Volvo is introducing a 112mph speed limiter to all its new cars starting 2020 - Sensationalist Headlines

Right, but that's just you. You can't assume that everyone is going to be a perfect driver all the time that pays perfect attention and never makes any mistakes. And a lot of accidents aren't even because of you, they're because of someone else. What if someone just cuts into your lane while you're going too fast to safely maneuver or stop? The facts on this are clear. It is more difficult to drive at a higher speed, there are more crashes when driving at higher speeds, and crashes are more deadly when driving at higher speeds. "There's a direct correlation between higher speed limits and more serious crashes on these roads. That's the trade-off," Rader told Life's Little Mysteries. "Political leaders and traffic engineers have to decide on whether they want that trade off." In 1995, Congress passed the National Highway Designation Act, which removed all federal speed limit controls. Although the national speed limit had previously been set at 55 mph and 65 mph in some rural areas each state was now allowed to raise or lower its speed limits as state officials saw fit. A 2009 study published in the American Journal of Public Health analyzed the long-term effects of the 1995 act. From 1995 to 2005, there was a 3.2 percent increase in road fatalities attributable to higher speed limits on all road types, with the highest increase 9.1 percent occurring on rural interstates. Researchers estimated that 12,545 deaths were attributed to increases in speed limits across the U.S. during that time. https://www.livescience.com/33202-higher-speed-limits-cause-more-accidents.html "the relationship between speed and road accidents has been studied extensively and is very clear: the higher the speed, the greater the probability of a crash and the severity of the crashes." Using the most widely accepted statistical model, drawn up by a Norwegian academic using data from 100 studies in more than a dozen countries, an increase in average traffic speeds of just 3mph – a typical change for a 10mph rise – would be expected to cause more than 25 extra deaths a year on motorways and more than 100 serious injuries. Do speed limits reduce the number of road deaths? | News | thegu..

Nearly a lot of cars in the U.S have speed limiters and they're capped at around 150MPH. If the highest speed limit in the U.S is 85mph (God bless Texas), don't you think 112mph is enough? I feel like people in this thread are getting way to caught up in this puritan car argument when the reality is cars are heavily regulated and controlled mechanically. That is why you usually have to mod a car and do work on it yourself. Or you know, build a actual race car. Now put it into context with Volvo - they make cars designed to be sold at a lot and go straight to road. They're not making race cars for average people. A 112mph limiter isn't really out of the question nor is it really a hindrance as people make it out to be. The majority of regular drivers who are driving factory OEM cars do not have the driving skills to handle high speeds nor do they really keep up with their cars enough to ensure that the car can operate safely at that speed. A study shows that 31% of car related fatalities are speeding related. https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/230446/f4ee8f62-c073-401c-a2b7-fc4ec7832d50/image.png Now drinking and driving has about the same fatality rate/percentage, the reason it is so high because when people drink drive they also speed. Speed is a extremely important factor in accidents as even 10mph can decrease/increase odds of survival/death. just ten miles over the speed limit can make the difference between life and death. In a crash, the severity of injuries increases dramatically depending on the speed of a driver—a pedestrian hit at 30 mph has a 60 percent chance of survival, while someone hit at 40 mph only has a 40 percent chance of living. Some states have laws in which you can be arrested for reckless driving if you go over the speed limit by so many mph. So all I see is Volvo trying to make their own cars more safer. Speeding is dangerous for multitude of reasons, just because the driver has not had a wreck yet does not change that. Cars can handle the speed or at least reach high speeds, but the car equipt properly to deal with mechanical failure or an accident properly? I highly doubt it. Also it is kinda irresponsible to speed on public roads. I live in Texas and the highest I ever had to go was 80-90MPH due to the SA area. It was like a fucking death race and I shit you not I spent like 2 hours creeping along certain stretches because of car accidents. My little shit town can hardly handle driving at 60mph let alone. When it rains there are so many accidents. People truly overestimate people's ability to maintain their cars. Most people can accord the car payment, but they can cannot afford the maintenance. This speed limiter that volvo is doing isn't going to impede people's driving experience nor it is going to make the roads unsafe.

