Speed limits and marginal safety.

in #speedlast year

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IDGAF who owns what roads, speed limits save lives and are a great source of increasing safety in our road systems, whether private or public.

The evidence clearly shows that for every reduction in 1mph, there’s about a 6% decrease in road fatalities (up to a certain speed obviously)

Sao Paolo dropped their interstate speed limits from 90 to 70 in 2015 and accidents and fatalities both dropped by about 20%.

Whether it’s a public road or a private road, the insurance companies, community, and rational individuals like myself all realize that speed limits save lives and reduce costs overall.

Does this mean that the state should have a monopoly on road systems? Nope, but it does show that speed limits on govt roads often go way above and beyond purely state tyranny. It comes down to basic safety. Even in an ancap society insurance companies would demand safety measures like speed limits and turn signals to reduce deaths and costs.

Fatality reduction works to a certain speed, and it's not something ludicrously slow like 3mph.

For instance, you see a 6% decrease in accidents and fatalities for each 1mph from 70 down to 65mph, but it's not the same reduction as from 65 down to 60.

Obviously the break even analysis shows that the first speed reduction may be warranted, but that the margins from 65 to 60 aren't even comparable.