An oped by Dr. Kent Sepkowitz in the – I’m shocked – NYT:
SPEEDING is the cause of 30 percent of all traffic deaths in the United States — about 13,000 people a year. By comparison, alcohol is blamed 39 percent of the time, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. But unlike drinking, which requires the police, breathalyzers and coercion to improve drivers’ behavior, there’s a simple way to prevent speeding: quit building cars that can exceed the speed limit.
Most cars can travel over 100 miles an hour – an illegal speed in every state. Our continued, deliberate production of potentially law-breaking devices has no real precedent. We regulate all sorts of items to decrease danger to the public, from baby cribs to bicycle helmets. Yet we continue to produce fast cars despite the lives lost, the tens of billions spent treating accident victims, and a good deal of gasoline wasted. (Speeding, after all, substantially reduces fuel efficiency due to the sheering force of wind.)
Gosh, there’s so much to deal with here.
I really have two issues with this; the first is that I’ve come to believe that freedom means the freedom for other people to do things you find wasteful, annoying, even somewhat disgusting. Yes, there are limits to freedom, and yes, the government has rights to some level of control. But this pushes a little past it and moves directly to the far horizon.
Otherwise it doesn’t matter much. Yes, we’d be better off if driving was safer, and yes, speeding contributes to the risk of driving. But the steps we’d have to take to keep the risk of speeding vanishingly small would be so intrusive that we might as well live in England (about which more in a moment). But to be honest, if we banned call phones and additionally required intrusive vehicle inspections like the TUV in Germany (and had German driving license requirements), we’d probably have a bigger impact on road hazards.
There’s a second issue as well. The playground equipment next to our house (we’re across from a wonderful park) was recently ‘upgraded’, and the new stuff – well, it’d be hard for an infant to hurt themselves on it. And so my son doesn’t use it – it’s boring. And what I worry about isn’t that he’s more sedentary (he’s taken to climbing the trees in the park, meaning that I keep mineral spirits and tweezers handy); it’s that he’s losing the opportunity to gain judgment.
We’re raising a generation of people who have no clue about how to take care of themselves. They are the couch potatoes of Wall.E (annoying music) brought to flesh.
There’s no way that’s a good thing. And if it means that my odds of dying are somewhat higher when I’m headed out in my Civic Hybrid, so be it.
This kind of intrusiveness is coming to a kind of crescendo in the UK, where antiterrorist laws are being twisted so they can be used against … wait for it … people who throw away too much trash, or make noise and annoy their neighbors.
An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph found that three quarters of local authorities have used the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) 2000 over the past year.
The Act gives councils the right to place residents and businesses under surveillance, trace telephone and email accounts and even send staff on undercover missions.
…
Councils are using the Act to tackle dog fouling, the unauthorised sale of pizzas and the abuse of the blue badge scheme for disabled drivers.
Among 115 councils that responded to a Freedom of Information request, 89 admitted that they had instigated investigations under the Act. The 82 councils that provided figures said that they authorised or carried out a total of 867 RIPA investigations during the year to August
Of course, the agencies should be trusted with those powers…
Sir Jeremy Beecham, the acting chairman of the Local Government Association, which represents councils, said last night: “Councils are tuned into people’s fears about the potential overzealous use of these crime- fighting powers. They know that they’re only to be used to tackle residents’ complaints about serious offences, like when benefit cheats are robbing hard-working taxpayers or fly-by-night traders are ripping off vulnerable pensioners.”
He added: “Councils do not use these powers to mount fishing expeditions. First and foremost it is about protecting the public, not intruding on privacy. Crime-busting powers are targeted at suspected criminals and used only when absolutely necessary.”
That kind of thinking, to me, is the all-too-logical extension of Dr. Sepkowitz’s thinking.
I have two immediate responses…
Here’s one:
What is it?
2009 Cadillac CTS-VWhat’s special about it?
What’s special about it?! Well, how about 550 horsepower? That’s pretty special, wouldn’t you say?For those of you who haven’t been paying attention for the last 10 minutes or so to the horsepower war raging among carmakers, this 550 hp means the 2009 Cadillac CTS-V’s supercharged 6.2-liter V8 makes 43 hp more than the 6.2-liter V8 of the Mercedes-Benz E63 AMG, 50 hp more than the 5.0-liter V10 of the BMW M5, 130 hp more than the 4.2-liter V8 of the Audi RS4 and a whopping 134 hp more than the 5.0-liter V8 of the Lexus IS-F.
And here’s the other:
Good evening, London. Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of every day routine- the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke. But in the spirit of commemoration, thereby those important events of the past usually associated with someone’s death or the end of some awful bloody struggle, a celebration of a nice holiday, I thought we could mark this November the 5th, a day that is sadly no longer remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat. There are of course those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now, orders are being shouted into telephones, and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent. Last night I sought to end that silence. Last night I destroyed the Old Bailey, to remind this country of what it has forgotten. More than four hundred years ago a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives. So if you’ve seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you then I would suggest you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to stand beside me one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament, and together we shall give them a fifth of November that shall never, ever be forgot.