If you've got actual evidence and explanations as to how and why speed increases safety, then go ahead.

Exactly, people will always crash. We should always aim to build roads to be as safe as possible, but people will always crash due to lack of attention, skill or otherwise. And when they do, higher speeds make crashes much deadlier. 180 km/h is crazy fast.

I would contest that higher speeds always mean higher probability of crashes, considering that most crashes occur in urban areas rather than on freeways and motorways. https://www.motorists.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Do-crash-rates-really-increase-with-increases-in-average-speed-Lambert.pdf This study reviews research on crash rates by road type and speed limits, and finds no correlation between crash rates and average speeds. There's also many case studies in which it was found that raising speed limits did not result in an decrease in safety, in some cases the exact opposite. California: https://www.motorists.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/california-speed-limits.pdf Michigan: EVALUATION OF MICHIGAN 70 How raising the national rural highway speed limit from 55 to 65 decreased deaths: Did the Higher 65 MPH Speed Limit Actually Reduce Highway Deaths.. https://www.motorists.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/55-mph-study.pdf There's many reasons for this, and obviously the conditions of the road itself and the visibility have to be taken into consideration, but you cannot simply conclude that slower is safer, research doesn't support that. (and if you want more studies you can go look at the website of the organization responsible for repealing the 55MPH national speed limit in the USA at Speed Limits) In anything involving humans operating machines, you have to take human factors into consideration. This is done very effectively in the aviation industry, but less so in the land transport side of things. Slower speeds might sound good on paper, since they allow for more reaction time and a lower braking distance, as well as lesser consequences in the event of a crash, but it's not that simple, as proven by the fact that some road in Germany with sections with no speed limit at all is one of the safest in the world. Speed limits that are set lower than the appropriate speeds for the road promote tediousness, driver distraction and a decrease in situational awareness, while an appropriate speed promotes attention and alertness. This is similar to how aircraft pilots are sometimes told to control the aircraft manually in certain sections of the cruise even though the autopilot is technically capable of handling all of the cruise segments; to maintain a certain level of alertness and situational awareness in the event of an anomaly. The same applies to cars; sometimes allowing people to go a little faster results in increased safety.

Kinetic energy is proportional to speed squared. This means that doubling your speed quadruples the amount of energy that ends up being dissipated in a crash. This is why seemingly small differences in speed can often be the difference between life and death.

Read my previous post. Yes, crashing at a higher speed means worse consequences for a crash, but it doesn't say much about the actual probability of having a crash; that depends almost entirely on the road itself, and this is why most crashes happen in urban areas at low speeds, and also why it's possible to have a two-lane road with sections with no speed limit at all be one of the safest in the world.

All you've got to offer is counter-examples. This is weaker evidence than correlation, which is weaker still than a demonstration of causation. Bringing up crashes being more frequent in urban areas to support the idea that slower speed somehow means more crashes is nonsensical. No shit you've got more crashes in areas that require magnitudes more vigilance, with crossroads everywhere, lots of signalization, pedestrians crossing where they shouldn't, and dense traffic, than in areas that consist in straight lines with clear lanes and rules. That has nothing to do with the speed being lower, that's a retarded conclusion to make. 180km/h is not appropriate speed. The mechanism you describe has no bearing on the thread's topic.

You're purposely misinterpreting my post. The point isn't that lower speeds are more unsafe, that's stupid. The point is that for a given road, setting a speed limit which is artificially lower than what's appropriate is counterproductive to safety. I don't believe that you read my post and honestly assumed that what I was trying to say was that we should just drive faster everywhere.

