Everyone, this is about highways, not cities or residential roads...

I'm from Germany where we have areas on the autobahn where you can drive as fast as you want. But the fatalities per capita is only halve of the US. There are some factors to that besides the Speed limit. Anyone has to go to a real teacher to learn to drive. Trucks can only go about 50 mph. You can and will get a ticket for staying in the left lane if the other lane is free. Most people stick to the rule to not pass on right.

I've known a few, especially older drivers, who have gotten into a kind of feedback loop thinking that 'slower equals safer' so they start driving at 60 in 65MPH zones and you have all these cars swerving and weaving around them and zooming by so they think the entire highway is unsafe so they go EVEN SLOWER.. 50 in 65MPH zones.. and even more swerving and weaving and cars blowing by even faster happened. It eventually got to the point where they simply afraid to go on interstates at all because they were 'much too dangerous' which is probably a good thing because they were the ones MAKING them dangerous.

As promised, I addressed a lot of your questions in a blog post this morning. Go here to read it: theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/healthcare-triage-sometimes-not-always-faster-is-better-ctd/ Here is the text: The video brought out a lot of great questions in the comments. Enough that I think it’s worth a follow-up post to address some of them. I’m paraphrasing them. Here we go: 1. There are studies showing that people who drive slower are less likely to die than people who drive faster. Doesn’t that bother you? Well, sure. But a lot of those studies are showing that people who drive less than 30 mph are less likely to die than people going 40 mph. I’m sure people going less than 10 mph are going to die even more rarely. If we don’t drive at all, it will go down even further. I’m not disputing this fact. We accept a certain amount of risk when we drive. But this video wasn’t about speed - it was about speed limits. The question is whether a 55 mph speed limit is always safer than a 60 or 65 mph speed limit. That’s not as clear. 2. How can you advocate for higher speed limits (of even 65 mph ) in a city? I don’t!!! We’re talking about highways here. I said that I don’t think we should do away with regulation. Residential areas, school zones, those are a whole other story. 3. Aren’t you cherry picking by citing Lave? Doesn’t other research show that lower speed limits reduce fatalities? I tried not to cherry pick. But you’re misinterpreting me. I take the fact that the literature is equivocal on this to mean that there are probably times when slower speed limits are better and times when faster speed limits are better. I’m not advocating for higher speed limits across the board. The point of the video was to push you to question your bias that slower is always better. Sometimes (not always), faster speed limits may be better. 4. Aren’t you advocating that people break the law here? Nope. I’m advocating that we should sometimes change the law because people not following it is leading to a bad outcome. 4a. Isn’t that really saying that people shouldn’t be held accountable for breaking the law? Nope. I think people should follow the law. But sometimes, in the real world, they don’t. 4b. Shouldn’t we just punish them? This is a critical point, and worth of debate. I view this as the difference between efficacy and effectiveness. In an ideal world, everyone would do what we tell them perfectly, and we’d get the “efficacy” of speed limits. In the real world, lots of people don’t, and you see the “effectiveness” of speed limits. The effectiveness is often much less than the efficacy. If we can’t change the world to make efficacy work, we should deal with effectiveness. Sometimes, that means raising a speed limit. We’re not doing it to benefit lawbreakers. We’re doing it potentially to prevent accidents and save lives. 5. Shouldn’t we listen to engineers who tell us what the speed on a road should be? YES! That’s exactly what I said in the Route 3 example, where engineers rated the road much higher than 55 mph. Looking back at effectiveness, it turns out that people may be, in general, pretty decent at figuring out intuitively what a safe speed on a road would be. If you set the speed limit near that number, more people drive the same speed. If you set the speed limit too far below that, you get a lot of people driving at different speeds. I’m advocating for listening to the engineers. 6. What about pedestrians? Pedestrians shouldn’t be on highways! 7. What about animals? I have no data on that. But I have to say that almost all highway laws are about protecting humans, not animals. 8. Why do you focus on the US? I use the US as an example. I live there, and I know its policies best. 9. Traffic cameras could fix all this! Maybe. But they’re not in use like that in the US, and if they were, maybe the evidence here would be different. They are, in their own way, an attempt to improve efficacy, by making more people follow the law. That’s another option, but perhaps expensive. And not everyone will tolerate monitoring. 10. Don’t improvements in cars reduce fatalities and accidents? How do you know it’s not that, but instead speed limits? We don’t. I think they’re absolutely reducing fatalities. Accidents, to a lesser extent. But these are responsible for both better outcomes with lower and higher speed limits, and people on both sides use them to bolster their claims. Let me finish by repeating what I said in the video. Sometimes we have to question our biases for the real world. There are times when lower speed limits are better. But there may be times when higher speed limits are better. NOT ALWAYS. But sometimes.

