Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!genrad!decvax!harpo!floyd!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!ucbcad!ucbmonet.arnold From: ucbmonet.arnold@ucbcad.UUCP Newsgroups: net.flame Subject: Re: re: scott preece on 55mph - (nf) Message-ID: <152@ucbcad.UUCP> Date: Sat, 25-Jun-83 22:46:49 EDT Article-I.D.: ucbcad.152 Posted: Sat Jun 25 22:46:49 1983 Date-Received: Mon, 27-Jun-83 19:11:31 EDT Lines: 72 #R:utcsstat:-70700:ucbmonet:17400003:000:3874 ucbmonet!arnold Jun 23 15:23:00 1983 /***** ucbmonet:net.flame / utcsstat!laura / 2:41 pm Jun 21, 1983*/ The problem with your conclusion is that you assume a smooth curve between the number of people killed and the speed they are going. This is not the case with the statistics I have. At 70 mph, you will be killed and your car will be really smashed up. At 55 mph, you will be killed but your car will suffer less damage. /* ---------- */ Would you like to quote the statistics you have and their sources? I have none on my desk right now, but an example might help. My mother ran into the back of a car stopped in the left hand lane of a highway (yes, I know it was her fault) when she was travelling at between 50 and 55 mph. Her car front was smashed to within 6 inches of the passenger compartment. Since she was wearing her seatbelt, she sustained only relatively minor injuries. Now, I'm quite convinced that there is a function relating speed of that impact to the distance the car was smashed in, i.e., that if she had been driving faster, the car would have been smashed in farther (I am a trusting soul, aren't I?). I therefore reach the conclusion that, had she been driving at some (uknown) faster speed, the passenger compartment would have been damaged sufficiently to increase the damage to her. I then make the flying leap to the conclusion that it is less dangerous to get into a collision if you are going slower, i.e., your chances of getting out alive are better. This does not, of course, claim that any speed would eliminate the chance of getting killed, unless everyone went 0 mph, in which case everyone would die of starvation. /***** ucbmonet:net.flame / utcsstat!laura / 2:41 pm Jun 21, 1983*/ 55mph is pleanty fast enough to kill the same proportion of people who get killed at 70 mph. If you want to slow people down so that they dont get killed you have to slow them down to about 30mph. It is only at significantly lower speeds than 55mph that you begin to see a decrease in fatalities. At 55mph and at 75mph you see a strict proportion to the number of vehicles on the road, except where other large factors (such as a large crackdown on drunk driving) come into play. 55mph is fast enough to kill you, 70mph is overkill. But given that I am driving fast enough to be killed anyway, there is no saving of lives at 55mph -- only a saving of gas, and perhaps a saving to the highway. I figure that as long as i buy my own gas and pay taxes to fix the highway these costs dont matter, and 55 saves lives is an easily demonstrable falsehood. Does that change your mind about 55 mph? /* ---------- */ Not at all. First, there are definitely accidents which are fatal only at speeds greater than 55 mph (besides the above example, the flexibility of what you run into helps govern this). Second, at 55 mph you approach situations slower and your stopping distance is reduced, and therefore you have more time to react. I see no reason to change my beliefs that these factors increase safety until and unless I see definitive studies from reliable sources (i.e., someone besides the Committee to Raise the National Speed Limit). Beyond this, I personally don't care much if you are paying for your own gas. It is a limited resource, and even if I didn't drive, excess consumption of it hurts me. For example, scarcity of a resource makes its price go up if the demand remains constant (modulo several other factors; this is not an advanced economics lecture). When the price of gas goes up, the price of everything that uses it for either production or transportation goes up. That's inflation, which hurts the economy we all live in. Just to keep this shorter than it might otherwise be, I will leave the arguments about national security and balance of trade for other notes if people can't figure them out for themselves. Ken (Arnold, just for Tim)