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- cross-posted to:
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Darryl Anderson was drunk behind the wheel of his Audi SUV, had his accelerator pressed to the floor and was barreling toward a car ahead of him when he snapped a photo of his speedometer. The picture showed a car in the foreground, a collision warning light on his dashboard and a speed of 141 mph (227 kph).
An instant later, he slammed into the car in the photo. The driver, Shalorna Warner, was not seriously injured but her 8-month-old son and her sister were killed instantly, authorities said. Evidence showed Anderson never braked.
Anderson, 38, was sentenced Tuesday to 17 years in prison for the May 31 crash in northern England that killed little Zackary Blades and Karlene Warner. Anderson pleaded guilty last week in Durham Crown Court to two counts of causing death by dangerous driving.
Why can someone even drive a car that can go that fast on public streets? Countries should enforce speed limiters on vehicles brought into their country for roadway use. It may not prevent drunks from driving, but it could slow them down and prevent some deaths and injury. People don’t even need to be drunk for these speeds to be dangerous.
Because every time government tries to limit vehicles there is a very loud roar of whataboutism and mah freedom.
At a certain point we need to prioritize people’s safety over “vroom vroom”. 200+ km/h is nearly double highway speeds. Children dying from speeding crashes should be much more important than somebodys ego and desire to speed.
If children dying from mass shootings isn’t enough to move these obstructionist-types, then nothing is.
When Sandy Hook happened and we didn’t even get universal background checks, I saw conservatives plainly that day.
The only thing stopping a bad driver with a fast car is a good driver with a fast car!
Guns have useful legal purposes and specific constitutional protections though. Cars don’t. The number of people going track racing in their SUVs has to be essentially zero.
Weapons are tools with only one utility, kill people.
Fascists and oppressors are people too.
Killing people isn’t always illegal, and you forgot hunting, euthanasia, and target shooting.
Who exactly is euthanizing people with a gun? And why aren’t they using a less painful method?
If a horse or cow breaks its leg, what’s a less painful method? A properly-aimed bullet is instant and 100% painless. You gonna call a vet, wait half a day if you’re lucky, and then hope they give chemicals quickly and correctly while the animal languishs in pain?
The famous US constitution of England written by George Washingtonshire.
These rights are enshrined in the Magna Car-ta
it’s cheaper to race on the streets
As a driving enthusiast even I agree with this.
However, people will just work around any limiters that get set like we already do.
Many cars and motorcycles already have speed limiters—often 130-150mph.
Big fines, impound, jail time for people caught bypassing their limiters.
As far as I know that’s already the case.
But nobody is going to know about it except you and (optionally) whoever you hired to do it if not yourself, so you’re only getting fined/arrested for it after you’re caught going 180mph.
yeah, be hard on crime! (sarcasm)
I’m just meming—i don’t have a solution. other than maybe if people like me had a good outlet to enjoy what we love.
The fastest speed limit I’ve seen is 65, so it is over double that
There are some 110 km/h hwys near me. The average speed seems to be 130 km/hr and cops don’t seem to mind until you go faster than that. 20 over seems “acceptable” near me, even in school zones marked 40 km/hr.
Lol could you convert those to freedom units? I’m too smoothbrained for this
20 km/h ≈ 20.000 yards per hour
40 km/h ≈ 40.000 yards per hour
110 km/h ≈ 110.000 yards per hour
130 km/h ≈ 130.000 yards per hour
Live up to your name!
A meter is a bit longer than a yard though. https://www.google.com/search?q=1+m+in+yards&oe=utf-8
Close enough. Just don’t ask me to convert between one freedom unit to another freedom unit.
It’s close enough to work for napkin math, just don’t try to build a bridge to these specifications.
There’s one around the White Mountains in NH that I have driven on that was 75 mph, but that is the absolute fastest I have ever seen. The same highway (I think) stayed 75 mph through the Green Mountains in VT too. Both areas are rural without a ton of drivers outside of peak tourism season, and about a 0% chance of hitting a pedestrian.
Definitely a chance of hitting a moose and totally fucking up it’s legs, ending your own life in the process. Motherfuckers have been known to walk away from many car accidents without much more than a limp. They’re tall enough where they roll over most cars and even many pickup trucks when full grown.
