster and raising the speed limit encourages law abiding people to travel the same speed as the speeders.
If you drive into a wall, the faster you're going the worse the damage to your vehicle and likely yourself will be. So our intuitions about speed limits and speed are correct IF people actually follow the law.
I'm not opposed to setting speed limits based on the statistics of how people are actually driving on the road, but the accidents that do happen will be worse if people are traveling faster.
just a suggestion/question.
is it possible when you list a lot of numbers/dates (like when you were listing the accident rates in the first half of the video) that you put in in a graphic, for non-auditory learners like myself it can be hard to follow just by listening.
I know you (and other people) work hard on these episodes, so I can understand if I'm asking to much, but I thought I'd give my input, since if I don't say anything, how will you know what your viewer(s) want?
Anyone who's ever been on a highway where the general flow of traffic is 10mph above the posted limit, and then suddenly comes across that one idiot who insists on going the limit or below it (bonus points for attempting to merge onto the highway at less than posted speeds!) can tell you that it's not speed that kills, it's slow.
Driving slower may be safer for me (because I have more time to react to changes ahead of me), but it's far more dangerous for everyone else on the road if I'm not keeping up with traffic.
I wonder if enforcement of lane discipline, i.e. keeping right except to pass, could also make a difference. In the US, no one really abides by that law.
Traffic Engineers, whether on local streets or freeways, always have a factor for speed limits in their design equations. This means that when designing the roads, traffic lights, and almost everything a driver interacts with on a daily commute the engineer takes into account the assumed driving speed. This means that if you are traveling faster (and slower in some cases) you are traveling at a speed the road wasn't designed for and puts you at much greater risk. I think this is important to know because I feel the facts presented here may be misleading.
In my town, citizens wanted to lower the speed limit on the highway that runs through it. When the government looked at the highway, they decided to raise the speed limit instead to help with the accident rates.
I think automotive fatalities will decrease even further with the introduction of autonomous vehicles, and the fuel consumption will decrease even further with an expansion of the electric car market. Supporting these two industries will allow us to go faster & safer more efficiently.
Perhaps this is true on large roads but any residential area surely needs to consider that if you hit a pedestrian, even a school child, it's much more likely to be fatal?
Lived the video. However, your Rte 3 argument needs to be corrected.
Rte 3 between Braintree(or slightly south of Braintree) IS 60mph. Has been for at least a decade. It has NOT been rebuilt, except for work on widening the breakdown lane to allow use during commute times.
Which makes where it WAS rebuilt more egregious. Rte 3 was widened to 3 lanes a decade ago. From Burlington all the way to the NH border. It's actually been graded to make a 4th lane a cinch to add. All the granite and trees in the median were cleared out. It is flat and straight with clear sightlines all the way. And while Rte 3 on the South Shore is at 60mph, this northern stretch is mired at 55. It should be the safest stretch of highway in the state, by far.
Sticking it at 55mph is simply a money grab. 55 on that stretch feels like a brisk jog. I got a ticket on that stretch once a year after the widening. I went to fight it but the officer never sent in the paperwork. But I would encourage anyone who does get a ticket to fight it. It's an illegal speed limit. One that an engineering study proves is worthy of at least 65mph. I got stopped doing 70, well within reason of road conditions...
Thanks for making such great informative videos
Yes, sometimes "faster" is better. I'm still a new driver, so I'm not yet completely familiar with all the little things one can encounter on the road, which could lead to disaster. One night I was driving home on the rightmost lane, and I didn't know, that on that particular road, there was a point where the rightmost lane only turned right. Now, the right thing to do would've been to stop, and check to make sure it was safe to change lane. But since I had no prior knowledge of this, I hastily moved to the left lane w/o looking. However, since I was driving significantly faster, I was much ahead of the person behind me, and therefore did not get in an accident.
Another day after that, I was in a leftmost lane, and that lane became left-turn only, at a highway entrance! I did NOT want to get on a highway which I was completely unfamiliar with, so I quickly turned on my right-turn signal, started watching the right lane, and thankfully I got an opening before that left-turn green light came on.
I feel like speed limits should be allowed to raise. If you are uncomfortable with going the highest speed, go slower and drive in the slow lane. Other cars can go around you in a highway setting. Accidents are caused by carelessness, and speed is usually a factor. There’s a nifty button that is called cruise control that I wish a lot of people knew how to use. It would help a lot with people staying at or around a speed limit, which would in turn help with fatality rates due to accidents at a slower speed. There have been many times that I have almost been in fatal accidents due to people not driving fast enough. It isn’t that I’m going too fast, its more of the fact that they are going at least 20 miles per hour under the speed limit. This is significantly more dangerous than going too fast, because cars coming up quickly behind cannot tell how fast you are going until they are behind you. I also think that the elderly need to have a set age that they need to take a second road test at. Maybe that would be a great topic to address in a video?
