Alan K

Thank you for being so magnanimous. I was getting concerned that I may have to cancel my next trip.

I-Like-To-Bike

Electric powered automobile advocacy/evangelism with brand name recommendations no less? Who knew that the subject of bicycling advocacy or bicycling advocacy was so encompassing?

RubeRad

How hard it is to recharge a Tesla between Dallas and Minneapolis certainly has nothing to do with mandated speed governors

Alan K

Advocacy seems to have become hardcore evangelism these days, replete with tent-style holy rollers and snakes.
If you are not with us, you are against us… kinda attitude.

It’s quite a fascinating development!

I-Like-To-Bike

Charging rates and praise of Tesla cars has about the same relevancy to bicycling safety as a discussion about mandated speed governors on cars and trucks has on bicycling safety. Bicyclists struck at legal highway speeds by careless/reckless drivers (or because of careless/reckless cycling) won't likely be made any deader at higher speeds.

RubeRad

But fewer will be made dead if there are fewer cars driving illegal speeds.

Leisesturm

That is very debatable. Ours has always been a culture that detests law breaking by others. It drives us nuts. Mostly, there is no real justification. A large amount of grieving for justice is against victimless crimes. Here we have a crack of validation, as it can be argued that slower cars are better to be around. The susceptible are piling on. Cars and trucks and their increasing size is the main driver of the spike in deaths. At the size and heft of the typical SUV of today they are lethal at walking speeds. During and post Covid all Americans became more irascible and turned their frustrations outward. As I have mentioned earlier, speed limits are a low bar to anything like safety. Judgement is far more important.

Alan K

It entirely depends on the speed at the time of impact.
Human body is quite fragile. A bicycle does not impart human body with any magical powers. LD50 for human in a free fall is merely 40 feet (which translates into about 25MPH at the time of impact, I think, you may want to confirm it). And this does not include transfer of momentum from the large mass of car.

I suppose if bicyclists can succeed in mandating a speed limit considerably lower than 25MPH, some bicyclists will become the top level menace on the road… so that’s the plan, I get it now. 👌

RubeRad

Frankly, although I'm interested in the safety improvements of lowering speeds across the board, I'm more interested in breaking the back of overconsumption in the American automobile marketplace, because why throw away money on a car that can go 0-60 in 3 sec, but can't go any faster than 65? And if Americans start seeing cars as commodity transportation items rather than personal lifestyle statements, maybe they'd be willing to go the next step and start using mass transit, so it gets full enough to support building more mass transit, etc.

tomato coupe

Nope. 35 mph.

Alan K

Correct!
Evidently, I can’t do simple math in my head like I used to be able to it in my younger days.
Nevertheless, a lot of damage to body happens at the time of impact with a car - the larger its size, more damage. Very simple laws of physics. I’m not sure you can get to a reasonable speed limit which will be acceptable to the majority which is safe for a human body so a person can simply brush off his clothes and walk/pedal away.

Alan K

Good luck with that!
The thrill of speed/danger is rather visceral.
It’s not among just car drivers; you may want to check out the thread about maximum speed of bicyclists here.
Compared to a driver in a car getting in an accident at 55 MPH, versus a bicyclist with practically no protection, who has better odds of survival?
Are you now going to propose that bicycles should come installed with devices that automatically engage their brakes on downhill slopes when the speed reaches a certain maximum (determined by you)?

RubeRad

Which is a fact the auto industry has exploited, but if effective speed governance technology eliminates the speed, consumers will not be confused by thrill and viscera

Leisesturm

I liked your earlier post but not because you are correct. But your heart is in the right place. Nevertheless, the speeds cars can reach is a byproduct of the power necessary for them to lift their own weight on inclines. Clearly, the technology exists to also limit their top speed, but it won't be implemented in America. It just won't. But thrill???

