This week, instead of answering one of your questions, I have a question for you. But first, I need you on my side. You’re likely familiar with the following quote, sometimes apocryphally credited to Abraham Lincoln: “My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins.” There’s a 150-plus history of Americans agreeing with that sentiment, so if that doesn’t ring true for you, you’re the outlier.
Of course, it’s a metaphor, and it’s been applied to many situations besides fists and noses, including arguments against slavery, bars in neighborhoods, and smoking in public. It’s also an argument in favor of a person’s right to do whatever they’d like as long as it doesn’t harm someone else.
Today I’m applying that principle to driving: Your liberty to drive how you’d like ends where it puts other road users at risk. If you think about it, that’s the fundamental principle underlying much of our traffic law. Driving impaired, reckless, distracted, or exceeding the speed limit; these are all prohibited because they create an unnecessary risk to others.
Now imagine that there is a $1.99 device that car manufacturers can install in new cars that can identify if a driver is impaired and prevent them from driving, without the driver having to do anything outside of their normal routine. It could save 13,000 lives a year in the US alone, reduce serious injuries even more, and reduce the burden on emergency responders. That would be amazing, right? I’m guessing most of you would support that.
How about if there was a device that was free and could save 12,000 lives a year by preventing drivers from speeding? Would you be in favor of that? Not as many of you this time. I bring this up because this technology already exists and could be coming soon to a car near you. A new car knows the speed limit. With a bit of programming it could be made to never exceed it.
Starting this year, new cars in Europe will give drivers an audible alert if they exceed the speed limit. A bill in California is proposing something similar. But that wasn’t how the California bill started; it originally intended to prevent vehicles from driving more than ten mph over the speed limit. Is that government overreach or wise transportation planning?
We tend to agree that a person’s right to be impaired ends when they get in a driver’s seat. Why do many of us believe we should have the option to speed, even though it’s prohibited by law and there’s low to no-cost technology that could prevent it?
Maybe it’ll help if I make this less personal. Should we allow school bus drivers to speed? A recent observation study found that half of school bus drivers speed in school zones. Nearly a quarter of those speeding drivers exceeded the speed limit by at least 10 mph. That’s a problem, right? We likely could convince the powers that be to install speed limiters in school buses.
But that would be a bit hypocritical; in that same study about three-quarters of car drivers were speeding. And the school bus fatal crash rate is .2 fatalities per 100 million miles compared to 1.5 fatalities per 100 million miles for passenger vehicles. We kill ourselves and others over seven times more frequently than school bus drivers do.
We’ve tried for decades to warn people not to speed and write a few tickets to those who do, and still every year we have five-digit fatality counts due to speeding. Maybe it’s time to take away the option.
Common excuses for speeding are “everybody does it” and “if you don’t keep up with the [speeding] flow of traffic, you’re going to get run over.” But I tell my students that it only appears that “everybody is speeding” because that’s the only ones you see passing you when you’re doing the speed limit. All of the law-abiding drivers behind you will remain behind you.
Another factor is the synchronization of traffic lights. If they are programmed effectively so that a driver doing the speed limit gets green light after green light, hopefully the speeder will eventually learn that it just makes sense to drive within the lawful limit rather than race up to red light after red light.
Doug,
Americans do not take easily to restrictions of their freedoms.
to me, a free market approach could be helpful.
it should have the support of car insurance companies.
track the driver’s speed at all times . if exceeding the limit, then increase premiums by as much as needed to encourage sticking to speed limits. you can still speed, but just pay for it.
on a personal note, I drive my Mazda cx5 (2014) with cruise control set almost all the time. even in 25 mph zones, and with adaptive cruise control, it makes driving a more relaxed experience and one less thing to worry about.
pt
pt
So those who can afford it get to speed to their hearts’ content, but those without the financial means cannot? That’s a highly unethical method of promoting road safety!
Hi Peter, you’re right that Americans do not take easily to restrictions of their freedoms. And with good reason. But should we think of speeding as a right?
I’d be okay with the free market approach you described, but I’m not sure the insurance companies want to be perceived as the villains any more than they already are. They’d be doing a lot of data collection on their customers, which for some people might be more objectionable than limits built into their car.
This reminds me of British Columbia, Canada in 2001. The province instituted photo radar to catch speeders. The technology worked like a charm and also captured images, should one with to contest the ticket that arrived by snail mail. What happened? Another political party used eliminating photo radar as one of their major platforms. They took office and this tech was scraped. So apart from the freedom and liberty arguments, there are always politics!
Doug I think maybe you’re getting at something here at least it’s good to talk about. I think a test of some vehicles with this technology would be a place to start, and I would volentier for that test on my car, since it wouldn’t impair my driving very much because 99. 9 % of the time I don’t drive more than 2 mph over the posted limit. I know that I would not be in favor of such technology unless it would include All drivers, even police and emergency responds, because how many people do they kill per 100 million miles. You might defend them and say “ how would they do there job. And my response to that would be , they’d figure it out just like the rest of us learned to get everything done we need to do without going more than two mph over the posted limit.
Hi Merrill, your comments about limiting emergency responders got me thinking about high-speed pursuits. If the suspect in the getaway car can’t speed, the police don’t need to speed to chase them. Kind of ruins car chase scenes in movies, but it’s good for real life. I don’t know if I’d go as far as you in always prohibiting emergency responders from speeding; if my house is on fire or I’m having a heart attack, I want the person responding to get there fast. But it is a legitimate concern. The number two cause of death for both police and fire personnel is traffic crashes. Even if they’re allowed to speed, we should do some thorough risk analysis. If we’re going to expect first responders to make good judgements about when to speed while responding to a call, we should have some good data to justify it.
And a couple related anecdotes from my previous career as a deputy: Early on I was taught that you don’t hurry to a commercial burglary alarm. Somewhere around 95% of those calls are false alarms, and you don’t want to put yourself and others at risk for those odds.
I also learned that if you’re the only deputy in the area, you don’t hurry to a bar fight. You want those guys tired before you get there.
Thanks for responding Doug. We see things from a different perspective, so if we keep talking maybe we can learn something from someone else’s perspective. Already with speed limiters to the posted limit we have some exceptions and it’s not you or me, but someone is better than us , or more important on the road than you and I so they can sometimes speed , or don’t need a limiter at all , even though they may be working on their first 100,00 miles, when you and I and a large majority of drivers have lots more driving experiance . . When they kill someone or themselves, it’s just as devastating to their families and communities as is every crash death. Somehow we need to all be treated as equals in most instances on the highways. I’m not sure, but I think I’d be upset if I was limited and police weren’t, but maybe not at this stage in my life, but I’m sure that would Anger lots of drivers. They’re the ones who are enforcing the traffic laws after all( which is probably necessary), so they should be setting the example by volunteering to have limiters on there cars if in fact it’s about saving lives. It’s not easy to get it done with strict limits, but I can tell you that it can be done. I’ve been taught the hard way.
I agree with you that law enforcement should be setting the example for safe driving. Whether we ever get limiters or not, we should expect that the people enforcing the law also follow the law.
For me, the underlying attitude from drivers is as interesting to me as the possibility of speed limiters. How we respond to the suggestion that our speed could be limited says a lot about our self interests compared to the safety of others.