Nanny State.
It would be much more logical to develop a line of helmets that can be worn in cars. It would be voluntary, of course, but those that wear these helmets would reduce their chance of death or injury by 75% or more. Racecar drivers wear helmets.
The helmet would have to have :
1) A wide field of vision.
2) It need only be strong in the front (the back isn’t really at risk in car crashes).
“We’re raising a generation of people who have no clue about how to take care of themselves. ”
And thus have been perfectly cultivated to become left-wing voters. Tax the evil entrepreneur for taking too much money from society – his money should be ‘fairly’ distributed.
_Yes, there are limits to freedom, and yes, the government has rights to some level of control. But this pushes a little past it and moves directly to the far horizon._
I dunno about far horizon – I disagree with his opinion, but I don’t see it that far away from cigarette taxes. Walking them up x% has driven down deaths y%.
_Here’s one:_
They make the HP of the car more so that it can move around all that weight – it’s more a showing (in the Caddy) about how we still cannot make a competitive car, even at the high end. 4300 curb weight for the Cadillac, 3900 for the Mercedes, 4000 for the M5, 3700 for the Audi. Meh.
How about this – instead of his proposals (the EZPass like booth and/or GPS like tracking for road miles, which has been suggested) it is addressed with taxes. Car over a certain weight (say, 4000 lbs) and/or with a power-to-weight of over 100bhp/ton get hit with a beloved *cough* tax instead of a restriction on manufacture. Still not good, but more palatable?
I think the Ford Escort of 20 years ago was somewhere around 90, a Camry of today is around 110, F150 maybe 130.
_It would be much more logical to develop a line of helmets that can be worn in cars. _
I think that over 50% of fatalities come from unrestrained people, so weight sensors/seat belts make more sense. More than that – I think about 10k of his total comes from pedestrians, motorcyclists, bicyclists, so the speeding benefit is not only to passengers.
I do remember a study somewhere that said that simple bike helmets provided greater safety than side curtain air bags – in fact, more than any improvement from aside from the driver air bag and seat belts.
*”It would be much more logical to develop a line of helmets that can be worn in cars. It would be voluntary, of course, but those that wear these helmets would reduce their chance of death or injury by 75% or more. Racecar drivers wear helmets.”*
Race cars have five point harnesses, I’ve often mourned the fact that you can’t get them as options on regular passenger cars. And race cars have the sort of protective cages built in which we can’t build into regular passenger cars because CAFE limits have stripped the builders of the necessary weight budget.
Watch a crash on Transam racing some time, and the driver walking away from it, and reflect on the fact that it’s government regulations that make cars that safe unavailable to the average person.
You want “blood for oil”, CAFE is it. Not exactly a novel observation, it’s been known for years.
this was a pretty cool country before the lawyers and pussies took over.
But I forgot to mention someting: Risk homeostasis. Look it up, those helmets won’t gain you as much as you’d think.
Interesting, AL
I think everyone missed your point and the movie. I suggest you go to the window and yell, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”
As to the nanny state. I always find it interesting that people object to anything that would protect people but have no objection to advantaging large corporations w/ tax cuts, credits and exemptions. An acknowledgment that both are out of control would be more fitting.
_”An acknowledgment that both are out of control would be more fitting.”_
Both are out of control. How they relate to each other is beyond me. I’m gonna talk about Jesus for a while now.
Robert, I frequently have explained that I’m liberal because someone has to counterbalance the power of large corporations, and the only institution that can do it is government.
I also have said – pretty often – that regulation bears two costs: the costs of actually meeting the regulatory goal (lower mercury emissions) and the cost of compliance with the administrative regime (paperwork, testing). I’m all for maximizing the former and minimizing the latter.
A.L.
I fear the government more than I fear large corporations. Who regulates the government? It’s most certainly not the people. When was the last time anyone in government was actually held accountable for their failures? 9/11 occurs and no one is fired, no one is held accountable for our security failures, Tenet keeps his job, as does everyone else involved.
Corporations at least answer to the market, shareholders and boards (well most do). Corporations for the most part, are not ignoring the needs of their customers to their own detriment (barring the airlines), and if I don’t like how a corporation is treating me, I can choose not to use their services.
I can’t say the same for my government, which continues to waste money on a plethora of fundamentally flawed programs of which their only purpose is to enrich those involved.
Who regulates the government?
Theoretically, the voters. But for that to work, we need more people paying attention.
_”regulation bears two costs: the costs of actually meeting the regulatory goal (lower mercury emissions) and the cost of compliance with the administrative regime (paperwork, testing”_
The problem is that government bureacracy _by its nature_ maximizes the latter and corrupts the former. The goal of every government agency in existance is to increase its budget.
