Guest Post by Eric Peters
The main problem with speed limits is they’re not.
In a legal sense – yes. You are not legally allowed to drive faster than whatever the number on the sign is. But as a speed limit, the concept is idiotic.
Airplanes have speed limits. If you operate beyond the limits of the airframe, the plane will begin to physically disintegrate, stall or some other catastrophic thing.
Continue reading “What Speed Limits Aren’t . . . But Should Be”
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Speed limits are as much about saaaaaaaaafety as George W. Bush’s invasion of Poland – whoops, Iraq – was about (beady-eyed squint into the camera) “weapons of mass destruction.”
This is easily demonstrated.
In my neck of the Woods, there is a roughly 15 mile stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway that has been posted 45 MPH since the ’70s, at least – if not since the Parkway was built, back in the 1930s.
This is a limited-access secondary highway. People have been driving 45-50-something MPH for a long time and for the most part, without triggering the Apocalypse.
All speed limits are arbitrary because they are based on the idea that one size fits all. That Driver A must driver no faster than Driver B is competent to drive – all based on a supposition about the abilities of both.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Even better – from a certain point-of-view – than a radar trap based on an under-posted speed limit is a radar trap with a changing speed limit. One that can be dumbed-down at random and with no prior notice, at the whim of the same government workers who enforce the limits and profit from that enforcement.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
More evidence that the American Automobile Association (AAA) ought to have its license revoked comes in the form of “summer safety tips” offered to teenaged drivers from AAA’s Foundation for Traffic Safety.
Bet you can guess.
Observe speed limits –
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Few people with working brains respect the obviously stupid. Which explains why almost everyone disrespects posted speed limits … by ignoring them.
Any law or edict that is almost universally ignored can be safely presumed stupid. Or – as here – cynically dismissed as a tool for separating people’s money from their persons. Most speed limits (and thus, speeding tickets) fall into this latter category.
None of this is news.
But because speed limits exist as an artificial barometer of reasonable maximum velocities, there is the problem of a generally distorted perception of what constitutes reasonable average velocities.
The Clover who mopes along at say 44 in a 45 contents himself with the thought that he is “doing the speed limit” and feels righteous or at least, justified, about not yielding to the faster-moving traffic stacking up behind him. Even though almost everyone is doing more than the limit – or at least, trying to – he does not question the reasonableness of the statute. Typically, he defends it. Takes the position that whatever the posted maximum is, the fact that it is posted constitutes definitive proof that it is the balls-to-the-wall highest safe speed; that anyone (which is almost everyone) who drives faster deserves a ticket.