What I took from this video is not so much that faster is better, as the title suggests, but that we should institute a national speed limit that all interstate and state highways adhere to regardless of which state they are in.
Hey, is that a Fitbit Flex on your wrist? I just ordered a Fitbit One after reading the Flex tends to be inaccurate when it comes to steps.
Love this show so much
I knew this already, since I did some research on the German autobahn. No speed limit there, people go insanely fast, but the rate of accident is low. That said, getting a license over there is much harder.
As always, it's not the speed that kills you, it's the sudden change in acceleration when you hit something that kills you
Can you please do a video discussing HIV, its history, treatments, and why it's such a tricky virus to eliminate?
What happened with Route 3? Did it's speed limit get increased? If so, did it lower the accident rate?
When you said we have to be willing to let go of our biases I LOLed because, well you know...
An interesting perspective. I had never considered that artificially low speed limits increase the variances in speed. Interesting.
I am surprised that speed limit in the United States are so low! I used to thought the bigger a country is the higher the speed limit is. This is why islands have lower speed limits than continental countries. But now I know that the infinite highways of the US are limited (in average) at 65 mph when France is at 85 mph and Germany has none.
I have to say I found it odd that you didn't discuss the confounding factor of improved car safety measures much in this video.
So would it be better to abandon the speed limit in place for a speed range? Instead of having a set number a car shouldn't go over, say 65, have posted sign read 65 which means the driver must be between 60 and 70 mph?
I wonder if i can submit this as evidence for my speeding ticket court hearing. I saw a similar video a while ago about the speed limits in Canada.
There's one major factor you didn't consider here--pedestrians. Research consistently shows that higher speeds result in a drastically increased risk of pedestrians dying in collisions. So while there's no real reason to reduce speeds on highways, there's strong evidence behind reducing speeds in areas that pedestrians frequent, such as neighborhood and arterial roads .
Lower speed is intuitive, just not along the correct axis. Moving forward at slower speed isn't what is harmful, it's the sideways shift from one lane to another that's extremely dangerous. The variation in speed between vehicles increases the rate of sideways motion, due to lane swapping, which has a strong correlation to rates of accidents. Perhaps the speed which people change lanes is what should be limited, and not their forward motion. It is an interesting proposition.
Isn't the real issue the non-highway roads? I know it is in my country. Highways are usually pretty safe, it's why the Germans can even have them without speed limits.
And state of maintenance, driver training and safety regulations for cars and things like DUI are probably much more important than speed limits any way.
Now we have more accident proof cars which are supposed to help decrease injuries and fatalities in the event of a car crash. Was this factor considered?
The clapperboard blooper at the end, had you used it too slowly - would faster have been better ?
In Europe speed limit is between 73 and 79 mph, and that is optimal speed on highways. Over that fuel consumption increase, and in case of extraordinary situation it can be dangerous (like flat tire). Most people do go around 90 mph.
At speed of around 50 mph, you can have the highest number of cars passing. And don't forget that truck don't go much higher than 50-60 mph.
While I agree that speed variance and lane changes are probably the largest contributing factor, you're forgetting that some people drive slower than the speed limit as well. Is there any evidence that variance lowers as the speed limit goes up?
If reducing speed limits only results in some drivers slowing down, then I can see that would be a problem, but that does not disprove the proposition that slowing down traffic will result in fewer deaths. The trick would to actually slow down all (or close to all) of the traffic. Speed cameras everywhere perhaps?
Another problem is that car safety is constantly improving. If the figures you quoted were not adjusted to take that into account, the comparisons may not be valid.
The civil engineers that design these highways don't design them for 55 mph (or any posted speed limit for that matter). They realize that people will drive at the speeds that suit them and and focus on designing roads to be safe at speeds higher than an average person would drive. They consider how the road was designed, all weather possibilities, average speeds of drivers on similar roads, and all manner of influencing factors and determine an appropriate safe speed limit. They then report this appropriate safe speed limit to the local police for them to enforce (usually in the eightieth percentile of average speeds), but local police department will always ignore the engineers.
Why? Because speed limits aren't there to keep you safe, they're there to make police departments money. I know it sounds like a conspiracy but the annual revenue from speeding tickets in the US is more than 2 billion dollars. Police departments would go broke without this cash flow. So, they post a speed limit that most people will break so that they can generate enough money to operate.
This artificially low speed limit produces an extremely hazardous phenomena: large differential speeds. Many societies of civil engineers have taken police departments to court over this and either loose, or the speed limit is raised insignificantly.
Speed differential is an extremely real and well know problem with no clear solution.
+snail282 l think you are making excuses (artificially low speed limits, civil engineers taking police to court) to justify your speeding. lf you know that speed differentcial is a problem, then why don"t you slow down.