Gabriel is theoretically correct about the market correcting corporations. However, the government has now interfered so thoroughly in the market that too many companies have become ‘to big to fail’.
Consider the most mismanaged industries in the country- airlines, lenders, and the auto companies. Now consider which industries are certain of a government bailout. Airlines, lenders, and auto companies. This is not a coincidence.
bq. I think everyone missed your point and the movie. I suggest you go to the window and yell, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”
It might be interesting to contrast the differences between what “Howard Beale”:http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechnetwork2.html was raving about, and what “V”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0434409/ was “protesting” against. It might also be interesting to draw inferences about how their _methods_ reflected on their underlying messages.
But I can’t figure out an interesting way to make it relevant to the thread.
Speeding doesn’t kill people, bad driving kills people.
I bet Dr. Kent Sepkowitz is one of those NYC-area Volvo drivers who bought a super-secure car because they were frightened by the many near-accidents they caused, puttering along 20 mph slower than the rest of the traffic in the center lane of the Major Deegan.
I find that overly cautious drivers are just as likely to cause accidents, if not moreso. Especially the slow right turners. You dont have to stop to turn right. You know who you are.
Just looking at the “graphs”:http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811017.PDF of a recent NHTSA study (pdf), the rate of traffic fatalities and injuries has been steadily decreasing since at least 1988. (I don’t see any increase related to the years around 1995 in which the federal speed limit was repealed.)
Speeding, of course, is a relative term. I would imagine that a serious proposal would look for the number of fatalities and injuries related to speeds over 80 miles per hour.
Funny how all the mooks ignored the last quote.
I’ve spent a lot of time in Denmark (whose efforts at Nanny-statism put us all to shame). I don’t find their fear of terror or lack of survival skills particularly worse than ours. Of course, they have far less violence and a sense of public propriety that is still functional. I’ve been reprimanded there by random people for jaywalking.. with no cars around. Recently two Danish tourists were arrested for leaving their child in a stroller in front of a restaurant while they were eating.
What disturbs me about all this is how little emphasis is given to not terrorizing other people. We bring up kids obsessed with their own safety but who have no thought of others’. So we buy SUVs, invade Iraq, and vote ourselves lower taxes and higher military budgets each year.
Kudos for driving the civic hybrid btw. I hope you have the side-curtain airbags though 🙂
bq I find that overly cautious drivers are just as likely to cause accidents, if not moreso. Especially the slow right turners. You dont have to stop to turn right. You know who you are.
Possibly maintaining proper stopping distances would ameliorate this issue.
The main issue really is how “speeding” is defined and under which specific circumstances it occurs. This is important because exceeding speed limits below the maximum limit set on roadways is almost impossible to control.
For example, if someone runs over a pedestrian at 45mph in a 25mph zone, that would seem to fall under the classification used by the NYT article. However, all vehicles are and will continue to be capable of “speeding” under this circumstance; even a Smart car can be deadly. The author of the article does not seem aware of this distinction, preferring only to address maximum speed limits. Yet no data is provided for traffic deaths in that category (as noted by #17). And honestly I’m a bit skeptical that a substantial fraction of traffic deaths are the result of excessive high speeds (over say 80mph), so limiting the top end speed any further would seem pointless (they’re already electronically capped on many cars in the mid 100s). Yes, you do see the occasional gruesome accident on the parkway that looks like it must have been fatal, but smackups at busy intersections with confusing signals seem far more common. If I had more time I’d try to dig into the data, but I think it’s problematic to do so since it sounds like each state keeps its own collision records and they are likely to be woefully incomplete.
And as an aside, I very much like comment #2 by GK above regarding passenger vehicle helmet use. I’ve been saying the same thing for years after doing some auto racing myself, as well as #5 about 5-point restraints (I think you can get them on Ferraris, though they’re not “regular” passenger cars of course!).
Yeah. Kids are out shooting each other in the streets because I own an SUV. Thats the ticket. Hyperbolic hand wringing over overblown social issues probably drives people to drink and drive. Who will stop the madness?
_”Possibly maintaining proper stopping distances would ameliorate this issue.”_
Not likely. The three second rule doesnt help with a 10 second turn.
“I can’t drive – 55!”
— Ted Nugent
_We’re raising a generation of people who have no clue about how to take care of themselves._
As they say over at Wikipedia, “citation needed.”
We have a nation of poor drivers. To them, the car is an extension of the living room. How many would be able to recover from a slide to save their life? (literally) How many have the least damn clue about stopping distances? How many understand that AWD is not a magic replacement for a low co-efficient of friction? And the distraction level of the ever-present cell phone is added to the mix. I have seen people drive right through a red light talking merrily on the phone. We have spent 40 years making cars safer and safer and our drivers get worse and worse. I would argue there is a direct inverse proportional effect here.