So, I'm just one person, but I know tons of people that HATE to drive. I know people who won't drive on highways, over bridges, out of state ... you name it. But they drive. Every day. Multiple times a day. They drive at walking speeds in suburban or urban residential grids because they won't walk or bicycle and because they hate mass transit even more than they hate to drive. For the last 12 years I've lived in a city that is in the top five for extensive mass transit implementation and I don't know a single other person (besides DW) that uses it. They don't even have/give reasons, but they won't be riding mass transit even if car speeds are mandated down to 5mph.

PeteHski

True, but if you want to discuss intelligent speed control then Teslas are actually a good example of how it would work in practice if they actually did make speed control mandatory, which I think is highly unlikely any time soon.

Chuck M 

I've always felt like many of those going 5 over were well aware of it due to so many people I know that believe that police cannot ticket you for 5 over. While it is likely true they won't waste time pulling you over for that, it doesn't necessarily mean they won't. Although I think you are correct that many people are going over the speed limit due to inattentiveness. And if they aren't paying attention to the posted limit, what else are they not paying attention to?

RubeRad

I'm always aware of whether I'm 5 or 10 over

jon c. 

Most every driver knows that the effective highway speed limit is 10 mph over the posted limit as they won't ticket you up to that point. But it is the variance in speed that creates the greatest danger. When the speed limit is 70 the majority are going faster. The 'speeders' are exceeding 80, the expedient are going 78, the law abiders are right on 70, and the clueless are puttering along at 64. It would be safer if everyone were traveling the same speed, whether that was 70 or 80. And when we get to the point where the speed of all vehicles is remotely controlled, that speed could reasonably be 80. But that's likely decades away.

If I'm not on city streets I'm always using cruise control so I'm quite aware of the speed at which I'm traveling.

PeteHski

I set my cruise limit to be 10% over the speed limit, which works pretty well and you can set your preferred percentage in the software.

I-Like-To-Bike

As Jon points out, most every driver knows that (at least in the U.S.) the the "effective highway speed limit" (AKA the point at which drivers might get a speeding ticket.) It is the posted limit plus a specific whole number such as 5 or 10 mph. Since the law the enforcers don't set the "effective limit" as a percentage of the posted limit, there doesn't seem much point to calculating and setting percentages in cruise control whether using the vehicle software, or pencil and paper, or even mentally using simple arithmetic.

Either way, a bicyclist or pedestrian hit by a vehicle at the posted highway speed limit or the "effective" highway speed limit will suffer the same fate.

RubeRad

40000 vehicle deaths per year, 12000 of them involving speeding.

You keep talking about death involving non-speeding cars. That's the remaining 28000 deaths which don't involve speeding, and which imposed speed governors would not help.

You don't think eliminating speeding might save some of those 12000 lives? And that some of those 12000 lives will be pedestrians and bicycles?

PeteHski

They do here in the UK. Most speed cameras are triggered at 10% +2 mph. It’s not an official rule, but it’s pretty widely used.

https://www.confused.com/car-insuran...0to%2079%20mph.

I-Like-To-Bike

It wouldn't save many, if any, bicyclist or pedestrian lives. Even if you choose to include under "deaths involving speeding ," all the fatal collisions that also involved DUI and reckless driving your highway speed governors would have little if any effect on bicyclists or pedestrian fatalities.

Note: this is a bicycling safety list, not an automobile driver or passenger safety list.

jon c. 

Cameras are not widely used in much of the US. Increasing their use would be a more practical method of trying to reduce speeding that trying to force the implementation of speed controls in vehicles.

But even that would face a lot of backlash. I'd certainly be opposed.

RCMoeur 

As someone who has sealed several speed studies and was in charge of evaluating and maintaining speed zone records for an entire state highway system for several years, I will never forgive Richard Nixon for imposing the NMSL and destroying speed zone credibility for the past half-century.

In reality, most flesh n' blood drivers rely on a wide variety of cues in selecting travel speed, and not so much on small retroreflective rectangles with numbers on them.

When I would draft or review speed studies, the pace (the 10 mph range in which the largest number of free-flow motor vehicles traveled) was generally more informative than the 85th percentile (the criterion blamed by activists for just about everything). If the pace contained a higher percentage of motor vehicles, there typically were fewer operational problems, conflicts, or crashes.