The term "safety" doesn't make any sense if we don't agree on what it means. I think you're confusing crashes/car accidents in general with crashes leading to death or severe injuries, which is what this topic is about. Speed limiting isn't about reducing crashes, it's about reducing deaths.

I do still agree with this. Kind of baffling to make 180km/h the limit, when law forbids you from going upwards of 120, 130 if you count the radar safe spot, at least in Portugal.

The 180 limit isn't even new, many Japanese cars from as far back as the early 2000's are electronically speed limited to 180kph (If I recall the R34 GTR had is, although just about anyone who has ever bought a GT-R has removed the speed limiter) because Japanese laws decided that they don't want people driving any faster than that, despite the fact that there is no public road in Japan where you are technically allowed to go faster than 120. I do admit I am curious as to how that number came up in the first place.

But that's precisely it lol You ARE supposed to be paying ATTENTION, you ARE supposed to not make any mistakes, you ARE supposed to be near perfect, because a small mistake could end up even in a small fender bender, which IMO is something anyone should aim to avoid at all costs. To the point of having friends that will happily get hit from behind so that the other guy's insurance pays it all, and finding the practice out of this world. You got your car smashed, that's not good, no matter how you look at it. What I said above doesn't even demands that you are a perfect driver. It just demands common sense, the thing that car manufacturers have to program AI to compensate for the lack of the same in the driver. You SHOULD be prepared to know what the car is gonna do in pouring rain, in sandy surfaces, what the car itself can handle and how will it handle, and what to look out for in a road. My god, driving instructors will even give you shit for not having both hands on the wheel at 10 and 2, as if suddenly you're a mass murderer, when they should be teaching you how to handle a sudden stop in the highway with a wet road. No if, no but. You HAVE to be paying attention at whatever speed, and that's it. This isn't debatable. If you don't feel safe driving at high speeds, don't do it, simple.

I'm surprised 112 is the cutoff, I used to haul up the interstate to Vermont in my 1992 Volvo 240 going around 100 and she was taking it way better than I ever would've expected. As long as you're aware of your conditions and do it in the right circumstances (large, multi lane highways with no traffic) then as long as you're a decent driver I wouldn't call over 100mph "unreasonable". Sometimes you just wanna crack that bad girl open and see what she can do. No need to vilify people who go fast

I remember being surprised at seeing even a couple of "sad" ratings on the thread about the proposal for a speed limit in the currently unrestricted sections of the autobahn being rejected, because they thought it was a dangerous road. Some people are genuinely baffled that it's one of the safest motorways in Europe despite the fact that it has dozens of people driving it at over 120 mph every day.

I'm not even a car guy at all but I'd love to get a chance to ride on the Autobahn someday. I feel so much safer on highways even at high speeds than I do cruising around towns, and the whole autobahn just seems like a traffic design wet dream

Except for the sections with no speed limits, where the fatality rates are significantly higher.

Significantly higher than regular roadways or just the other parts of the autobahn?

That's what people should do, yes. But if you want to be pragmatic and want to actually reduce road deaths, you have to realise that not everyone will, and design your rules around that.

From what I can gather around 67% of the accidents that occurr on the Autobahn happened in sections where there was no posted speed limit (2017 data), but do take into account that over 50% of the Autobahn has no posted speed limit. Regardless, the autobahn fatality rate is consistently lower than most other countries' highway systems.

You're using a single example (and ignoring posts that talk about why the Autobahn is a bad example) to try to argue against studies that have proven conclusively that as speed goes up safety goes down. You're trying to compare a single highway in a single country that has vastly different standards and policies with the average American highway and say that because one single highway in Germany doesn't match that trend, fuck it.

That's definitely the case in Finland where we have winter and summer speeds on many roads (100 kmh vs 120 kmh on highways). Especially in southern finland most big roads are practically in summer condition for a large chunk of winter, so a lot of people drive 120 kmh anyway.

