What happens when you implement a speed limit?

[sebberry]

Crashes go up!

Zulutango, I know you have experience with the Australian way of things and are quite supportive of their photo radar program.

Here's another case where limitless sections of road were given a speed limit and deaths actually increased in the following year: Cookies must be enabled | Herald Sun

I say "another" because a similar thing happened in Montana after the repeal of their "reasonable and prudent" speed law.

[zulutango]

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.

[sebberry]

Utah’s 80 mph zones to be permanent, more test zones may come

Speed demons rejoice: Permanent 80 mph speed limits are coming to two sections of Interstate 15 in southern Utah. And legislators signaled Wednesday that they may hit the accelerator to create more 80 mph "test areas" around the state.

The Utah Department of Transportation three years ago created two 80-mph test zones near Fillmore — in areas selected because they are away from populated areas, without many curves or mountains and have a history of few speed-related accidents.

Studies found that average speeds there increased only by 2 mph — from 83 to 85 mph. Accidents actually decreased in one test zone by 11 percent, and by 20 percent in the other. No speed-related fatalities have occurred in either area during the test.

"There also was a 20 percent reduction in drivers exceeding the speed limit," UDOT Deputy Director Carlos Braceras told the Legislature’s Transportation Interim Committee. He said the higher limit essentially just legalized how fast drivers were already traveling.


[...]

"When we initially presented this, there were concerns that if we raised the speed limit from 75 to 80 mph that people would really travel from 90 to 100 mph," he said. "That didn’t happen. The average speed only increased a couple miles an hour."

Source: Utah


So what can we take away from this? Appropriate speed limits reduce speed differentials between vehicles, compliance with the speed limit improves and contrary to popular belief, drivers didn't continue to drive "20 over" for the sake of driving "20 over"

[T4RAWR]

[Glove]

they wont ever change it here, the cops need the ticket sales to fund themselves, if they raised the limit to 70 instead of 50, theid all be out of work.

[mtnrat]

Glove, your avatar pretty much sums it up.

[radioman]

Originally Posted by zulutango

IRiding for hours at 200kmh makes it very difficult to adjust to velocitization when coming back in to populated areas with limits.

When I read this it reminded me of when James May did a top speed run in the Veyron and he said when he was slowing down he almost opened the door when he was still doing 100kmph.

[zulutango]

You get tunnel vision and only use the 3 degree central beam of your vision and everything gets very quiet....almost surreal if you don't keep telling yourself that you are covering almost 200 feet a second.

[Eastwood]

Why is it that speed limits work in other countries or even continents, such as Europe and Australia, but politicians believe they won't work here?

[vafanculo]

Originally Posted by Glove

they wont ever change it here, the cops need the ticket sales to fund themselves, if they raised the limit to 70 instead of 50, theid all be out of work.

People will speed up to 90. Whenever there is a cap placed, its human nature to exceed it.
Posted via RS Mobile

[sebberry]

Originally Posted by Eastwood

Why is it that speed limits work in other countries or even continents, such as Europe and Australia, but politicians believe they won't work here?

Because they're generally set reasonably and in accordance with accepted engineering standards.

Originally Posted by vafanculo

People will speed up to 90. Whenever there is a cap placed, its human nature to exceed it.
Posted via RS Mobile

Speed creep has been proven to not be true when limits are set appropriately.