Food for thought

In Europe just recently they were considering forcing car makers to limit the speed of all new cars to 80 mph or something, exactly for that very reason - less polution. Most people however feel funny about limiting their rights/freedoms, so that proposal failed miserably.

 

In answer to the title, because they can and because it sells cars.
People who feel inadequate in themselves like to own fast cars, they connect things like dignity to their car. A confident person would never feel shame at owning a small or slower car.

 

I used to live in Oklahoma where we get lots of tornadoes.. You REALLY don't want to be driving a car that has a speed limiter when trying to outrun one of those funnel clouds.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(patsparks @ Sep 11 2007, 02:56 PM) [snapback]510751[/snapback]</div>

Thats a horrible stereotype, no bettter than any other racial or sexist stereotype. Maybe it's true for some people, Im sure it is, but many people just love the sport. Ive been an avid race car fan all my life, I love racing on the track and I enjoy driving a fast car on the street. Its nothing to do with confidence.

 

I find it is best to use almost any possession to less than its capacity for long life. If cars were made so that they were at their maximum capacity at the speed limit, I would assume that they would have SHORTER lives.

What I think is foolish is people who insist on using their things to the maximum and then wearing them out prematurely. But that is their right if they do not violate the law or my rights in the process. It is a deleicate balance, but one which we live with daily.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Allannde @ Sep 11 2007, 04:52 PM) [snapback]510794[/snapback]</div>

The OP made no suggestion to design cars to run at their maximum capacity, but suggested cars be limited to a maximum speed. This would also enforce your idea for making them last longer.

As for individual rights, I fully agree: a person should be able to drive a car just as fast as he wants as long as it is being driven on private property. As soon as you pull onto a public road, your rights as an individual must be subjugated to the rights of society. It's the same reason I can't target shoot in my back yard inside the village limits.

Tom

 

While I am not fundamentally opposed to the concept of speed limits, I can personally remember at least two occasions (one involving a tire bouncing down a freeway, and one involving a County Sheriff doing 100+ in the fast lane with his lights on), where a quick burst of speed and power enabled me to extract myself from a bad situation with minimal danger and disruption to other drivers. This is actually on of the things I dislike about the Prius - it, by it's design and nature, doesn't have the power reserves of a bigger (Straight 6, V6, V8) engine.

[Soapbox]
Just because some people a jerks, and abuse their toys, doesn't make it okay to take the toys away from the rest of us. Give them tickets, take their license, and, eventually, put them in jail. Don't punish everyone else.
[/Soapbox]

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(JustLurkin @ Sep 11 2007, 10:07 PM) [snapback]510759[/snapback]</div>

or when you're wife's in labor

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Albertus @ Sep 11 2007, 05:52 PM) [snapback]510838[/snapback]</div>

In which case it would be kind of a shame if you crashed at high speed and killed both her and the baby, no?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(JustLurkin @ Sep 11 2007, 04:07 PM) [snapback]510759[/snapback]</div>

And in the case of tornados, the last thing you try to do is try to out-run it! A supercell with high crosswinds is no place to be doing 100+. Do yourself a favor: get out of the car and take cover. A ditch, a highway overpass, the inner-most room of a strong building...all far better than your car. Not everything you see in the movie "Twister" is a good idea. Heck, I think it even worked out badly for them.

 

Hi All,

Cars are not purposely designed to go so fast, usually. They are designed to accellerate as quick as possible. This requires power. If somebody then uses all that power for maximum speed, the car has to be able to handle it, or its dangerous.

This is where the Prius is a change in that status quo. Its designed to accellerate fast with as little power as is practical.

A car that can go fast is really just a car without the gear ratio to permit a smaller engine accellerate it at an appropriate level. Its just cheaper to put in a larger displacement engine, then to add 2 or 3 more gears to the transmission. Because the engine has the same amount of parts, just a little bigger. But the transmission would have 20 or 30 more parts to add the extra gears.

 

Hi All,

Cars are not purposely designed to go so fast, usually. They are designed to accellerate as quick as possible. This requires power. If somebody then uses all that power for maximum speed, the car has to be able to handle it, or its dangerous.

This is where the Prius is a change in that status quo. Its designed to accellerate fast with as little power as is practical.

A car that can go fast is really just a car without the gear ratio to permit a smaller engine accellerate it at an appropriate level. Its just cheaper to put in a larger displacement engine, then to add 2 or 3 more gears to the transmission. Because the engine has the same amount of parts, just a little bigger. But the transmission would have 20 or 30 more parts to add the extra gears.

 

Accidents, by definition, are preventable. Food for thought.
.
_H*

 

Accidents, by definition, are preventable. Food for thought.
.
_H*

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TonyPSchaefer @ Sep 11 2007, 05:38 PM) [snapback]510823[/snapback]</div>

As for cars on public roads, I'd like to have the car know the speed limit. The speed limit could then be displayed inside the car and the driver could be alerted if speeding. I wouldn't limit the car's speed to the posted speed limit, but I would log it and somehow make it known if a driver habitually speeds. This avoids the problems with those rare but real emergency situations by letting a driver speed, he just better have a good excuse.

Tom

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(TonyPSchaefer @ Sep 11 2007, 05:38 PM) [snapback]510823[/snapback]</div>

As for cars on public roads, I'd like to have the car know the speed limit. The speed limit could then be displayed inside the car and the driver could be alerted if speeding. I wouldn't limit the car's speed to the posted speed limit, but I would log it and somehow make it known if a driver habitually speeds. This avoids the problems with those rare but real emergency situations by letting a driver speed, he just better have a good excuse.

Tom

 

There were accidents back in the day when there were two cars on California roads and their top speed was 18 mph...

Limiting the top speed would prevent only a very small portion of accidents. If they limit the speed to the speed limit currently top in the US is in Texas, 80 mph, that still won't prevent some idiot doing 80 mph in a school zone or in a residential neighborhood or any other place with speed limit of 25 mph. Even if the car's limit is set to 60, that's still extremely dangerous if all the other cars are going 25 or 35 mph. So what will setting a limit on the car prevent, unless the limit is 25 mph? How many accidents have you heard on the news lately to have happened due to speeds of over 100 mph? Not many (not one in my case and I watch the news every day). Excessive speed is a cause of many accidents, but the excessive speed is in correlation to the speed limit, not in general. 65 mph in a 35 mph speed zone is a lot more likely to cause an accident than 140 mph on the Autobahn. It's all relative. You don't have to be Einstein to realize it.