Dartblog

A recent opinion piece in the Times entitled “No Need for Speed” advances the idea that car should not be manufactured with the ability to go faster than posted speed limits. It is one of the silliest ideas (to put it nicely) that I have heard in a long while. It is perhaps fitting that an proposal that would have us drive as slow as turtles considers this idea with logical capacity of a member of that reptile group.

The article begins by considering that alcohol accounts for about 10% more driving fatalities than speeding:

Speeding is the cause of 30 percent of all traffic deaths in the United States — about 13,000 people a year. By comparison, alcohol is blamed 39 percent of the time, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. But unlike drinking, which requires the police, breathalyzers and coercion to improve drivers’ behavior, there’s a simple way to prevent speeding: quit building cars that can exceed the speed limit.

I think my favorite line here is the one that says policing alcohol would require “coercion to improve drivers’ behavior” as though this is a type of coercion less egregious than forcing car companies to build slower cars and banning drivers from buying fast cars. It is fitting, though, that the author chooses to juxtapose alcohol and the proposal for governing automobile speeds. It is fitting because this country has already tried, albeit for different a reason, exactly the same type of proposal: prohibition. We have already tried to ban alcohol. That worked out well and people really liked it. Now we are going to ban fast cars? The Al Capone’s of automobiles are certainly going to be excited.

Just to take a look at a few other components of this ridiculous proposal:

1. Claim: EZ Pass should record your time between tolls to determine whether you got to the next one too fast. Response: That sounds fantastic, but how is it going to work on back roads where there are no tolls? Why don’t we just mandate mini cameras in cars facing towards people’s speedometers. That way if people are going too fast, the camera can trigger an immediate call to the police.

2. Claim: Speeding substantially reduces fuel efficiency. Response: First off, it kind of depends on what kind of car you have and how fast you are going. If the speed limit is 15 mph and you are going 30, speeding has boosted fuel efficiency big time. Even conceding that maybe going 80 burns fuel at a higher rate (disproportionately higher relative to the rate of speed) than, say, 60, who’s to say this isn’t worth it? If I burn an extra dollar in gas to get somewhere 15 minutes sooner, that is bang for your buck. If a person makes anything more than 4 dollars an hour that hypothetical trade off is worth the while.

3. Claim: “Sure, it would take us longer to get from here to there. But thousands of deaths a year are too great a cost for so adolescent a thrill as speeding.” Response: Maybe that’s true, but then why should be even be allowed to drive 60 mph? Surely many people get killed at this speed, so too at 40 mph and maybe even 20 mph. If we mandated that cars go no faster than 10 miles per hour and mandated that all cars have enormous foam-padded bumpers on their front, back, and sides, almost zero people would die. Or perhaps cars should be banned altogether in favor of the much safer alternative of driving, a column to this effect would end similarly: “Sure, it would take us longer to get from here to there. But thousands of deaths a year are too great a cost for so adolescent a thrill as driving.”