Reply to I'm the person you cursed on the way to the school kiss and ride...let me explain

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[quote=Anonymous]I got curious about statistics on speeding and found this study on speeding. http://www.ibiblio.org/rdu/sl-irre0.html  I have no idea if this study is well sourced or not, but here are some claims I find interesting:

1. 70% of drivers exceed the speed limit.  [u]"Driver compliance with speed limits is poor. On average, 7 out of 10 motorists exceeded the posted speed in urban areas. Compliance ranged from 3 to 99 percent. Compliance tended to be worse on low-speed roads, better on roads with prima facie limits, or where the speed limit was based on an engineering study. Better does not mean good compliance; less than 10 percent on [sic] the sites had more than 50-percent obedience with the posted speed."[/u]

2. Speed limits are supposed to be based on prevailing traffic patterns, but often are set much lower than the prevailing traffic patterns warrant.  "[u]In a nationwide survey of current speed zoning practices, all states and most of the 44 localities reported using the 85th-percentile speed as the basic factor in setting speed limits. However, the posted speed is often set up to 10 mph lower than the prevailing speed based on a subjective consideration of other factors such as road-side development. The relative subjectivity of the speed zoning process points to the need to re-examine the criteria and procedures used in setting speed limits ....  On many streets and highways the speed limit is set 8 to 12 mph below the prevailing 85th-percentile speed ....  Many current speed limits coincide with 30-percentile speed, which is near the lower bound of safe travel speed. Speed limits should be set in the 70-to-90-percentile range or roughly 5 to 10 mph above the average speed to correctly reflect maximum safe speed.[/u]"  My best guess is that no city council member wants to be blamed as the one who approved a speed limit after someone gets hurt, so it's easiest to reduce the speed limit.

3. People who drive the very slowest are the most likely to get in accidents.  [i]"The accident involvement rates on streets and highways in urban areas was [u]highest for the slowest 5 percent of traffic[/u], lowest for traffic in the 30-to-95-percentile range and increased for the fastest 5 percent of traffic. The relative involvement rate is a measure of the chance of being involved in an accident, and is a ratio of the percent of accidents in a given speed range to the percent of travel in the same speed range."[/i]

There are lots of other studies, but I have not read them yet.
http://www.nhtsa.gov/search?q=speeding&x=0&y=0
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=speed+limit+driver&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C33&as_sdtp=[/quote]

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