As someone who studies civil engineering I'd like to tell what my professor told me. If you are going higher than about 25 km/h, your brain can't comprehend the same amount of information for the same lenght of road, so you start missing things (signs, animals, etc.) which is why on faster roads you get more signs and bigger ones. He told us, that anything moving above that speed has more or less the same chance of hitting a person or thing, the only difference is that roads made for higher speeds are usually more secluded and spaceous which is why less accidents occur. (just an oversimplification)

lower speed limit = more time on the road

I totally agree. Everyday on the interstate, the person causing the biggest issue is the the person doing 5 under the speed limit, most of the time on their phone. You have a bunch of steel boxes moving at a certain speed trying to dodge one crawling along & its always going to be bad.

Lots of nay-sayers in the comments here missed a crucial point in the video: speed limits don't significantly impact driving speeds except to artificially slow a small portion of drivers. It's true. In NH some of our posted limits are 10mph higher than the average speed (I drive on a 50mph road to work and the average speed is certainly about 40mph). People drive at the speed that feel comfortable at. If you completely removed speed limit signs on a road you wouldn't have vehicles' speeds randomly distributed between 0mph and infinity mph. You would have a consensus.

The amount of controversial comments on this video makes me question how many people actually have their drivers license, let alone regularly drive on freeways. Anyone that spends any amount of regular time on the 401 here in Ontario knows that next to no one drives at the posted limit of 100 kph. (62 mph) With out exaggeration the average speed is about 120 kph (75mph) I'm not talking about the occasional jackass that needs to go faster, I'm talking about the average flow of traffic. The only people you will pass doing 120 is transport trucks and the occasional person doing only 100 because, it's the law. There are still people that go faster. It's not uncommon for people to drive 130 kph (81 mph) or even 140 kph (87 mph) People go that fast because it is a safe highway built and designed to handle these speeds. The problems that this video addresses is the speed difference between the different drivers on the roads. Speed limits artificially increase that difference on some roads which causes more accidents. Raise the limits to what the people are actually doing and the slow people can catch up with the rest of the people because fear of breaking the law is the only thing holding them back.

This it the first Healthcare Triage that I've been disappointed by. All that research is on data thats 20 years old before the introduction of the speed cameras, which can police speed limits way more effectively. Speed cameras can reduce serious injuries by 30-40%. Edit: As Aaron replied, I went to the trouble of digging a paper, so it doesn't seem like I'm just being indignant. This is a review on the new average speed cameras: eprints.qut.edu.au/58119/2/58119.pdf

I absolutely love how this show actually has references.

Even if points aren't addressed or missed, I'd say the amount of discussion that springs up around things with these videos is pretty cool.

What about stricter safety laws with seat belts, and improved safety features in cars contributing to the lower rates of fatality and injury? The benefit of being properly strapped into a safer car can be underestimated. Also what about better designed infrastructure like RT 3? I live in an area where older roads have accidents more frequently, even though they have the same speed limit as the state thruways.

Lots of great questions here. Worthy of a follow-up answer post on my blog. Will post a link in the morning!

I love being told I'm wrong so many times in so many awesome ways on this channel!

Out of curiosity, has there been any review of this evidence, with adjustments based on improved safety features in more modern vehicles? That seems to be an important point that's being missed in this video.

What people don't get is that if the speed limit is higher, then the number of accidents won't increase, so much as the risk of dying _from_ an accident, and even then not much. The real issue is that in the US we don't enforce car distance spacing at all. In Germany, even though they don't have speed limits, this is exactly why they have far less car accidents than in the US, since they strictly enforce this.

Ah, well ... we have no speed limit in Germany. :) We have regulated speed limits for certain areas though, for example, in towns it's almost always 50 km/h or lower.

Sir, thank you for making this video. I have been saying this for years. I lived in Germany for two years with the Air Force and would consistently see the flow of traffic range from 90-115MPH, I open highway between cities I would usually set the cruise control for 155. In two years I saw exactly ZERO accidents on the autobahn. Zero. Yet, as most of you know, it is near impossible to drive on a US highway with seeing at least one. I am a firm believer that the drivers are the problem, not the laws. German drivers are better, they follow common courtesy laws religiously, and it creates a safe environment.

