As told in my comment on the League’s What is Your Sputnik Moment thread, I don’t like to drive faster than the posted speed limit.
I don’t like driving faster than the posted speed limit because we live on a residential street, posted limit 30 mph — where people regularly drive 40mph or faster.
One day, and predictably, one of our cats was struck and killed.
Undoubtably, the driver who killed her was driving faster than the posted limit, and in my grief I resolved that I would like to do everything I could to make sure that I was never involved in a motor vehicle fatality, and that if I obeyed the posted limits (which admittedly feels quite slow in most situations) I would almost for sure be able to react in time to avoid a cat, or dog, or deer, or a child.
Following through has proved to be a nearly daily excerise in mindfulness.
There is of course my own inattentiveness. Some of you are probably too young to remember what cars were like before the advent of aerodynamic shapes and “aircraft-style” doors, but cars used to provide a lot more feedback about speed. I remember driving a Ford Taurus on I-5 in 1985 and even though I had been warned that I would soon be traveling faster than I realized, it wasn’t long before I was barreling along at 75-80 mph.
Aside from my own inattentiveness, there is also the undeniable pressure of a line of cars on one’s bumper.
I like to think of myself as more inured to social pressure than the average person, but even still, looking in the rear-view mirror and seeing cars stacked up is sometimes more than I can bear. I will sometimes exceed the speed limit because it’s easier, less stressful and/or safer than “standing-on” or pulling over to the shoulder and letting cars pass. When I have to drive in the LIE, I drive in the HOV lane and keep 5 seconds between me and the car in front of me, regardless of the speed.
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Cars, of course, are much safer now than they were in 1985, and they probably handle better too. Probably under 99% of situation, 75mph in a 2012 model year auto is safer than 55mph in a 1972 Ford F150.
But some things don’t change.
Aircraft doors and anti-lock brakes or no, force still equals mass times velocity squared. A recent study of pedestrian/auto interactions in NYC suggested that pedestrians struck by autos going 30mph have an 80% chance of surviving. Pedestrians struck by autos going 40mph have a 70% chance of dying.
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Last Spring, when I applied for a liabitly insurance policy for our Sailing Montauk operation, I had to sign a document releasing my DMV records to the insurance company. Well I didn’t have to, but they didn’t have to write me an insurance policy either. Our transaction was consensual. I could have asked them to quote me a price absent my driving record, and if they wouldn’t write a policy under those terms, I’m sure my agent could have found a carrier who would. Like lending, there’s always someone willing to take the action.
Again, when I applied for builder’s risk insurance for the Mon Tiki Eco Catamaran Project, I was asked to sign a release for my DMV records. Apparently insurance companies have found one’s driving habits to be a useful proxy.
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If I understand James Poulos‘ Pink Police State contention, it’s that an increasingly decadent populous will (eagerly) trade important freedoms for petty indulgences. In his writing on the subject James cites the state’s tolerance of increasingly licentious behavior regarding sex and drugs combined with the State’s ever tightening grip on every other aspect of our lives.
The libertarianish part of me has some sympathy to this argument. Watching TV week or two ago, my youngest daughter cried out “He just said a bad word!” when someone uttered the word “gun”. When I asked her where she learned “gun” was a bad word, she said “school”.
I bristled; and I’ve had similar experiences with regard to food, energy consumption, and other “politically correct” topics.
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I remember not too long after I met my wife, and we were on the New York State Throughway on a trip up to the Gunks for some climbing and camping. She told me that a former boyfriend of hers had suggested that the time-stamp on the toll-tickets would be a useful tool for detecting speeders. This was right around the time that Easy-Pass was being introduced, and it didn’t take a paranoid IT genius to connect the dots.
But we Americans are touchy when it comes to our cars. As easy as it would be to create an Easy-Pass system of speed enforcement, I don’t think it’s something that’s going to happen anytime soon.
