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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)