Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Krieg" data-source="post: 2029957" data-attributes="member: 5282">Yes that is a tragedy, but statistically it is an aberration not the norm. Your anecdotal evidence while heart wrenching, is irrelevant.Want to place a wager on what the air pressure was in the tire at the time that it failed? Improper vehicle maintence, ignoring road conditions (rain/snow etc) and reckless driving (weaving in and out of traffic, tailgating etc) should be far more of a concern from a safety standpoint. While to some extent that is true, it is also true that the national interstate system was designed to safely vehicles moving at 75-80 mph. The engineers based those numberes on the automobile technology that was available in the 1950's. Once again it is important to reiterate that the national speed limit was limited to 55 mph to conserve gasoline not because of safety concerns. When the national limit was raised to 65 mph in 1987 traffic fatalities continued to drop at the same rate that they had previous to the change. When it was eliminated in 1995 again traffic fatalities continued to drop at the same rate. States with higher upper end speed limits do not have higher traffic fatality rates than those at the lower end. The primary reason for most of the speed limits in this day and age has absolutely nothing to do with passenger safety, it is largely driven by politics and money. The influence of lobbyists paid for by the insurance companies cannot be understated, nor can the desire of politicians to look like they "are doing something" in the eyes of their constituants.Just out of curiosity how much of your municipality's budget is made up from revenue generated from traffic violations? If your department did not write a single ticket in FY05 how much of a shortfall would there be in the budget?Disclaimer: In retrospect I should point out this primarily concerns limited access divided highways. I failed to clarify that originally and may have caused some confusion. I don't think any would advocate unlimited speed limits on roads through built up areas (although I would wager that if the limits were removed 99% of the drivers on the road would continue to drive at prudent speeds).Now that is a law I would heartily endorse.</blockquote>

Verification