Raising Speed Limits Cost Lives

[CascadeClone]

This was in the 70s in the muscle car era. The speed limit was 70 until the 55 limit came in. Even at 55 to 60, those roads required your full attention.

Mom used to talk about how 151 from home to Dubuque was considered a major highway, yet was only two lanes and had CURBS on the sides. She said people would lose control, hit the curbs and fly off into the next life. This was in the days before seat belts too.

 

[CascadeClone]

Texas has many 2 lanes with 70 mph limits, and some with 75 mph speed limits. Then again, these are usually areas with very little traffic.

Sure, but that's a great way to get killed if something pops up unexpectedly where there is usually no traffic.

They used to teach people to slow down, cover the brake, and be ready for surprises around corners, up hills, etc. Driving was a lot more "active". We're so used to just following lights and signs, wide lanes, ramps, etc that those actual mental and physical driving skills are not very common.

 

[intrepid27]

Several years ago I was driving back from the Black Hills with my ex who is from SD going 87 and she was like "how fast are you going" as I was passing someone. Said 87 and shes like no one drives over 85. Just had it my head that I always put cruise at 7 or 8 over everywhere else.

During the pandemic we were driving home on I-80 in Western Nebraska, my wife was asleep and it was like a ghost town. I then learned that the cruise control on a Subaru Ascent is disabled over 90 MPH. Fun haters.

 

[xr4ticlone]

Speed limit increases are tied to 37,000 deaths over 25 years

Rising speed limits over the past 25 years have cost nearly 37,000 lives, including more than 1,900 in 2017 alone, a new IIHS study shows.

www.iihs.org

Not to mention the increase in fuel costs.

If we’re gonna be about saving lives…taking people who don’t have licenses or insurance off the road would be a great start.

We should also remove those who can’t read road signs & don’t respect our laws. I know it’s a radical theory.

 

[1SEIACLONE]

Mom used to talk about how 151 from home to Dubuque was considered a major highway, yet was only two lanes and had CURBS on the sides. She said people would lose control, hit the curbs and fly off into the next life. This was in the days before seat belts too.

I remember highway two being like that in southern Iowa, people were always bouncing off the curbs and then back over into the other lane. They finally got around to grinding them off and putting in larger shoulders in most places on the road, but there is still a stretch between Moulton turnoff and Chariton river where there is a foot or two shoulder and drop offs of 3 to 5 feet. Just a horrible stretch of road.

 

[GP4ISU]

Now you've hit a pet peeve of mine on the interstate, the semis that are governed to 65 or 70 then they get side by side and take miles to pass. They need to have a passing override on those. They back up traffic a bunch on the interstate.

Especially when the passing semi moves to the left lane right in front of a car going 5 over….with a hill coming!

 

[ISUTex]

I'm often confused why people feel like they can't accelerate while passing on the interstate. "I'm going 70mph and not 1mph faster! Even if I'm camping here in this trucks blind spot!".

If you are driving 70mph, and you're passing someone 69mph, it takes roughly 35 seconds to pass.

If you accelerate to 75mph, it takes roughly 5 seconds.

It's actually safer to accelerate.

Any state trooper would say the same thing. Even if you have to go 80 to pass. Nobody will get pulled over for going 10 over to pass.

 

[GP4ISU]

You could avoid that entirely by speeding up an extra 5 mph. As the poster above said, it's safer to accelerate in this scenario.

Agree. Let me ask this real life scenario:

You’re following a group of three cars on a winding S IA highway that vary their speeds from 50-54 mph. Goes on for 10 miles. None of the cars has any inclination to pass the others.

You finally come up over a hill to a long open stretch with no one in sight (trooper was hiding behind a bridge). No one passes, so you go for it, passing three cars at one who are going 53.

The question - how fast do you go while passing or do you even pass three cars? Can do it at 55 but you linger in the wrong lane. 65? 75? 83?

I clearly made the wrong choice.

 

[bluestarcyclone]

Any state trooper would say the same thing. Even if you have to go 80 to pass. Nobody will get pulled over for going 10 over to pass.

Depends what day of the month it is

 

[CyCoug]

If we’re gonna be about saving lives…taking people who don’t have licenses or insurance off the road would be a great start.

We should also remove those who can’t read road signs & don’t respect our laws. I know it’s a radical theory.

You could just say “illegals” (in your parlance). It’s shorter and tells us lots about where you stand.

PS. I’ve driven in lots of places where the signs aren’t in English. It’s pretty easy to safely drive even if you can’t understand the exact worlds. Signs are designed with standard colors, symbols, and shapes for that reason.

 

[dmclone]

Agree. Let me ask this real life scenario:

You’re following a group of three cars on a winding S IA highway that vary their speeds from 50-54 mph. Goes on for 10 miles. None of the cars has any inclination to pass the others.

You finally come up over a hill to a long open stretch with no one in sight (trooper was hiding behind a bridge). No one passes, so you go for it, passing three cars at one who are going 53.

The question - how fast do you go while passing or do you even pass three cars? Can do it at 55 but you linger in the wrong lane. 65? 75? 83?

I clearly made the wrong choice.

That's a **** cop move.

 

[xr4ticlone]

You could just say “illegals” (in your parlance). It’s shorter and tells us lots about where you stand.

PS. I’ve driven in lots of places where the signs aren’t in English. It’s pretty easy to safely drive even if you can’t understand the exact worlds. Signs are designed with standard colors, symbols, and shapes for that reason.

True…but the PC police here frown on it.

It’s a personal thing for me as I have a HS friend who will spend the rest of his life in a nursing home (he’s been there 4 years now and is 56) due to an illegal driver hitting him head on while driving to work.

His wife couldn’t face the prospect of caring for him for the next 20-30 years and left. He’ll never work again, lost his house, his ability to walk, part of his mental capacity is also gone as well as his ability to speak clearly.

