Prelude Guy

Distracted driving kills far more people every year than speeders. Should distracted driving be a criminal offense then? That's more dangerous than speeding.If so, I am sure you have been guilty of it in the past few days!

Criminal!!!! You share the roads with everyone else and you are making them less safe! Turn yourself in to the closest police station immediately!!!

It's like talking to people who think the solution to the concussion problem in the NFL is more padding. Smh

Cuda911

My solution: All cars should be made of the same material as Nerf *****, and max speed limit should be 3.5 mph. That, right there, would save more lives than ALL of the combined deaths due to guns, cancer, AIDS (is that still around?), Zika virus, plane crashes, Islamic radicals , murders, and slipping on banana peels. YW.

Next time somebody designs a universe, I want some input.

Millemiglia

Unless of course it's an unrestricted part of the German Autobahn...

vchris1987

I never understood the speed limits in US, you have the infrastructure, you have the ability to replace cars far easier than other countries (e.g Greece) where taxes have skyrocketed. And you still drive in 5 lane highways at 60 mph. The highway in Greece is 2 or 3 lanes and you don't get pulled over unless you are doing 110mph. I can't imagine doing a 300 mile trip at 60mph!!!

Mike Murphy

My parents live 300 miles away, so it takes us 4 hours to get there. I could also take the high speed train and get there in 4 hours. There's a train that links a large city (Chicago) to a smaller City (St. Louis). They are rebuilding the track for even higher speed, so it takes 8 hours to get there at the moment, due to construction. When the track is completed, the targeted max speed for the train will be about 110mph. Lookout rest of the world, the US it OUT OF CONTROL!

strathconaman

This.

There is nowhere that I would go 100mph on public roads in North America. Our highways are not designed for it. Worse, the other drivers here are not trained to deal with it. I have my speed warning set for well under this, and lift (when safe, let's not go crazy here with absolutes) when it goes off.

There is a lot of fun to be had in 2nd and 3rd gear in these cars.

Mike Murphy

The US highway system was designed for "high speed," after the then president had a look at the Reichsautobahnen.

To your other point - the US drivers - I couldn't agree more. Certainly the weakest link in the system. They are truly horrible drivers.

TonyTwoBags

Be careful, he might be using alternative facts.

strathconaman

I actually worked in a MOT legal branch, and worked with the road design group quite closely. They did not consider people driving at 100mph a critical assumption in designing divided access controlled highways. Full stop. When considering sight lines for on/off ramps, banking of curves, even the length of the ramps, that speed was not considered important. Thus, "our highways are not designed for it".

I can tell you I am not the one using alternative facts here.

Please, this is supposed to be a happy occasion. Let's not quibble about who killed who.

TonyTwoBags

Not sure how the Ministry of Transport relates to CONUS.

So what max speed are highways designed for? Specifically, I-80, I-15. Because their limits are between 70mph and 80mph in most areas, even within cities. The design inputs appear to vary across different regions, unless current limits breach the engineering bounds? Or perhaps your generalization is just dumbing down a nuanced topic? Either way, I don't buy your haughty breakdown.

Spork

You must not have ever been to rural NV. Or west Texas. Or eastern Montana. Or central Utah. Or many other places out west.

See my previous posted photo. There are plenty of places with wide open roads and very little traffic with no on or off ramps and sometime no cross roads for 100 miles. I'm not talking about busy freeways or city roads. Hell, I-70 through southern Utah has an 80 MPH speed limit. People drive 100 MPH on it on a regular basis. Until recently, some Montana roads didn't have day time speed limits. Now it's 80 there too but you can still push it pretty hard and not get a ticket. If you are going way over 100 or there is traffic you'll get popped but if you are at 100 and the road is empty (which is quite often) then they will let you slide. You may get pulled over and just given a warning.

TonyTwoBags

One thing you'll never hear from the overly normative thinkers:

Speed differential wrt safety is skewed in favor of speeding in modest amounts. Note how +10 is safer than 5 under avg speed.

strathconaman

There is no nuance.

1. Highways are designed around traffic and speed.

+

2. North American highways aren't designed around traffic traveling the speed of 100 mph.

=

"Our highways are not designed for it"

I didn't say "There is nowhere in North America you could drive 100mph and not crash into an 85 year old who last took a driving test in 1962 driving a k-car in the left lane."

I said the roads weren't designed for it.

In fact, it is probably safer to drive 100 mph on rural (read, middle of no-where) non-access controlled two lane roads where there is little chance of you rounding a bend only to find SUV's camped in all three lanes.

But...

You run the risk of hitting a rise, bump or frost heave that causes your car to become airborne BECAUSE THE ROAD WASN'T DESIGNED FOR IT. Or striking an animal or other debris on the roadway. That, of course, has a lot to do with highway design.

How many decreasing radius bends do you find on unrestricted Autobahn stretches? How many go through urban areas? All your chart proves is that you are safest going 75 mph (the average interstate speed being 70 mph) and not very safe going 100 mph, probably, again, BECAUSE THE ROAD WASN'T DESIGNED FOR IT.

Calling me names is about as poor of an argument as telling me my nationality makes my argument a non-starter. If only we could build a wall around the internet and get someone else to pay for it.

ditto

The autobahn is not any better road for driving 100 mph, or more, than many US highways. The unrestricted speed zones are only where deemed safe. When it approaches or goes through cities and towns the speed limit is reduced to similar to US. Germans obey the speed limit much better than Americans.

The difference is drivers. America is not ready for unrestricted roads, collectively we don't have the experience to do it safely.

I got a kick out of driving 150 mph in a C-Class AMG MB wagon. The GPS was almost necessary to know when turns were coming up.

jaetee

I respectfully disagree with the first comment above for two reasons.

1) The autobahn is generally maintained much better than US highways and built to a much higher standard. Autobahn pavement is made with many more layers than US Interstates to resist becoming brittle under drastic weather change from season to season. Autobahns are acutally built to aircraft runway specs and are deignated with a pavement capacity numbers high enough to support landing transport aircraft, if needed.

2) Just about every stretch of autobahn has guardrails along both sides that would, at least most of the time, keep an out-of-control-car contained from going off pavement into a patch of trees or (even worse) crossing over into oncoming traffic. Compartively, here in the USA there seem to be very few guardrails. it's much more conceivable that a high-speed out of control car could end up smashing into a tree or in the face of oncoming traffic.

I definitely agree with the comment about drivers... That is the biggest hold-back to higher speeds in the USA.

There's no such thing as a "learners permit" in Germany, where your mom, dad or brother can teach you their bad habits. In Germany you must take a lot of driving theory classes, as well as practical driving hours in all types of scenarios (city/highway/day/night) with a certified instructor. I think it costs around $1500 for someone to get a drivers license in Germany.