Our speed enforcement is 99% about revenue, not safety.
Admittedly, my views may be colored from being a lifelong motorcyclist- when some idiots tiny mistake may kill you, it tends to heighten the awareness a bit.
My take for cutting collisions? New law- Anybody in a collision gets their cell phone record checked- if the time frame of a phone call coincides with the collision time , extra $1000 fine. And none of this crap about hands free- it is not a mechanical impairment, it is a mental impairment.
_The main issue really is how “speeding” is defined and under which specific circumstances it occurs._
If you look at the “2005 study”:http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd-30/NCSA/Rpts/2005/809_839/809-839.html the editorial relies upon, you’ll see that relatively few speeding fatalities are reported on interstates, mostly they occur on local and arterial roads. About half of speeding fatalities occur on roads with speed limits posted under 55 mph. Also, 40% of fatal accidents occur at curves. A lot occur at night.
All of this suggests that people are not driving too fast, they are driving too fast for relative conditions. They are failing to exercise good judgment (the study points out that age and alcohol are significant contributing factors to poor judgment).
If a car driving below the speed limit fails to decelerate before entering a sharp curve, are they speeding? The Study doesn’t inform us.
_”I can’t drive – 55!”_
_”– Ted Nugent”_
I believe that was Sammy Hagar. Dissing The Red Rocker?!
Yeah, its Sammy, not Ted. Ted would sing I can’t shoot semi-auto.
#26, exactly, making the calls to limit the top end speed of cars pointless.
I love that movie.
In my country, where the _Good evening, London_ speech can be directly applied, TUV concessions are simply another business for the friends of the politicians. Furthermore, their diagnosis may vary considering urban or rural, rather unpopulated, areas and most faults can be detected by the driver himself without their service. Just a way of losing 40 euros and an afternoon.
I agree governers are too intrusive. I drove a governed vehicle once. It was a Ryder truck and I was moving my parent’s belongings. The governer worked on engine revs so it took the entire top end off the motor, let alone restricting you to immigrant-on-an-L.A.-freeway speed in the right-hand-lane. Worst . . . driving . . . experience . . . ever.
But don’t you think we have gone overboard with the recent horsepower race and obsession with 0-60 times? It works against raising mileage standards on cars and light trucks. The Toyota Avalon 3.5 L 6-cyl has a sub 7 second 0-60 time and some auto rag is complaining that it is sluggish.
What I find as a pedestrian is that you enter a clear street, some wise person turns a corner and floors it and one has to beat a retreat. Cars seem to materialize out of nowhere. It isn’t so much that people drive a high top speed, but people are so quick off the line, quick to honk at anyone who isn’t, and will chase pedestrians out of crosswalks doing this.
What ever happened to the 85 MPH speedometer? You weren’t governed at 85, only if you exceeded 85, you didn’t have the thrill of knowing your speed. My Toyota Camry 2.2 L with automatic transmission has a speedometer marked up to 140 MPH. 140? Get real! The shocks, tires, and engine will have blown out long before reaching that speed.
I actually commented “on the horsepower race”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/008766.php back in ’06…
I’d still like one of those Cadillacs, though…maybe if I did a blog fundraiser?
A.L.
The owner’s manual on my 2002 Passat advises against operating for sustained periods at more than 80% of the max speed on the speedo during the break-in period. Max speed on the speedo is 160 mph (NOT kph). I managed not to spend any time over 120 the first year, though the car clearly can go that fast…
Now, seriously, I cannot imagine that a non-intrusive, speed-based governor couldn’t be developed with existing tech tomorrow; rental cars already report to the rental company if you speed in ’em, and my Passat gives me mileage calculated on the fly, which means that it’s keeping track of speed. For those folks who want to race their cars where it’s legal to race, maybe the governor could be triggered by road signal? On the other hand, making it tougher for the nitwits who street-race on Riverside Drive to do so doesn’t strike me as a bad thing.
On a very distantly related issue, I’m going to be interested in hearing the political response to the discussion we’re going to hear, after the Chatsworth disaster on Friday the 12th, to the effect that if 30 years ago, when the NTSB suggested it, the government had bit the bullet and paid for inter-city passenger rail (like Metrolink and the Surfliner) to be all run on new, 100% _grade separated_ (’cause some folks, besides suicidal idiots, just don’t get the “don’t race the train” thing) 100% passenger-dedicated track, (so nobody would have to WORRY about what UP does with their freight hauls…) all PTC controlled, (the NTSB repeated THAT suggestion in 2002, when a freight/Metrolink collision in Placentia killed 2) there’d be a bunch of people alive today who aren’t. Not only that, you could probably get from LA to San Diego in 90 minutes, San Francisco in 4 hours, Vegas in 3, and maybe New York in 40. . .