Faster Drivers in Today's Society
Speed limits are meant to put a limit on how fast drivers can go. But for whatever reason, most of society sees speed limits as a minimum. According to an article in USA Today, speeding has not only increased, but speeders are now being clocked at speeds far beyond the speed limit. This may not be news to any body that has driven a car lately, but what the statistics in the article show is a significant increase in the speed of traffic and a higher leniency on the part of officers; who now ticket fewer people going between 10 and 15 mph over the speed limit. Everyone has a different reason for speeding, but do they truly consider the possible consequences of their actions? If they are caught, not only do they have to pay the ticket, but they get points on their drivers license and their auto insurance price can increase. But for whatever reason, people think that the benefits brought by speeding are greater than the possible cost of being caught. Do you think this is a problem, and if it is, do you think it is correctable? How high do you think the price of a speeding ticket would have to be before people really slowed down on the road? How can society create an incentive for police to ticket more?
1 comment:
Finland utilizes an income-based system to determine the fines that speeders pay. The Chairman of Nokia, for instance, recently paid a fine of $217,000 for speeding through the streets of Helsinki.
On a related note, do you think traffic fatalities are more influenced by the average speed of the traffic flow or by the variability of the traffic flow? Often times I've seen problems develop on the highway because you have a mix of slow drivers that interfere with the faster drivers (of course, the slow drivers would say the same thing about the faster drivers).
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