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?
4 comments:
Speeding is an issue especially when you have heavy traffic going one speed and some idiot flying between cars. That is something that only increased tickets, trips to jail and suspended licenses can probably fix. However there are other speeding situations that could easily be fixed but are not. For example, in southeast Michigan it is common to drive 10-15mph over the speed limit on the highways outside of Detroit and not get pulled over. Michiganders seem to have some crazy love of driving fast. When the government (federal or state) starts to complain, the police then let the Detroit newscasters know that they are planning a "sting operation". They tell you what highways and at what times they will be pulling people over. Smart drivers then listen to these reports and drive the speed limit at these times. This situation could be easily fixed if the police regularly handed out tickets for speeding. It would create an initial backlash from the public, but they would settle down if it were made known how much revenue was being generated from the speeding tickets and used for educational purposes, fire departments and community development projects.
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).
I think that the reason many people speed is just that they don't think they will get caught. I know that, while I tend to go about 10 over on interstates, if I see a speed trap, I slow down for about 15 miles or so until it seems like it is safe again. Despite being cautious, there are times that I have flown by an officer with a radar gun going 10-15 miles over, but not been pulled over. If there were more officers on the road, and if they would ticket people who were speeding, even if it wasn't too much over the speed limit, I think there would be a dramatic decrease in the amount of speeders
I think that increasing the price of a speeding ticket alone is not enough to cause people to slow down. I think there have to be some fines that don’t involve the transaction of money, associated with the ticket. By this I mean, that maybe requiring the speeder to do community service or some other community development related activity. I think that people would respond more to having to take away time from their daily life; which maybe the reason they are speeding in the first place, to cut down time.
I think that a lot of the traffic fatalities are influenced by the variability of the traffic flow. I think that it comes down to people not knowing how to drive with or away from the traffic. People forget that the right lane is for slow, non-passing traffic and the left lane is for passing traffic, which is generally faster. The problems spring from people not knowing how to driven offensively and defensively at the same time. I think people need to learn to be more observant of their surroundings.
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