🚀 go-pugleaf

efaubion@oklahoma.ten (E. Faubion) wrote:

>Tony Wang <tonyw44@prodigy.net.nospam> wrote:
>
>>And that may result in someone dying......maybe an innocent person who was
>>driving by and just happened to get nailed by one of the idiots playing
>>games.
>
>More often than not that's the outcome.

Well I agree that increases the chances of death. I do not think you
have stats though that exceed 50% and thus your statement "more often
than not" is just not true. It just sounds like an overstatement, to
win your case.

>
>>BTW, as a police officer, do you consider the type of vehicle someone's
>>driving before you write them up?
>
>Generally no.  It's how they drive, not what they drive.

Funny, hard statistics show red cars, regardless of type, get stopped
more often than other colors. Some argue its the driver. Some argue
its the car color.
 
>
>>Obviously, someone driving a Geo Metro
>>at 90 mph is driving recklessly, because that car can't handle it.  But if
>>that guy's driving, say, a Ferarri......then it's a little different.
>
>I understand what you're getting at however what we find all too often
>is that a high performance vehicle is manned by a low performance
>driver and that's when the problems begin.  Let's face it, a true high
>performance driver isn't very likely to take unnecessary risks anyway.
>They know better.

Then what kind of risks are those people in "low performance",
gas-misers taking when they are being tailgated by an 18-wheeler. I'd
like enough performance to pull away and give the guy some room so he
can get a "running start" to help him make the next hill better. Oh, I
forgot, unlike "smart" Europeans, we have speed limits that cause us
to all tailgate.

They do not have a tailgating problem, because most places the limits
are higher or suggested speed limits on autobahns. Guess what? Per
miles driven they have a slightly lower death rate than we do. They go
100+ mph, we are stuck at 60 or 70 and take more lives. How come?

And how come the death rate went down in Maryland when the raised the
limit from 55 to 65? The reason is easy. Congestion was reduced and
with it tailgating was too. The optimum of saving lives in MD is
probably closer to 75 mph limit. Confused? Yes, I agree that at higher
speeds death is more likely in an accident. However, if higher speeds
reduces congestion and this reduces interaction and this in turn
reduces accidents so that it more than offsets deaths when accidents
do happen, then we have something know as "highway dynamics". Oddly,
on  wide open roads, higher speeds only translate to higher deaths. In
congested areas, increased speeds have been now proven to reduce
deaths, something that is intuitively contrary to our thinking.

But here's one for you. If 55 is "safe". Isn't 45 safer, and 35 and 25
and 15 too? So why don't we have a 15 mph limit on our highways to
save lives? I mean what is an "acceptable' number of deaths? Well,
none is of course. But we have some "arbitrary" idea what is
acceptable. So we raise the limits and "accept" that some deaths are
inevitable, however regrettable they may be. But what we raise them
too is still arbitrary, and if its arbitrary, the Europeans figured
out long time ago to do three things:
 (1) make highways safe as poosible with guard rails down the middle
     when opposing lanes are too close (unlike here)
 (2) driver training is mandatory. No training, no license
 (3) let them drive fast enough to ease congestion and thus actually
     reduce deaths by increased limits or have none at all.