It was good that you considered not only traffic fatalities, but also (in one statistic, at least) traffic *injuries*. It may be important to recognize that accident survivability has probably improved over time, due to better designed crumple zones, air bags, etc. A further suggestion is to consider the number of *accidents*--which is the most inclusive statistic. Linking traffic accident rates to lane-changing is an enlightening observation. Thanks.

In New South Wales, Australia, the speed limit for learners is 80km/hr, while for everyone else it's 110km/hr...and driving on highways I feel like this is really dangerous?? Even for provisional drivers, the speed limit is either 90 or 100 :/ And I think THIS IS STUPID.

Speed doesn't kill. It's the sudden deceleration.

An interesting aspect is the survivability of a crash at increasing speeds. Your odds of walking away or surviving drop pretty quickly (depending on the accident circumstances).

I’m a civil engineer who designs roadways for a living. This is a relatively accurate summary of studies related to traffic and accidents. People tend to drive relatively close to the design speed of a highway purely on instinct. The vast majority of people don’t drive staring at their speedometer 100% of the time, they have other things to worry about (like actually driving their vehicle and paying attention to what’s going on around them). You do occasionally get a lunatic who drives like a mad-man barreling down the road or a grandmother driving 25 mph below the posted speed. Both of those are extremely dangerous. In general, a big goal of designing a highway is to narrow the overall range of speeds driven so that there isn’t a huge gradient and everyone is driving a roughly consistent speed. Artificially lowering the speed throws a wrench in this, making it less safe for everyone involved and also worsening traffic in general and making highways less efficient.

Where I'm from, most driving isn't done on big highways; it's done on residential and urban roads. Could you do a video on speed limits there? It seems like there's gonna be a pretty big difference, considering there's more likely to be distractions and instances where you'll need to stop suddenly, unlike on a rural highway.

I wonder if enforcement of lane discipline, i.e. keeping right except to pass, could also make a difference. In the US, no one really abides by that law.

A good comparison would be to the unrestricted German Autobahn, which has a fatality rate comparatively low to highways in other European countries, and 1/3 lower than the US. Despite an average speed of 100-120 mph for cars.

There are two factors outside of traffic that will affect how fast I got on a given road: my vehicle and the road itself. If the road is narrow, twisty, and with bumpy pavement and I'm in something like a light truck or passenger van, I'm going to be driving slow. It does not feel safe to pursue highway speeds. However, on a highway it feels much safer to go those speeds. But a lot of highways have artificially slow speed limits, that is, the speed limit is 10 or even 20 mph slower than what feels safe to do. I've been driving for 14 years now and I've always been a speeder, and never been in an accident. I try to not take risks. When I speed, I'm doing it because there isn't traffic around, the road conditions are good, and my vehicle is up to it. The only risk I feel like I'm taking is getting a speeding ticket. When there's more traffic, the weather gets worse, road narrows etc. I slow down.

Anyone who's ever been on a highway where the general flow of traffic is 10mph above the posted limit, and then suddenly comes across that one idiot who insists on going the limit or below it (bonus points for attempting to merge onto the highway at less than posted speeds!) can tell you that it's not speed that kills, it's slow. Driving slower may be safer for me (because I have more time to react to changes ahead of me), but it's far more dangerous for everyone else on the road if I'm not keeping up with traffic.

If you want to see this fact in action come to Thailand and drive here for a while. Because of the massive gaps between vehicle speeds you can never expect a lane to actually be open at any given time and what ensues is a constant swaying in and out motion where cars are constantly changing lanes to avoiding slower traffic. To make matters worse cars regularly enter roads without yielding and cause even more drastic differences in speeds as they accelerate.

I kind of don't like that the video was not very clear in its exact meaning, but after reading your blog post, I completely agree with you. I just wish that your video had more clearly asserted that speed limits on highways should be based on the design of the road rather than some legislative maximum.

Guys, he is only suggesting that it is safer to increase your speed if most of the drivers around you are going faster than you, even if you are going the speed limit and they are speeding. Yes, it seems unfair that you should be forced to break the law because everyone else is, but usually police officers will only ticket speeders on the highway if they are going faster than the flow of traffic, meaning they have to be frequently passing other cars, which is very dangerous. Besides, even if you are ticketed, it's better than getting into an accident.