So now he sits alone in a nursing home with people 20-30 years his senior waiting to die as he watches them depart one by one from old age. This is far from the only case I’m aware of…others weren’t so fortunate…or maybe they were more fortunate that they died. The sad truth is I’m not sure saving my buddies life was the best thing those paramedics could have done for him that morning. He’d probably tell you it wasn’t.

But I’m truly glad you can identify the visual clues of foreign street signs though. That’s fantastic.

 

[madguy30]

True…but the PC police here frown on it.

It’s a personal thing for me as I have a HS friend who will spend the rest of his life in a nursing home (he’s been there 4 years now and is 56) due to an illegal driver hitting him head on while driving to work.

His wife couldn’t face the prospect of caring for him for the next 20-30 years and left. He’ll never work again, lost his house, his ability to walk, part of his mental capacity is also gone as well as his ability to speak clearly.

So now he sits alone in a nursing home with people 20-30 years his senior waiting to die as he watches them depart one by one from old age. This is far from the only case I’m aware of…others weren’t so fortunate…or maybe they were more fortunate that they died. The sad truth is I’m not sure saving my buddies life was the best thing those paramedics could have done for him that morning. He’d probably tell you it wasn’t.

But I’m truly glad you can identify the visual clues of foreign street signs though. That’s fantastic.

That's a sad story, but an insured person legally able to drive does this type of thing often when drunk or high or on their phone, whatever.

Then in places like Iowa you have 'parents know best' efforts that will leave you with parents teaching their kids that the laws don't matter within a small imaginary circle around their vehicle as they drive around.

There's quite a bit more nuance to it than 'follow our laws' since people in general are adverse to rules.

 

[barometriclow]

If we’re gonna be about saving lives…taking people who don’t have licenses or insurance off the road would be a great start.

We should also remove those who can’t read road signs & don’t respect our laws. I know it’s a radical theory.

Surely the technology exist to not allow a vehicle to run when unlicensed driver or uninsured

 

[nhclone]

Surely the technology exist to not allow a vehicle to run when unlicensed driver or uninsured

Even if it does, the cost of adding it to every existing car on the road would be astronomical and adding it to new cars would mean a rollout that literally takes decades. That is a common theme really, we have technology available to make driving much safer, but passing those costs along to consumers is a non-starter and they won't be implemented voluntarily at a large scale for a very long time.

 

[Big Daddy Kang]

Agree. Let me ask this real life scenario:

You’re following a group of three cars on a winding S IA highway that vary their speeds from 50-54 mph. Goes on for 10 miles. None of the cars has any inclination to pass the others.

You finally come up over a hill to a long open stretch with no one in sight (trooper was hiding behind a bridge). No one passes, so you go for it, passing three cars at one who are going 53.

The question - how fast do you go while passing or do you even pass three cars? Can do it at 55 but you linger in the wrong lane. 65? 75? 83?

I clearly made the wrong choice.

Ah, the farmer/blue hair car parade. 151 between Dubuque and Dodgeville was prone to this when it was two lane. To answer your question - 83.

 

[CyCoug]

So you have anecdotal (and I admit very personal) incident. And now have decided to generalize this to the entire "illegal" population. I did a bit of searching and there really isn't much evidence either way. So my next step was to at least see if there was a correlation between the estimated share of undocumented immigrants and serious accidents / DUIs. Here is what I found (using Claude.ai). Is that perfect? Definitely not. But is it more thought and research than you have put in - definitely.


State Est. undoc. share | Traffic fatalities per 100M VMT | DUI arrests

California ~2.5% | 1.02 | 190 | High undoc. share, below-avg fatality rate

Texas ~2.1% | 1.52 | 370 | Mixed — high rural VMT inflates fatality rate

New York ~1.9% | 0.78 | 125 | High undoc. share, lowest fatality rate tier

Florida ~1.6% | 1.46 | 285 | Mid-range; tourism/VMT confounds data

Illinois ~1.2% | 1.10 | 210 | Moderate undoc. share, mid-low rates

Montana ~0.1% | 1.89 | 610 | Very low undoc. share, highest fatality/DUI tier

Wyoming ~0.2% | 1.72 | 580 | Very low undoc. share, high fatality/DUI tier

North Dakota ~0.1% | 1.61 | 540 | Very low undoc. share, high fatality/DUI tier

Undocumented share estimates use DHS residual methodology and carry significant uncertainty. DUI arrest rates reflect enforcement intensity, not incidence. VMT = vehicle miles traveled. County-level cross-tabulations are not reliably available in public datasets.

 

[baller21]

Now you've hit a pet peeve of mine on the interstate, the semis that are governed to 65 or 70 then they get side by side and take miles to pass. They need to have a passing override on those. They back up traffic a bunch on the interstate.

I really wish we could expand 80 and 35 to three lanes and restrict semis to the right two lanes like other states do.

 

[VeloClone]

If you get a little love tap it was me, just enough to let you know im there

Rubbin' is racin'

 

[VeloClone]

During the pandemic we were driving home on I-80 in Western Nebraska, my wife was asleep and it was like a ghost town. I then learned that the cruise control on a Subaru Ascent is disabled over 90 MPH. Fun haters.

About 20 years ago the wife and I borrowed my FILs Road Trek RV and went to Yellowstone. We were trying to get all the way from Grand Tetons to Des Moines on our trip back all in one day so I was tooling along at a pretty good clip on I-80 late at night in rural western or central Nebraska when a couple of construction ahead signs popped up. Before I could do anything there was a drop off in our lane that had to be 8" to a foot with no other warning. I was sure that our bikes that were on the rack on the back of the RV would be all over the road. Mrs. Velo who had dozed off in the passenger seat about soiled herself.