zulutango | 09-13-2012 06:00 AM | I have no idea why the deaths went up when the limit was imposed. You would have to examin the reports for each individual crash to find the causal factors. Simply by requiring vehicles to travel no more than 130k does not cause a crash. Drivers cause the crashes. To follow the logic you are suggesting we should have no limits at all and the crashes will go down because the roads are safer when anybody can go as fast as they want.
Imaging trying to decide the delay on yellow lights at an intersection if you had no idea of approaching speeds? How about you as a driver trying to enter a roadway with traffic approaching at any possible speed? How about passing a slow moving car when it could also be about to be passed from behind by a car doing 200k. Think you would ever see it coming? I have ridden in Australia where they had no limits out in the desert and it is a very "focusing" experience. Riding for hours at 200kmh makes it very difficult to adjust to velocitization when coming back in to populated areas with limits. Everything comes at you impossibly fast and you have to be at least 200% paranoid about anything you can see as you come up on things so fast if there is a problem you probably can't react in time to avoid it. It only worked there because the area was desolate, deserted, featureless, dead flat and with no corners or curves at all. One stretch was over 400k long. Even there they had crashes and they were usually fatal at those speeds, even if there was nothing to hit if you drove off road. Rollovers as drivers fell asleep or zoned out and they tried to correct off road left or right. If you say that limits cause crashes then the converse must be that no limits are going to prevent them. Nobody could possibly believe that logic. |