I like how a large amount of people seemed to completely ignore that list bit of the video about letting go of the preconceived biases and insist that slower is always safer, in all cases all the time(and the few people that seemed to gather that you implied the opposite, that faster is always better in all cases). But that is really not surprising, as very few people will change their ideas about anything, regardless of subject matter, when presented by logical arguments or evidence.

I for one rarely look at my speedometer at all unless I think there is a cop nearby. I am paying attention to other things like the position of other cars, potential hazards etc. I drive whatever speed it feels comfortable to drive. Sometimes that is fast, others slow. Depends on many factors, none of which are the posted speed limit. I think cops on the side of the road checking peoples speed creates a dangerous situation where those who are speeding start slowing up which can cause a ripple effect and create panic and more variability and potentially more accidents.

I remember a guy in Columbus, Ohio fighting a speeding ticket on those grounds. Although he was speeding, he was merely keeping up with traffic & felt that slowing down would be more dangerous. They let him go.

That an overall speed limit increase reduces variance in motorist speed, and thus number of collisions, is a fascinating point. It's strange that the increase in severity of collision isn't a larger factor in fatality rates. Insufficient reaction time, lessened traction, higher force of impact...

I'm glad you made this, it's a great topic. I'm even more excited for next weeks episode.

there was one state which completely repealed its speed limits for a short time (i think it was montana), they saw a decline in traffic accidents during that time.

Perhaps this is true on large roads but any residential area surely needs to consider that if you hit a pedestrian, even a school child, it's much more likely to be fatal?

Yeah Route 3! I mostly drive it in NH (limit is still 55), and most people will go 70 in NH.

Faster driving is (for the most part) only an issue when people do not drive with care - ie not under the influence of substances, not distracted by phones (hands free or otherwise), not keeping far enough from the car in front. Britain has started to combat this by reducing speed limits in very busy/residential areas to 20mph so as to reduce the stopping distances of cars and reduce the injury caused anyone hit - my sister was on the bus which caused the accident which started this "revolution", and I can definitely see the point. If a child runs out and is hit at a lower speed, it is more likely to survive. No changing lanes in areas like that though - I've been driving years and I'm still super twitchy about changing lanes on a motorway when it's busy

The speed differential totally makes sense to me. In Houston, if you don't go the speed of traffic, you're dead. It just feels less safe if you go slower than the people around you.

For anyone not paying attention if the speed limit is at a speed that everyone is comfortable driving (which frankly is relatively high on highways and not for dumb reasons) you'd have less lane changing because people would not feel restrained. I personally am an extremely patient man and so I stay in the same lane basically from work to home (and vice versa). But I live in LA where everyone is going about 80-85 regardless of speed limit signs. Its when people aren't doing that that folks start lane changing and it is lane changing that causes accidents. 80 thought a school zone is a bad idea, but 55 on I-5 would never make sense. It's a long stretch of road where, if not lane changing, you should always be aware and able to react presuming you keep distance from the car ahead of you. The latter being almost always true when everyone is at speed, speaking from experience during my 45 minute commute twice a day.

Isn't the real issue the non-highway roads? I know it is in my country. Highways are usually pretty safe, it's why the Germans can even have them without speed limits. And state of maintenance, driver training and safety regulations for cars and things like DUI are probably much more important than speed limits any way.

And you also seem to forget that most accidents/death do NOT happen in highways. They mostly concern cities, traffic lights, pedestrians and cyclists..

It's weird that you say the state police fought the speed limit increase on Rt 3 so that they could make more money writing tickets. I've gone through several speed traps on that stretch of road driving 75 and haven't gotten a second look.

The unaddressed issue is, by the principles of physics, whether or not driving faster leads to more devastating accidents when they do occur. Instead, the focus is on the dangers of driving in variable speed highway traffic.

Very insightful. I've never looked at it that way.

Great video, but there was a (small) consideration omitted. Not all vehicles are limited by the speed limit: some are mechanically limited. I can't speak for the US, but in Australia semi-trailers are often limited to around 90km/h for safety reasons. This is also somewhat of an issue for vehicles carrying heavy loads, and older vehicles. Raising speed limits would therefore increase the speed differential between these vehicles and others.

Lived the video. However, your Rte 3 argument needs to be corrected. Rte 3 between Braintree(or slightly south of Braintree) IS 60mph. Has been for at least a decade. It has NOT been rebuilt, except for work on widening the breakdown lane to allow use during commute times. Which makes where it WAS rebuilt more egregious. Rte 3 was widened to 3 lanes a decade ago. From Burlington all the way to the NH border. It's actually been graded to make a 4th lane a cinch to add. All the granite and trees in the median were cleared out. It is flat and straight with clear sightlines all the way. And while Rte 3 on the South Shore is at 60mph, this northern stretch is mired at 55. It should be the safest stretch of highway in the state, by far. Sticking it at 55mph is simply a money grab. 55 on that stretch feels like a brisk jog. I got a ticket on that stretch once a year after the widening. I went to fight it but the officer never sent in the paperwork. But I would encourage anyone who does get a ticket to fight it. It's an illegal speed limit. One that an engineering study proves is worthy of at least 65mph. I got stopped doing 70, well within reason of road conditions...

Fascinating. I wonder if making semis go slower in the right lane has the same effect.

YES! FINALLY TORT REFORM! I've been waiting for this one :)

One safety problem with speed limits is that it forces people that don't want a fine to pay more attention to their speedometer than to the road in front of them.

Paramedic checking in About 3/4 of y'all just don't deserve to have a driver's license. Learn what adequate following distances are. Then you might stop slamming into each other and flipping your cars "avoiding accidents". That is all.

I think automotive fatalities will decrease even further with the introduction of autonomous vehicles, and the fuel consumption will decrease even further with an expansion of the electric car market. Supporting these two industries will allow us to go faster & safer more efficiently.

The civil engineers that design these highways don't design them for 55 mph (or any posted speed limit for that matter). They realize that people will drive at the speeds that suit them and and focus on designing roads to be safe at speeds higher than an average person would drive. They consider how the road was designed, all weather possibilities, average speeds of drivers on similar roads, and all manner of influencing factors and determine an appropriate safe speed limit. They then report this appropriate safe speed limit to the local police for them to enforce (usually in the eightieth percentile of average speeds), but local police department will always ignore the engineers. Why? Because speed limits aren't there to keep you safe, they're there to make police departments money. I know it sounds like a conspiracy but the annual revenue from speeding tickets in the US is more than 2 billion dollars. Police departments would go broke without this cash flow. So, they post a speed limit that most people will break so that they can generate enough money to operate. This artificially low speed limit produces an extremely hazardous phenomena: large differential speeds. Many societies of civil engineers have taken police departments to court over this and either loose, or the speed limit is raised insignificantly. Speed differential is an extremely real and well know problem with no clear solution.

There's one major factor you didn't consider here--pedestrians. Research consistently shows that higher speeds result in a drastically increased risk of pedestrians dying in collisions. So while there's no real reason to reduce speeds on highways, there's strong evidence behind reducing speeds in areas that pedestrians frequent, such as neighborhood and arterial roads .

Yes laws shouldn't be driven by how many people obey them, but they also aren't _enforcing_ this in most places. If they seriously thought the speed limit was proper we could use the electronic payment gates to catch damn near everyone that uses the roads regularly. Or at least get more traditional stops. Point is we need to set it at a level that we will actually enforce, whatever that may be.

The thing I don't like is when this is brought up in a policy debate. They always bring in total fatalities, not just on the highway. There should be a clear distinction between the two as the majority of fatal accidents happen on rural roads that have less access to emergency vehicles and are traveled less. The highway is meant to get us somewhere directly fast. They are designed for higher speeds and for some highways in the US, a car can safely travel its length going over 200 MPH because they have 3 main design features that limit risk. Wide lanes, long corners, and an even surface. However, this design can also be a danger if its set too low. The driver becomes distracted and either speeds because the perceived speed feels slow or attempts to operate other devices that are not the vehicle. In California on highways the 2 most dangerous things are unlicensed drivers, and poorly maintained vehicles.

In my town, citizens wanted to lower the speed limit on the highway that runs through it. When the government looked at the highway, they decided to raise the speed limit instead to help with the accident rates.

I knew this already, since I did some research on the German autobahn. No speed limit there, people go insanely fast, but the rate of accident is low. That said, getting a license over there is much harder.

I love these videos. Though maybe you could do a healthcare triage on nausea and why it makes me feel ill when you keep jumping from left to right!

Perhaps an episode on drinking ages and health implications? I believe it's a similar story, with federal funds linked to having the legal age set to 21.

In Europe speed limit is between 73 and 79 mph, and that is optimal speed on highways. Over that fuel consumption increase, and in case of extraordinary situation it can be dangerous (like flat tire). Most people do go around 90 mph. At speed of around 50 mph, you can have the highest number of cars passing. And don't forget that truck don't go much higher than 50-60 mph.

For highway safety, as you say in the video, speed isn't what's relevant. What's relevant is keeping the deviation between speeds low. That does mean that sometimes raising speed limits lowers accident rates, but accident rates aren't lower because traveling faster is safer. It's because other people were already traveling faster and raising the speed limit encourages law abiding people to travel the same speed as the speeders. If you drive into a wall, the faster you're going the worse the damage to your vehicle and likely yourself will be. So our intuitions about speed limits and speed are correct IF people actually follow the law. I'm not opposed to setting speed limits based on the statistics of how people are actually driving on the road, but the accidents that do happen will be worse if people are traveling faster.

The main point that I got from this video was that people need to pay more attention to the speed of the other drivers than what a stupid sign says, which is what I was taught in driving school. It sometimes feels like people forget that they are riding in a missile instead of a magic carriage, we all need to try and pay attention to our surroundings.

Traffic Engineers, whether on local streets or freeways, always have a factor for speed limits in their design equations. This means that when designing the roads, traffic lights, and almost everything a driver interacts with on a daily commute the engineer takes into account the assumed driving speed. This means that if you are traveling faster (and slower in some cases) you are traveling at a speed the road wasn't designed for and puts you at much greater risk. I think this is important to know because I feel the facts presented here may be misleading.

I think a huge portion of what makes slower speeds feel safer is that when a collision does occur at higher speeds, it's much more disastrous.

How much of the difference in fatality rates year to year can be attributed to changes in safety features in cars, such as better seat belts and airbags?

Lower speed is intuitive, just not along the correct axis. Moving forward at slower speed isn't what is harmful, it's the sideways shift from one lane to another that's extremely dangerous. The variation in speed between vehicles increases the rate of sideways motion, due to lane swapping, which has a strong correlation to rates of accidents. Perhaps the speed which people change lanes is what should be limited, and not their forward motion. It is an interesting proposition.

I'm Ok with raising speed limits but really...... Faster is safer because others break the law. I hope they don't apply that logic to the rest of our laws.

What I took from this video is not so much that faster is better, as the title suggests, but that we should institute a national speed limit that all interstate and state highways adhere to regardless of which state they are in.

Is this really that hard to understand? Roads are designed to be driven safely up to certain speeds depending on the road. We should follow scientific and mathematical recommendations to decide on speed limits. To all those talking about people breaking the law, I say sometimes the law is wrong. Remember when the abolition of alcohol was a thing? By *sometimes* setting a higher limit on *highways* you reach a more intuitive speed that that road was made for. So less people are likely to speed or if they do then not by too much. This in turn reduces the overall speed gradient.

This is all highway based? I'm more concerned about urban / sub-urban areas where pedestrians etc are in danger.

Can you please do a video discussing HIV, its history, treatments, and why it's such a tricky virus to eliminate?

I'd love to see a video comparing various kinds of rehab. A literature review of AA vs CBT and non-12 step would be fascinating.

An interesting perspective. I had never considered that artificially low speed limits increase the variances in speed. Interesting.

Yes, sometimes "faster" is better. I'm still a new driver, so I'm not yet completely familiar with all the little things one can encounter on the road, which could lead to disaster. One night I was driving home on the rightmost lane, and I didn't know, that on that particular road, there was a point where the rightmost lane only turned right. Now, the right thing to do would've been to stop, and check to make sure it was safe to change lane. But since I had no prior knowledge of this, I hastily moved to the left lane w/o looking. However, since I was driving significantly faster, I was much ahead of the person behind me, and therefore did not get in an accident. Another day after that, I was in a leftmost lane, and that lane became left-turn only, at a highway entrance! I did NOT want to get on a highway which I was completely unfamiliar with, so I quickly turned on my right-turn signal, started watching the right lane, and thankfully I got an opening before that left-turn green light came on.

I feel like speed limits should be allowed to raise. If you are uncomfortable with going the highest speed, go slower and drive in the slow lane. Other cars can go around you in a highway setting. Accidents are caused by carelessness, and speed is usually a factor. There’s a nifty button that is called cruise control that I wish a lot of people knew how to use. It would help a lot with people staying at or around a speed limit, which would in turn help with fatality rates due to accidents at a slower speed. There have been many times that I have almost been in fatal accidents due to people not driving fast enough. It isn’t that I’m going too fast, its more of the fact that they are going at least 20 miles per hour under the speed limit. This is significantly more dangerous than going too fast, because cars coming up quickly behind cannot tell how fast you are going until they are behind you. I also think that the elderly need to have a set age that they need to take a second road test at. Maybe that would be a great topic to address in a video?

