85 MPH speed limit coming

If I were to drive at say 65 MPH on this road, would I be at risk of being struck by others?

 

As I saw on the signs around Tasmania... "It is a limit not a challenge"

 

I'm sure you'd be fine, but unless you were trying to go to/from sequin, I don't know why you would pay the toll.

 

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety of course made no such arguments. You have misstated them completely to create straw man arguments and then you opine on your own wrong assumptions.

IIHS recommendations are all science, testing based because that is what reduces accidents and lowers insurance payouts for damage and injuries. IIHS has been right for decades on every aspect of car safety from air bags to ABS breaks to crash tests.

 

Interesting thread. I'll add my observations about different speed limits. My conclusions are in the last paragraph.

While stationed in West Germany (and then unified Germany) a few decades back, my wife and I, California transplants, were petrified of the no-speed-limit German autobahns... for about a month. Years later, on return to the US I was shaking my head and laughing at the occasional newspaper letters-to-the-editor fulminating about the extreme dangers of people who exceed 65 MPH on a freeway. So, my conclusion was that our views are formed by our personal direct past experience and the psychological comfort derived from same.

With about 5.5 years of driving cars and a motorcycle on German autobahns, I observed that 1). there will ALWAYS be a faster driver than you, 2). that is almost always dependent on a higher-performance machine and thus indirectly, on $$$ available in the wallet, 3). OMG does the gas decrease geometrically faster from the tank the higher the speed 4). there as no need after a 1st season of experimentation / adaptation to drive faster than 125 MPH in the better of the two cars we owned - a BMW 318i, or faster than about 100 MPH on my pretty powerful Buell motorcycle. 5). The practical limit to speed, apart from the vanishing gas supply, was my ability to look ahead far enough to foresee the road and things on it: this was surprisingly harder to do on the motorcycle than in the car, and I concluded it was because of the physical buffeting to the head & neck above 100 MPH, and 6). our comfort with high speeds adapted upwards within weeks and stabilized at a much higher level.

Finally, the most important lesson we both learned: driver's license education for Germans is really superior, much longer, more expensive and a painful effort compared to what passes for driver's ed here in the States, and the license exam is designed to reinforce that. Hence, MOST drivers on the autobahn, regardless of vehicle driven, are better trained to behave appropriately irrespective of the speed limit or lack of it. There are still accidents, and the high-speed ones are horrendous - but there are really not that many accidents for the very high speeds maintained. So, in the end it comes down to people and their training and the expectation of high standards during that training. This high training level creates the safety layer. Our varied state driver training expectations are unequal to the driving social contract we observed in Germany, even in those few states with a past history of no speed limits or very high speed limits. A US state personal driver's license is seen often as a commodity rather than as a "certification to safely operate dangerous machinery". That is a shame IMHO.

A separate issue is the burning of hydrocarbon resources. There, I am a fan of both the US CAFE standards, and a fan of much higher gasoline taxes that would better reflect the impact of individual choice, i.e. if you have the $$$ to own a Porsche and treat gasoline like water, that's OK as long as your gasoline tax cost reflects your choice as compared to the tax cost to a Prius owner.

To recap: assuming a good supply of well-designed high speed roads, the safety of higher speed vehicles is largely governed by the socially mandated drivers' training standards, and then by the socially mandated maintenance and inspection standards of the vehicles they drive - I think that very high speed is a variable but not automatically the governing variable.

Thanks for reading.

 

A straw man argument is one you take to make the other side look foolish. I was talking about the IIHS arguments. Don't believe me listen to them.

IIHS news release

their press release not mine

The PACs position weakened the cafe standards. The prius proves automakers can make safe fuel efficient cars. IIHS challenges and says no physics. Give me a break.

Its not straw man if they put it in their press release. They also like to say they are non-proffit. Every PAC is "non profit". The tobacco instititue is non-pofit, and IIHS has picked and chosen their studies to highlight what will make the insurance companies money. No its not as bad as tobacco institute, but much of the data they release is just as misleading.

I guess the tobacco institute is all about helping us too. It is a pac funded to put forth the insurance company agenda. More SUVs, more premiums. There are many human factors beyond the simple physics when it comes to traffic accidents. Look at the autobahn.

So forget about human factors in accidents. Forget about fuel consumption.
Latest Safety Stats: New SUVs Are Safer Than Sedans

Yep and bring back the hummer. That car that can not see beyond the big SUV is more likely to b be hurt. We want to all drive tanks to feel safe.
The IIHS has science behind it, and you should get that big SUV so you can feel safe. Please ignore the other statistics that if you are a safe driver... well we wouldn't want to take personal responsibility would we.

 

DadofHedgeHog; you actually think that American Drivers are equal or capable of being equal with German Drivers? that is truly funny.

I was in Germany as well. not very long but long enough for 2 serious accidents to have happened near me. in both cases a foreigner was involved and most likely the cause.

 

Many of us have driven over there. I think the idea of having low standards, because americans are not as good as the rest of the world, is wrong. Let's strive for excellence. I remember sitting in the back of my granfather's car with my cousins, counting the number of people he almost hit. When he started driving, you paid your money and you got a license and a handbook to look at for the laws. No tests. Drivers education, especially with those older that have an infraction, should be part of the system. There should be periodic drivers tests even if you haven't done anything. Its tough to talk grandparents out of driving.

I've mainly been there for work. The system works. There are lots of human factors involved, but we should race to the top, not to the bottom.