EDIT: Nevermind. It was I-93, which has a speed of 70 mph in the section that I drove on and I couldn’t find a 70 mph speed limit sign on that highway in VT, because it ends quickly after entering VT. Couldn’t be bothered to find where the VT highway was though.
Southern Utah has 80 MPH between Cedar City and Washington City (by St. George).
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From this month it is already happening in Europe, with caveats.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/11/speed_limiters_arrive_for_all/
That’s not a limiter, just an alert that you’re going over the posted limit
I said, with caveats.
That implementation of a speed limiter is not a hard limit though.
Ok, as long as cops have the same limiters in their vehicles.
What’s the reasoning there?
So how would a cop catch up to someone who bypass their limiter? Or respond to hostage situation in a timely manner? Or get to another unit who needs assistance?
I think it would just be better to fire cops who abuse their power.
A lot of (sensible) municipalities have banned high-speed chases by police since they’re so insanely risky to bystanders. Nothing wrong with cops not being able to speed dangerously, even if it means perps sometime escape (to be caught later anyway since their identities are usually known).
They don’t, there’s no need. They get the person’s plate info and send the fine after the fact. They can also come impound the vehicle, as well. Dangerous chase: avoided.
They can have a special vehicle at the station that doesn’t have the limiter for extremely specific situations like that. Only specially trained officers can use it.
Normal speeds. They shouldn’t be allowed to endanger people not even near an incident to get somewhere because another cop is “”“in danger”“”
I think it would just be better to not give cops the chance to abuse their power in the first place since that injures and kills people
Why?
How would these work exactly? Where I live max speed on freeways is 70mph and 25mph on residential streets. You can definitely still kill someone using a car limited to maximum legal speed.
He’s saying that if the car in the article was speed limited, it would’ve hit the back of that poor girl’s car and dented it, instead of ruining people’s entire lives
I don’t think you understood the point I made.
I did. I’m just saying speed limiters would reduce deaths overall, but of course you had to counteract with “but they won’t reduce deaths in this specific situation”
Lower speeds will lower impact forces, increase vehicle handling, and provide more reaction time for drivers.
You can certainly kill someone going the maximum legal speed in a place where the speed limit is much lower. But the likelihood of injury and death still does increase with the increase in speed. So if, say, 5% of accidents involving someone going 70 are fatal, but 10% if the person is going 90 (these are made-up numbers), then if cars are not even able to go above 70, you end up saving lives.
I doubt there’s significant difference.
One of those speed limits is designed for a location where cars are unlikely to hit a human directly. Another location can have a child randomly run into the street. 70 and 170 are both death sentences.
Speed limiters in cars that don’t dynamically adjust to actual speed limits are useless and only exist to check the boxes for idiot voters disconnected from reality.
While I agree that it would certainly be ideal if a speed limiter could account for the context that the car is in, you’ve missed a lot in drawing your conclusion that it would be useless without being able to do that.
Hitting a pedestrian is not the only type of accident. If you rear end a car going 25 mph at 70mph it is not a guaranteed death sentence for all. Especially if the driver brakes, which some do not, but some will. And this is ignoring cases where there isn’t a tremendous mismatch in speed. Like, even if it reduced residential deaths by 0% but it reduced overall deaths looking at all situations, it would be a net gain with literally nothing lost. We are looking at the aggregate here. So, it isn’t relevant if you think of one specific situation where you believe 70mph isn’t better than 90mph or whatever number.
Reaction time and braking distance are affected by speed. In some cases, the person going 70 might be able to slow down enough to have the collision be non-fatal. Reaction time goes down and braking distance goes up as speed increases. If a speed limiter gives just enough time to occasionally make an accident non-fatal, then in the aggregate you have fewer fatal accidents.
In fact, taking braking distance into account, I don’t think you can even say that over the millions of miles driven, that a speed maxed at 70mph isn’t going to, occasionally, lead to a situation in a residential area where someone was able to just get out of the way in time because the car covered 30% less distance between the time the pedestrian reacted and the time the car reached that spot (or an even larger difference if the driver noticed and braked at some point as well). But again, it doesn’t matter if it’s few to none in this specific scenario, because a speed limiter of 70 will certainly reduce fatalities overall.