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I have written previously that I think “the Conservative Cultural Project fails, not because it goes too far, but because it doesn’t go far enough“. People are notoriously dishonest about their drinking, drugging, and sexual habits, even with themselves. It strikes me a shaky ground upon which to build a cultural counter-revolution, let alone a renaissance.
Also, Progressive Insurance doesn’t care how fast you drive, so long as the police don’t catch you.
Enjoyed the post.
I never really thought that EZPass would be used for tickets. Namely, because they are optional and because they *want* you to use them.The solution for me, simply not using one and stopping at the toll booth or foregoing toll roads altogether (where possible) would deprive them of money (they didn’t institute EZPass for *my* benefit, surely there is a calculation that says “more money this way”).
Now, you know how some people are talking about how we need a mileage tax in addition to fuel taxes? How we’d have to put a GPS in every car to measure these things? That would be prime pluckins for auto tickets.
I wouldn’t actually consider that the end of the world. Cars would start becoming equipped with devices that would help people not speed. People would become more insistent on speed limits being raised in places where they are absurdly low.Report
To my mind, the recent history of speed limits in Montana is instructive.Report
It’s kind of curious to me that Montana does not have 85mph (or at least 80mph) limits, since it’s permissible. Lots of Montana (and some of Idaho and Wyoming) is every bit as densely population at West Texas.
For those that drive in the wide-open west, beware of Silver Bow County, Montana (Butte), Bannock County, Idaho (Pocatello), and Albany County, Wyoming (Laramie).Report
Though the post in great, this:
Also, Progressive Insurance doesn’t care how fast you drive, so long as the police don’t catch you.
is exactly the opposite of the truth.Report
From approximately 48 seconds into the embedded video:
“Other stuff, like where you drive, or how fast you drive, it [Snapshot] just doesn’t care about that.”Report
Speaking of which, I love that Progressive has the patent on that little doohickey. One more fear (that all auto insurance companies will basically require that you install one if you want to be insured) negated.
Three cheers for patent law!Report
What does the patent cover, exactly?
This device is hardly the first vehicle telematic device on the market; trucking and delivery companies have been using them for years.Report
Huh. So it does. I stand corrected.Report
While I sit smugly.
(Like Will observed about Easy-Pass, they want you to use this thing.)Report
Yes, I suspect so. (In my underwriter heart of hearts, though, still suspect that even if they’re agreeing to to peek, they care very, very much about how fast you go.)Report
My best guess would be that they don’t care how fast you go until you get in an accident.Report
Well, that was a commercial. It is very possible, if not likely, that the fine print says otherwise.Report
One suspects that they do care, but can’t do anything about that care. If they monitored speed, a lot fewer people would use the device. Even people like me who do not intentionally speed.Report
If they didn’t have GPS tracking that’s correlated to roads (and speed-limit data) then there’s no way they’d know whether you were speeding or not.
State Farm already had one of these, anyway, as an iPhone app.Report
One day, and predictably, one of our cats was struck and killed.
As bad as it is to lose any pet, we’ve lost all of ours to old age and so had time to ease into the idea of not having him/her around anymore. It must be horrible to have it be completely unexpected on top of everything else.Report
About a year ago I was east-bound on the Montauk highway, just west of the village of East Hampton. It’s a mixed residential and commercial area. The posted speed limit is 30 mph. It was late in the afternoon, astronomical twilight by my reckoning. Traffic was heavy in both directions. I was doing about 35 or 40 to keep up.
In the fading light I saw a shape bolt from the side of the road, and as it crossed into my headlights I could see it was a cat.
In an instant I fought down the urge to swerve. For a child, yes; for a cat, no. In that same instant I checked my rear view mirror. The closeness of the vehicle behind me ruled out slamming on the brakes.
Then my body stiffened, every muscle locked to keep my car going straight, and I ran over the cat. I felt the front wheel go up, then the back wheel.
