Cpl Thompson said:
There are always going to be other circumstances surrounding a crash, however why add speed to the equation? and no you still dont know what could happen... I guess i should have explained in my last statement how road and traffic conditions factor into not knowing what is around the bend.... If its a beautiful sunny day, and your driving accross the praries, then yeah, i can see how you arnt going to be too worried about anything when youre the only car for miles.... but Im speaking from experiance on ontario highways. even on a good day on the 401 you still dont know if that truck in front of you is going to loose a tire, or if the guy talking on his cell phone is going to drift over into your lane, or the kid beside you spills his coffee everywhere by accident and swerves. driving the limit isnt just about your abilities, its about taking into account the abilities of the drivers around you. thats what i mean by you dont know whats round the bend. I mean that you cant always predict what will happen 100m down the road.
I know that, as do most experienced drivers. Some of us learned the hard way, buy were fortunate enough to only suffer in the wallet. A pointed out above, the laws of physics mean that speed is a major factor in the
consequences of an accident, but I would argue that speed is
NOT the
cause. Accidents are caused by drivers who fail to pay attention, fail to drive to the conditions, fail to realize that their 1996 Honda Civic is not a BMW M3, or generally drive recklessly.
Point Taken. it was a long day and i was a little tired. i guess what i wanted to write was more along the lines of, if we up the limit, does it mean people will speed faster? their reasoning being "well, now that the limit is 110 or 120 then i know i can do 140 before i get pulled over..."
That will always be a problem, but is 20 Kph over the limit truly the issue? Other than a ticket the consequences are nil - unless that speed is not appropriate to the conditions.
Last I heard most of the MVC's on the Autobahn were fatalities.
I'm not sure what the statistics are. However, with the arguments I've seen made by some here, one should conclude that ALL autobahn traffic accidents result in fatalities. That is clearly not the case. I recall seeing a clip sent to me on the Internet of a Porsche single-vehicle accident that looked like a disaster. The car was clipping along at greater than 100Kph and the driver lost control, the car flipped several times, shedding body panels. A few seconds after the wreck came to rest, the driver kicked himself free and walked away. That's German engineering - they build their cars to deal with Autobahn accidents. Most modern cars built in North America and Japan are also built with excellent safety features.
more then that though. it seems from what ive read, that the average driver on the Autobahn is more considerate then the average north american, (ontario) driver.
It's not as good as it used to be, but they have
LAWS that better regulate drivers (like the "drive on the right" law I mentioned upstream).
with all due respect Acorn, I didnt mean to challenge your experience, but as i said ealier, Im willing to bet there are not alot of professional drivers who are going to advocate that its ok to speed.
With all respect to your profession, I think you may be a bit optomistic. Drive any Ontario highway and clock the trucks - professional drivers - who routinely exceed the posted speed limits.
We curb agressive/incompetent drivers by applying legal sanctions to the bad habits - as well as training future drives in how to drive, as opposed to how to pass the driver's exam. Enforce "drive right" and reckless driving regulations.
Unfortunately, speed violations are:
a. easy to track (radar/ladar/photo radar)
b. major cash providers to municipalities (it is known that many municipalities actually count fine proceeds in their annual budgets)
Acorn