 

who is stopping you from changing the American level of driving?

 

I absolutely think US drivers are just as capable as German or any other drivers. ...once that capability is socially demanded, that is. I happened to be stationed in Berlin right at unification time, and believe me the behavior of West German drivers and East German drivers in the year after unification, on the same West German autobahns, was instructive - of course, East Germans had lived for three statistical generations under a 100 KmpH non/negotiable, zero-tolerance social construct. Apart from the pretty funny sight of a East German Trabi trying to survive on the autobahn, those East German drivers also had to adapt, on a massive scale, to basically a different social driving expectation.

I have my own comments I save for parties about the really wide driving capability standards observable in different US states - the Texas ones come to mind (i.e. "anything goes") as well as California ones, which I've fond to be pretty good. Then there's Maryland... feared by all (We live in Virginia). And I was just not that impressed when my son slept through the Virginia teen driver's ed, although I could see the instructors were trying their best. When he started to deliver pizzas at night as a teen, in our spare car, he had to suffer ONE YEAR of Dad in the passenger seat. No Dad, no pizza delivery car. It just about killed him, except the pizza $$$ was too good to let go. It just about killed me too...

So, I add fuel to the flame by provoking State patriotism, he hee... let the "In Defense of My State Driver's Ed" begin.

 

There are other results of this German tendency that are not shining examples of social success. To each society its own warts... I think we are blessed because we can talk about and easily laugh at ours.

 

ok, i have to either go to a discussion involving some reality or bail.

you are in fantasy land. lets talk about options on the "here and now" what you suggest is not impossible but realistically would take decades to get there only if we started a massive campaign to get it done right now.

and i know i am treading on dangerous ground when i say, dont start waving the Texas flag because WA Drivers are far far superior!

 

I'll just leave you with some reading material, since I would never argue that austin drivers were the most skilled. I'm not sure what that would have to do with speed limits, or why so many from other states think they have the right to set our speed limits. If you never are going to drive on the 40 miles of toll road, why all the complaints?

85 mph flap much ado about Texas 130

I was actually on lavaca street last night We did go about 25mph, well bellow the speed limit because of traffic.

The question really is for those complaining about a toll road going through sequin, what studies have you done to determine its unsafe? We know why its 85 mph.

I go to sequin about twice a year. It will be nice to have, but not necessary to have a direct highway without stop signs and lights. I still would rather have a free road paid for by gas taxes. We will see how much the state gets or looses on the toll road. We know the faster the speed limit the more the state makes.

 

You get that wrong also. Strawman argument is one where a person creates a comment made by no one except himself and then proceeds to try and win the argument with himself.

Too funny. You try to even strawman the definition of strawman argument and fail on that as you did on creating a false argument for IIHS.

IIHS right. You and wacky Texas Legislature are both wrong.

 

I think everybody got it wrong.....NO MORE RAISING OF TAXES; Texas Governor Rick Perry says. Well, the lawmakers cut the taxes for business, and gave large tax breaks for business to relocate to Texas. Now, not enough money coming in ..... The state got to make it up somewhere; so they raise fees on everything. The state bean-counters idea, if you can not raise taxes on gas, figure out a way for the public to use more gas; hence higher speed limits, all over the State of Texas. It's all about money, not safety for the public.

 

What about the trucks that are limited to 65mph? Most carriers limit the speed of their trucks and on hills the speed can quickly drop to 40mph or less!

 

First toll roads are raising road taxes. No getting around that. It is a voluntary tax unlike gasoline taxes. Second it obviously is about the money, the legislature said as much $100M more in state revenue for 85mph instead of 75mph from the Spanish company running the toll road. The higher limit will get more cars to pay for the toll road. The question is do we want different laws for those willing to pay. That is my only problem with it. I certainly don't think, as much as I dislike perry's policies, that he wants Texans to die. TxDOT would not be setting the speed limit that high if the road was not designed for those speeds. How many people do you think are going to die on this 40 mile road. Texas is a big place, its not going to use much of the oil.

If they choose this new road, then traffic will go around them. This works fine on I10 with an 80 mph limit. I don't think there are any steep hills on this short section. Most of the toll bypass is 70mph.

 

Here you are making yourself look foolish, I linked an IIHS where they made the physics argument.

Straw man - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Since I showed you that the IIHS made the argument in their press release, and they have in many other press releases like it, only an ignorant person would accuse me of making a strawman argument. What do you think I wrote their press release to make up a false position?

If you are talking about keeping the 55mph because simple physics would cause many more deaths. The NAS and NHTSA rejected the arguments with science, and all 50 states rejected it with legislation. Do you work for an insurance company?

 

Speed differentials in this case aside, they need to do this more in the US.

Last time I drove in the US it was a terrifying experience having 18 wheeler semi trucks on your bumper and jockying for postion at speeds over 70mph. I was once cruising at about 75-80 on some interstate that was in terrible condition, and I was passed like I was standing still by a semi - goodness knows what speed he was doing, but with all that weight he wasn't going to be stopping too quickly.

Here in the UK the speed limit is lower for these trucks and most are physically limited to it.

 

Yes, You always remember the bad truck drivers that carry a huge advertisement of their carrier in most cases. I sure do remember the 4-wheelers that don't know how to drive around trucks. There should be training for all drivers in the US on how to drive near trucks. I see 4-wheelers traveling in packs coming at me and I just hang on until they pass, it is very dangerous to travel in packs. Do the higher speed limits cut down on pack driving?