Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

You're the one calling them faceless bureaucrats. Most speed limits are set in place by a mix of safety boards and urban planners, who do take these limits into account. Explain to me what makes them faceless and detached from the situation?


> Explain to me what makes them faceless and detached from the situation?

The fact that they’re not there.

The idea that the same speed is appropriate at 9am when kids are crossing the street going to school and 2am when there’s noone there and no cars parked on the side of the road, is insane beyond belief.

Speed limits are generally repressive and mostly just a tax collection scheme (though I strongly support most daytime city speed limits!)


What are you proposing? No speed limits outside cities in the day time? Or speed limits that change based on circumstances?

Don't we already have school zones which are 20mph when kids are around and higher otherwise?


as @katbyte already suggested, yes

No speed limits anywhere, or at least no enforcement.

As I said above, speed limits are repressive and a way for the government to bully its citizens and extract money from them. If the government actually wanted to solve the problem (making roads safer), they would simply design the roads differently. Speed bumps are also a very bad solution. Good solutions are "road islands" [1], "curvy roads" [2] or "metal rods" [3].

No limits on the highway either, except to mark more dangerous parts of the road (i.e. it's a suggestion not a limit).

By definition, if you don't crash, your speed was OK. So maybe there should be speeding-related fines only if you do crash.

[1] https://www.google.ch/maps/@46.9519887,8.6213984,3a,75y,174....

[2] https://www.google.ch/maps/@46.0665621,14.4965949,3a,75y,188...

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/14vls...


> By definition, if you don't crash, your speed was OK.

Definition of what? By this logic SBF shouldn't be jailed but rather given an award for making FTX users whole with modest interest.

The law must scale to all of society. There cannot be different rules based on whether you are lucky, "skilled", or not. Most people overestimate the their competence, as evidenced by fatalities involving motor vehicles. (A professional truck driver I knew died, killing his wife, and harming his nephew just driving back home.)


People tend to just ignore speed limits and drive at the speed they feel safe and comfortable.

If you want people to drive slower you just design the road to slow them down.


I'm sure emergency services would like that idea


That doesn’t make them “faceless bureaucrats”. It just means you don’t like speed limits because you know best


Because everyone drives 40mph on that main road that is marked 25mph, and there is no string of accidents or fatalities after decades of this.


> there is no string of accidents or fatalities after decades of this.

Ignoring reality

A lot of people killed on the road


Once you are doing 40 or 50 any accident you do have with a pedestrian is almost sure to be fatal. Lower speeds offer more of a chance.


Not driving cars at all offers the lowest. There has to be a degree of nuance when evaluating this.

Ironically in my town, we did have a "string" (3 people in 5 years) of pedestrian fatalities. All of which took place downtown where people actually do drive 25.


Well its not a sure rule of thumb that lower speeds are safer. People die falling bad from standing too. But it sure as hell makes it a guarantee you kill someone if you hit them at that speed. Especially some of these newer suvs where the front end is effectively a wall at pedestrian height.


All it takes is for a driverless car speeding to hit a pedestrian for the industry to be dead in its tracks.




Consider applying for YC's Winter 2027 batch! Applications are open till November 2.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: