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      08-15-2013, 12:40 PM   #28
NemesisX
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I'd caution against reading too much into a study by CATO, as they have a vested interest in promoting a "hands-off" policy for philosophical reasons (CATO is a libertarian think tank). I know I might get some flack for trying to hold a study like this to the standards of scientific rigor, but shedding bias and encouraging peer review are feasible standards to strive for even at this level. And moreover, the second link Titanium3er posted actually contained a variety of miniature case studies with different results. A small case study in Michigan showed that increasing speed limits doesn't increase fatalities. A case study elsewhere showed that increasing speed limits does increase fatalities, albeit slightly.

In principle though I'm all for legally increasing speed limits. I have no problem with speeding in and of itself. What usually worried me was speed differential, though not in the absolute naive sense of the phrase (i.e. car 1 travels at 75 in a 70, car 2 travels at 90 in a 70, and I'm worried about 90-75 = 15 MPH). When I say "speed differential," I mean the following -

Car 1 travels at 75 in a 70
Car 2 (coming up from behind) is traveling at 95 in a 70
Car 1 expects car 2 (and all other cars, in fact) to drive within +/- 10 MPH of the posted speed limit.

It's the differential between the speed at which the average driver expects fellow drivers to be driving at and the actual speed they are driving at that worries me. And, I think the importance of paying attention to this difference is magnified on highly interconnected road networks with slower speed limits. People approach a T intersection and are trying to take a right turn and merge onto a 45 MPH street (for example). There's an expectation that fellow drivers around that blind curve aren't flying down at 70 or 80.
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