Not sure if speeding is the leading cause of death or just gets the blame. The standard of driving in the US is abysmal and getting worse. US rates of accidents and deaths are much much higher than anywhere in Europe.
In my state, everyone speeds 10-15mph above the posted limits on highways. But the people that cause everyone around them to maneuver aren't the speeders, it is the people driving the posted limits and creating a bottleneck on the highway. And the number of rear end collisions caused by distracted drivers looking at screens instead of paying attention to their driving is the type of driving incident I see most often.
You don't crash into a stationary post or a pedestrian on highways.
If you crash into a stationary post, you were texting. If you crash into a pedestrian, WTF was the pedestrian doing there.
> And the number of rear end collisions caused by distracted drivers looking at screens instead of paying attention to their driving is the type of driving incident I see most often.
Talk to anyone on a motorcycle, especially in states where they're allowed to lane split. Almost everyone is on their phones. Almost all the time.
I personally think if you are at fault because you were on your phone, you should lose your license and the device for a period of time. After that timeout period, you then have to pay for a device to be installed in your car that forces you to place your device in it that prevents it from being used as anything similar to a breathalyzer ignition lockout.
People will not put down their devices with the current no consequence state we find ourselves now.
> The standard of driving in the US is abysmal and getting worse. US rates of accidents and deaths are much much higher than anywhere in Europe.
Rates per capita are much higher in the US, but the average American drives more than the average European so even if American drivers and European drives were equally good drivers we'd expect a higher death rate per capita in the US.
It is generally more useful to look at rates per vehicle per kilometer. By that the US is still higher than most of Europe, but not all. The Czech Republic at 9.8 is higher than the US at 8.3. Second in Europe is Belgium which is about 13% less than the US, followed by Slovenia at 16% less than the US. The rest of Europe ranges from about 30% below US to 64% below US.
> The standard of driving in the US is abysmal and getting worse.
This is honestly the biggest issue. So, so, so many drivers are so utterly shit at driving, and because our infrastructure is completely 100% car-centered, they HAVE to be permitted to drive unless their infractions add up to a degree where it becomes untenable to let them continue. And even then, due to the same pressures, they will probably still be driving because in many places in the States, there is simply no public transit whatsoever. They'll just then be driving without a license, and be subject to an extra fine on top of the fortune they already owe.
I work remotely but make a drive down to my employer for various reasons very regularly, usually once a month or so, and it takes me about three hours, and never, ever am I able to make that trip without seeing dozens and dozens of boneheaded, brain-dead maneuvers out of people. Traffic weaving, left-lane camping, people merging onto highways doing 40 mph, people who don't understand roundabouts, people making illegal U turns, crossing several lanes so as to not miss an exit. The state of driving in the US is an utter disgrace. So many drivers have absolutely no business behind the wheel ever again.
IIUc in a lot of cases, they can now know speeding was a factor because (ironically given this post's topic) the black boxes in the vehicles involved plus nearby surveillance tools the vehicles passed or had an accident in view of give hard evidence someone was speeding.
i.e. "We used to believe lies about how people drive, but thanks to the presence of more concrete evidence we are disproving those false assumptions."
One of the things Alphabet discovered early on in the Waymo experiment that was an eye-opener to the whole industry is that auto accidents were probably underestimate by a factor of three. When they started rolling out vehicles on the road, the best numbers available for accidents-per-mile were insurance reports and NHTSA incident records. Having vehicles with cameras on the road continuously revealed that there were 300% more accidents than those numbers suggested because humans are bumping into each other due to mis-estimates at stoplights all the time, but nobody wants their insurance rates to go up so they just don't report those incidents.
What if ubiquitous mass surveillance is good actually because it forces us to come to grips with realities we'd rather pretend are otherwise?
> IIUc in a lot of cases, they can now know speeding was a factor because (ironically given this post's topic) the black boxes in the vehicles involved plus nearby surveillance tools the vehicles passed or had an accident in view of give hard evidence someone was speeding.
Base rate matters though; for example if literally everyone is speeding because speed limits are too low then every accident will involve someone speeding.
> for example if literally everyone is speeding because speed limits are too low
is that really the case though, or is it people are so self involved that they feel they are too important to have to move that slowly? Just because everyone else is speeding does not automatically mean that faster speed is safe. It could also just be that people are assholes and they do what they want.
IIUC it's mostly that speed limits are set a little conservative relative to average road conditions.
The tongue-in-cheek way it was explained to me once was "the highway isn't 70 because you need that. It's 70 because the trucker driving sleep-deprived in a light rain who doesn't know his left tire is about to blow needs that."
We have always had technology to detect this, it is just a matter if it was on.
A few decades ago the NYS Thruway caused a bit of political controversy because they started issuing speeding tickets if you traveled between two tollbooths faster than would be possible going the speed limit.
> US rates of accidents and deaths are much much higher than anywhere in Europe.
That's actually only true per population. If you measure per miles driven the US does better then Europe (although Europe is large, and numbers vary in different countries).
The US is 7.3 if you use the same dataset as France. The wiki puts in 8.3 because they have updated data for the US, but not for France.
There are also some differences in data methodology US vs European countries, and when checked the rates from a different source (it was a while ago, I'll have to try to dig it up) the US came out better by comparison.
I think the difference had to do with what counted as a KM traveled.
In my state, everyone speeds 10-15mph above the posted limits on highways. But the people that cause everyone around them to maneuver aren't the speeders, it is the people driving the posted limits and creating a bottleneck on the highway. And the number of rear end collisions caused by distracted drivers looking at screens instead of paying attention to their driving is the type of driving incident I see most often.