My first thought was that I should pull over, go back and get the body off the road. Then I thought about the fading light, and much and how fast the traffic was going, and I drove home. I didn’t tell my wife for about a week.
This Winter that stretch of road is a part of my regular commute. What I notice is that they have a bunch of those radar equipped “this is how fast you’re going” things. It used to be hard to keep up on that stretch of road going 40; cars doing 50 weren’t uncommon. This Winter 35 is usually enough.Report
Toll time stamps are used presently in ticketing commercial vehicles. If you have ever been on a bus tour and thought you were cruising pretty good but then can’t figure out the 40 minute stop at the wayside, you’ve now figured it out.Report
Speaking of kitties, I have just taken in a New Beast. Meet ButterscotchReport
That’s too dang cute. Congrats.
Looks like Lucy will be leaving us soon.Report
That totally sucks.Report
Congrats!Report
“Dad, quit bugging me. I’m doing stuff.”Report
I keep wondering how we might improve driving safety without throwing the problem into the technological realm. I see schemes such as magnetic slugs in the highway which could help steering, oh there are a hundred of them out there, each more ridiculous than the one before it.
There’s an old joke in robotics about the distant future, when aircraft will be fully automated. But people won’t fly in a fully automatic aircraft: they’ll want to see a pilot in there. And he’ll be there at the doorway, some avuncular figure, greeting the passengers. He’ll close the door to the cockpit but for the most part, he has nothing to do. He’s trained to handle the plane in override conditions but otherwise it’s corporate policy for him to keep his hands in his lap.
Alongside these advances in automation, we’ll also see border collies in the cockpit. If the pilot ever goes to sleep, they’ve been trained to bite him in the nuts.Report
I keep wondering how we might improve driving safety without throwing the problem into the technological realm.
Make a driving test hard. Get rid of the written test, and make people actually learn how to pilot the vehicle in scenarios that are likely to cause accidents, instead of seeing if they can follow (largely arbitrary) rules of the road.
You’d have at most half as many drivers as you have now, which will lower congestion and the sorts of accidents that are caused by it. Public transportation use would pick up nicely.
Everybody wins except people who refuse to actually learn how to effin’ drive.Report
“Poor and Minorities Hardest Hit”
(but not women this time)Report
Actually, I’d guess that the poor and minorities would do just as well as anybody else.
The elderly would have trouble, as a class. People with disabilities would likely have more problems.
Both of those classes of people already have independence problems, so there’s that counterargument. But if your goal is to make driving actually safer, getting rid of the 15-20% of the drivers on the road that seriously don’t know how to effin’ drive…Report
His point is not that they won’t do well. His point is that if any of them fail it will be seen as Obvious Evidence Of Systematic Institutionalized Racism.Report
But that’s way too much like the (eminently more sensible) way most European countries work, so it’ll never happen here.
Next you’ll be advocating people have to demonstrate a passing familiarity with firearms safety before owning a gun…Report
I’ve heard a variation of that joke! In the future airplane crews will consist of a charismatic pilot and a doberman. The pilot is there to greet passengers and sit in the cockpit, the doberman is there to bite the pilot if he tries to touch the controls.Report
Illusory superiorityReport
Dunning–Kruger effectReport
“[T]he Constitution does not prevent the majority from banding together, nor does it attaint success in the effort.”Report
I always laugh when I see people talking about how their run tracker monitors step count, tracks position via GPS, wirelessly uploads the whole thing through a dedicated cell phone connection.
If the government did something like that everyone would shit themselves, and here’s these guys paying to have it done to them.Report
It’s not *THAT* crazy.
I mean, there are people out there who pay for massages who would rankle at the thought of you walking up to them, throwing them on a table, and then touching their back for 10 minutes.
And rightly so.Report
Except that the conversation in re the government is that nobody would ever find it enjoyable and nobody should. It’s not presented as “yeah this might be a good idea if it were voluntary”, it’s presented as “OMG ORWELLIAN NIGHTMARE!!”Report