+hf35 Justifying my speeding was not my intent. My target speed for most highways is 80-90 mph. I own a car that was designed, and regularly maintained, to be more than capable of these speeds. I, as a driver with a litany of racing experience, am more than qualified to drive at these speeds. I have never had any sort of incident driving on a highway, save for a speeding ticket.This is because I understand how to drive safely at any speed, fast or slow. I understand speed differential and drive appropriately based on my surroundings. If most of the people around me are doing 60 mph, I will drive 60 mph. If I'm on an empty road by myself, then I will drive 80 mph. However, the later case is still illegal. To make it legal, i.e. raise the speed limit, state police need more funding. To make the roads a safer place people need to understand speed differential.
Another amazing video debunking long held myths that people have grown accustomed to.
Yo i live in New Bedford ma, around where rout 3 starts. Driving up to boston on that route, especially during rush hour, is some scary shit. Take 95, its worth it
I'd say that on the highway, a higher speed limit is safer, I'm much more fucused if I drive faster. My focus is a lot better at ~90 mph (No, you're not allowed to drive ~90 mph (150 kph) in my country, but I sometimes do it. Max is 130 kph or ~80 mph), and a lot of people say the same thing, for them a higher speed equals more focus on the road. At 110 kph (~70 mph), you can kind of zone out without noticing, it becomes harder at 130 kph (~80 mpg), but for most impossible at 150 kph (~90 mph).
Sir, thank you for making this video. I have been saying this for years. I lived in Germany for two years with the Air Force and would consistently see the flow of traffic range from 90-115MPH, I open highway between cities I would usually set the cruise control for 155. In two years I saw exactly ZERO accidents on the autobahn. Zero. Yet, as most of you know, it is near impossible to drive on a US highway with seeing at least one. I am a firm believer that the drivers are the problem, not the laws. German drivers are better, they follow common courtesy laws religiously, and it creates a safe environment.
I think somebody got a speed ticket! XD
I have many doubts about what have been told here… The number of accidents is something, but the severity is something else! *You won't convince me that driving faster will decrease the severity of accidents!*
In my opinion, the law exists to limit the severity and the amount of accidents… Faster speed may not increase the accident rate, but it certainly increase the fatality rate!
One, note that he said the number of fatalities, not accidents. Two, he's not just saying 'drive faster.' That's blindly and willfully misinterpreting the message. He's saying 'stop punishing people for going with the flow of traffic.' This way the dickbag roaring up past you, the stubbornly lawful driver, is only going 10MPH faster than you rather than 30. No, the crash still won't be pretty if it happens, but it's also much less likely to happen if there's almost three times as much reaction time.
So if you shall have an accident at 55 mph your going to walk away unharmed, but at 70 mph your dead. Either way it's a craps shoot. But car makers keep making faster cars.
+Hyskore410 Car makers are in the business to make money, and will produce what ever the consumer will buy.
Route 3 is seriously a mess, and all the out of state tourists going to cape cod in the summer don't help. They drive super slow and are always changing lanes (I assume because they are unsure where to get off). That's why I avoid it if I can.
Nonono. I always know that the higher speed difference, the more unsafe it is. I'm not a sheeple.
Thanks to this video, now I can include lane changes as another unsafe maneuver due to slow drivers (talking about the idiots driving SLOWER than the limit).
Yes laws shouldn't be driven by how many people obey them, but they also aren't _enforcing_ this in most places. If they seriously thought the speed limit was proper we could use the electronic payment gates to catch damn near everyone that uses the roads regularly. Or at least get more traditional stops.
Point is we need to set it at a level that we will actually enforce, whatever that may be.
Several years ago, Phoenix AZ highways were installed with speed cameras every few 2 or three miles. The result? People would speed in between the cameras, and then slow down right before getting in range of the next camera. This yo-yo of speed differentials at it's best caused traffic congestion waves rippling it's way along to traffic further back, and at it's worst caused more accidents. People hated them, many felt unsafe in the areas they were installed, and the camera's themselves were often targets for vandalizm. The cameras were removed after about a year or two.
People speeding is an issue, certainly. But the only true way to impose speed limits on everyone safely is by altering every car. Either to monitor for violations, or some other alteration that would prevent the car from going faster than the posted limit. (I suspect the later would be an issue though in the cases were someone tried to get out of a potential incident via acceleration but being prevented from doing so if they're unable to briefly go faster than the posted limit)
I think we really won't see an marked improvement here until we're all in an automated motorway with self driving-networked cars.
***** I've heard thats eastern states with toll roads have it set up so that if you get from one toll to the next too quickly, you get a ticket in the mail. That makes it so yo-yoing is actually no better than going at the speed limit. I don't have data on this but it seems its the better solution. Perhaps the cameras could measure speed by distance traveled instead of using a radar gun.
well there's still going to be lane changes cause I'm not comfortable going 150kph.
Can we get the self-driving cars already?