If reducing speed limits only results in some drivers slowing down, then I can see that would be a problem, but that does not disprove the proposition that slowing down traffic will result in fewer deaths. The trick would to actually slow down all (or close to all) of the traffic. Speed cameras everywhere perhaps? Another problem is that car safety is constantly improving. If the figures you quoted were not adjusted to take that into account, the comparisons may not be valid.

Yo i live in New Bedford ma, around where rout 3 starts. Driving up to boston on that route, especially during rush hour, is some scary shit. Take 95, its worth it

So would it be better to abandon the speed limit in place for a speed range? Instead of having a set number a car shouldn't go over, say 65, have posted sign read 65 which means the driver must be between 60 and 70 mph?

Actually most accidents happen because of turning, it's because people tunnel out of the front window of their car and never look at their surroundings. Slow speeds sate that we should have more time to look around and ensure we are aware. However, this can lead to boredom, and people not paying attention. Which is way worse then moving quickly paying attention and getting to your destination quicker. I mean you are less likely to be in a specific area if you move faster, and less likely to get hit if you move out of the way quicker.

I am surprised that speed limit in the United States are so low! I used to thought the bigger a country is the higher the speed limit is. This is why islands have lower speed limits than continental countries. But now I know that the infinite highways of the US are limited (in average) at 65 mph when France is at 85 mph and Germany has none.

Route 3 is seriously a mess, and all the out of state tourists going to cape cod in the summer don't help. They drive super slow and are always changing lanes (I assume because they are unsure where to get off). That's why I avoid it if I can.

The safe speed is the speed of traffic, whatever that may be (within reason). Trying to zip faster is bad, and so is obstructing traffic and making everyone zip around you.

I'd say that on the highway, a higher speed limit is safer, I'm much more fucused if I drive faster. My focus is a lot better at ~90 mph (No, you're not allowed to drive ~90 mph (150 kph) in my country, but I sometimes do it. Max is 130 kph or ~80 mph), and a lot of people say the same thing, for them a higher speed equals more focus on the road. At 110 kph (~70 mph), you can kind of zone out without noticing, it becomes harder at 130 kph (~80 mpg), but for most impossible at 150 kph (~90 mph).

The assumption being that only autos use the public roads. This assumption is where your logic falls apart. Faster is not safer for those walking and biking on the street. Now if you can differentiate between limited access roads and public roads then I could see your point. greatergreaterwashington.org/post/26389/theres-a-critical-difference-between-20-mph-and-30-mph/

Now we have more accident proof cars which are supposed to help decrease injuries and fatalities in the event of a car crash. Was this factor considered?

As always, it's not the speed that kills you, it's the sudden change in acceleration when you hit something that kills you

I have to say I found it odd that you didn't discuss the confounding factor of improved car safety measures much in this video.

What happened with Route 3? Did it's speed limit get increased? If so, did it lower the accident rate?

I think somebody got a speed ticket! XD I have many doubts about what have been told here… The number of accidents is something, but the severity is something else! *You won't convince me that driving faster will decrease the severity of accidents!* In my opinion, the law exists to limit the severity and the amount of accidents… Faster speed may not increase the accident rate, but it certainly increase the fatality rate!

Love this show so much

When you said we have to be willing to let go of our biases I LOLed because, well you know...

Hey, Massachusetts, my home state! So I live in Northern Massachusetts, so I'm not familiar with that stretch of Route 3. But I know that Route 3 runs from Orleans on the Mid Cape in the south up to the Tyngsborough/Nashua line in the north. Did this legislation only affect the part running from Boston to Plymouth?

Nonono. I always know that the higher speed difference, the more unsafe it is. I'm not a sheeple. Thanks to this video, now I can include lane changes as another unsafe maneuver due to slow drivers (talking about the idiots driving SLOWER than the limit).

well there's still going to be lane changes cause I'm not comfortable going 150kph. Can we get the self-driving cars already?

Speed limits are good in cities and in between the towns/villages, not on big highways.

I wonder if i can submit this as evidence for my speeding ticket court hearing. I saw a similar video a while ago about the speed limits in Canada.