> People think of bad driving tickets (mostly speeding) as just a price you pay to drive.
Furthermore, we literally use the phrase, "never got so much as a speeding ticket" to suggest that speeding is the epitome of a minor, inconsequential infraction, when the reality is that we know speeding is a significant cause of and contributor to death, destruction, and injury in automobile crashes.
Predicated on having already crashed, the chances that speed was a contributing factor to the severity is very high. That's why people want lower speed limits.
Predicated on simply having been driving over the speed limit, the chances of an accident are very low. That's why people don't care about speeding.
This only captures crashes with other road users. Increased speed increases a lot of other risks, such as risk of injury to pedestrians at crosswalks or sidewalks, increased risk to hitting a building, and of course the general depressing effect that happens on non-car usage of roads (how many people will want to ride a bike on a road where all car drivers are speeding?).
(This is one of my big issues with US speed limits. All the discussion around it is always scoped only to other cars for the most part.)
I don't have these numbers, but I'm positive that the lifetime risk for having experienced a serious car accident (or any car accident for that matter) is strongly correlated with driving behavior and specifically speeding.
Second, there's the matter of just how damn uncomfortable it is to be around speeding cars when you're not also in a car yourself. People in suburbs don't really think about this because nobody walks anywhere. But I live in a walkable urban environment and the speeders here are an enormous hit to quality of life. They're louder, more aggressive -- it's just really unsettling to be around.
This can be hard to convince suburbanites of, because they conceive of themselves mostly as drivers and not as pedestrians, but even if there were no safety improvements, it would be a huge win for urban environments if we could rein in speeding.
But the reality is that it would also save ~6,000 lives a year in the U.S.
Every speeding ticket that I’ve gotten in the US was issued on a controlled access road with a speed limit of at least 55mph. None were for as much as 20 over. Most were from pack travel where deciding to travel at the posted limit would result in far more passing and aggregate risk to roadway users.
I do believe all of those are minor infractions (and of course they were inconsequential, except for the delay and expense [if convicted] of the ticket). Revenue enforcement here is mostly done on controlled access highways; it’s shooting fish in a barrel.
That's another part of this issue. Traffic enforcement in the US is more ideological than it is utilitarian. Automated enforcement tools like red light cameras and speeding sensors run into intense political pushback in the US. Speeding tickets are usually ways to boost revenue instead of actually trying to deter speeding behavior. Traffic stops are arbitrary and usually based on the political and ideological goals of the Police department and current local government party instead of actually trying to reduce traffic incidents. In fact, as far as I know, traffic incidents are mostly used to drive infrastructure changes instead of really feeding into changing traffic policing.
There's real political pushback from trying to actually decrease traffic incidents because actions to decrease these incidents result in higher overhead for current drivers, something historically lightly enforced.
The typical driver has no idea what a safe speed feels like. They routinely travel beyond the safe speed for a given environment. Charitably, they are unaware of the connection between their actions and the increased risk to pedestrians and cyclists. Uncharitably, they just don't care.
For example, did you know that the risk of severe injury for a pedestrian struck by a moving vehicle is about 25% at 23 MPH but jumps all the way to 75% at 39 MPH. Do the people who routinely travel down my street at or near 40 MPH know this? They do not behave like they know this. They behave like they think 39 MPH is more or less the same as 23 MPH. They behave like they aren't aware of the non-linear increase in risk to everyone around them (because they aren't and they're operating climate-controlled machines that are designed to abstract away the environment outside the car).
Not to mention just how goddamn unpleasant it is to be around cars driving that fast on residential streets, even if they never hit anyone. It's loud, aggressive, and just downright uncomfortable for everyone not also in a car.
Just to add to this, though I'm obviously in agreement with you, is that most engines (gas or electric) used in US cars barely distinguish between 23 MPH and 39 MPH. You could probably just push your foot down a tad bit harder on the gas pedal and make up the speed differential. That's fine; many previous limitations on speed were based around actual deficiencies in automotive development (heavy car bodies, lack of synchros when shifting, heavy clutches, etc) but now that consumer vehicles can so effortlessly go from "0-60 mph" (the common metric used to judge acceleration of cars), it's harder than ever to educate folks on the effects of their speed.
This is a hugely important distinction. Unfortunately, speeding in urban areas — which is the kind of consequential speeding I care about — is still very common. If it were confined to the type of speeding you’re describing, then it wouldn’t matter (as much). But it’s not.
Oh please. This is the kind of comical rhetoric that gets road safety advocates ridiculed.
In practice speeding or at least the instance that resulted in getting ticketed is usually inconsequential.
Between highways signed well under the normal traffic speeds, revenue enforcement and fishing stops the overwhelming majority of speeding tickets are trivial. People engaging in the kind of speeding most people can agree is excessive are a tiny minority. If they weren't people wouldn't use a speeding ticket as the epitome of a trivial infraction.
Of course speed is a factor in death and destruction. That's tautologically true thanks to how the equations in Newtonian physics are written but you don't see anyone (who isn't getting laughed at) advocating for the return of the national speed limit for obvious reasons.
Pushing back on a banal, obvious truism like, "we know speeding is a significant cause of and contributor to death, destruction, and injury in automobile crashes" is the kind of comical rhetoric that should get drivers ridiculed. It really shows just how disconnected the typical beliefs about driving are from reality.
- speed is obviously a factor, but there's a wealth of other factors. 90 on a clear highway with little traffic, and the driver is alert? Fairly safe. 90 while weaving between lanes, leaving little reaction time? Not safe.
- drivers seriously overestimate their competence. Humans undervalue outlier events. This is the root of the stat about accidents occurring within a mile of home.
That's why we have generally-lax enforcement of motorway limits but "strict" enforcement of urban limits in the UK. I'm not asserting that we've got it right here, but it looks more sensible in my eyes.
Caveat: urban centres are increasingly adopting 20mph. I think there's a tacit understanding that people will drive at 27. When it was 30, they'd do 34, so that's a big increase in survivability.
Furthermore, we literally use the phrase, "never got so much as a speeding ticket" to suggest that speeding is the epitome of a minor, inconsequential infraction, when the reality is that we know speeding is a significant cause of and contributor to death, destruction, and injury in automobile crashes.