Actually, having reread @Freezorg 's posts, here's what he's actually saying. "Roads should have appropriate speed limits according to their relevant attributes." Something that nobody ever disagreed with because it is a borderline tautology. "We should not do stupid things" basically. Thanks for that.

Sure, if you ignore the fact that I posted American examples, too. I also don't see why America is relevant here, at any rate, since it's a thread about a Swedish car company that has most of its market in Europe.

If you think about from another perspective it is a speed issue though. Stopping distance and reaction distance are directly proportional to speed, the latter by a power of 2. Lower speeds means less risk of losing grip on slick roads. Lower speed means a greater chance of stopping before you rear-end someone, no matter the road condition or how much attention you're paying. It may be helpful to consider the argument to be "lower speed helps drivers avoid accidents" rather than "higher speeds cause accidents" despite being technically the same.

Right... But I didn't say that YOU shouldn't be doing these things, what I said was that it's foolish to assume that everyone is also doing it. If everyone was a perfect driver all the time there would be no accidents. There are 1.6 million crashes due to CELL PHONE use each year. How can you feel safe with driving at higher speeds if people are stupid enough to use their phones while driving?

And that's a fine opinion for you to have much like I have mine, the data doesn't conclusively back either side

Simple actually. Way too simple, and even dumb. the reason, is that because I drive at high speeds, nobody can crash into me This might sound like a joke, but it really isn't. You have no idea the panic I feel from doing a completely average and perfectly safe and limited speed in the middle of other cars doing the exact same, versus doing 200+ in a highway. The way people clump up together is incredibly scary. I've had 2 accidents happening right behind and in front of me, both in situations like that, both because of the same reason. Single lane traffic areas with people clumping together doing the exact same speed for loads of time, who get distracted with the same thing, suddenly smash into someone because of a sudden stop. The first time was a 4 car chain crash right behind me that almost included me, the other was someone right in front of me. Got lucky, swerved right off the lane to the right. That versus a place where I can carry a bit more speed and have nobody tailgating me? Nobody nor anything touches me, nor do I touch anyone. If someone wants to overtake someone, I have more than enough time to react and act accordingly aswell. Mind you, this obviously doesn't means I'm gonna do 100 in a 50 zone just because "i FeEl SaFeR" But I digress. If we go by your logic, these speed limitations go absolutely nowhere, because someone going below the speed limit might still crash into you, and they do so in such a way that you somehow get out of it in a very bad way, despite being a very tame crash. By that logic, you aren't safe around anyone, because danger lurks around every corner! But, as said, a speed limitation isn't gonna do that much of a difference. Especially one to 112 mph.

I don't know about 200km/h+, I only know of two stretches of road where I'd feel safe doing that speed even in ideal conditions with nobody in them (those being the south end of the A1 just before it becomes Segunda Circular, and the long straight at CREL) but there is a reason why you might feel safer going slightly faster than everyone else; that's because you actually are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_curve Naturally, this is somewhat paradoxical as if everyone was trying to go just a bit faster than everyone else, you'd just have a race track rather than a road, but statistically it is safer to go a bit faster than the traffic flow rather than precisely with it.

It does, though. As said above, even the studies Freezorg posted explicitly say that high speed crashes are much deadlier. Even if data was inconclusive (it isn't), the rational choice to make is the most reasonable one, the one that makes the most sense. In favour of maintaining reasonable, adequate speeds you have: Even a moderate increase in speed massively increases the violence of impact. Stopping distance increases quadratically with speed, which means that the higher the difference in speed between two cars, the higher the required safety distance between the two, making them essentially impossible to maintain with the slightest traffic. Less available reaction time should something requiring your attention happen. In favour of maintaining high speed : Lower speeds may lull drivers into a false sense of safety, decreasing their vigilance. ...and that's it. You'll notice that your attitude already makes that single point moot, since you already have a heightened confidence in your driving skills. So yeah, sorry to say, but your driving at the speeds you speak of does make you irresponsible.