I’m a bit concerned about the long-term effects of this plan (especially after laws formally change to disregard the old ‘speed limit’ signs entirely but strictly enforce the ‘max’ ones).
I believe that many current speed limits are much slower than the correct speed to drive at, and I don’t think this is particularly controversial. (I have driven on a perfectly straight, almost-empty six-lane freeway with a posted speed limit of 55).
This did not happen by random chance! Aliens did not land and subtract 10 from every speed limit sign! Existing pressures—revenue pressures from tickets? political pressure from people who don’t like cars driving fast by their house? - lead to speed limits being set too low.
If you switch to this new approach, in the absence of some reason to expect that not to happen again, I’d imagine that once your ‘max’ signs are the limit they will also be set too low.
I think US speed limits are so low in part because of an effort to limit demand for oil in 1973; see Wikipedia.
Even setting aside that ignominious origin, I expect that optimal speeds have significantly increased as technology has improved and so speed limits are probably too low because of inertia.
This assumes speed limits were correctly calibrated at some point. I think the actual cost of road deaths (which are arguably the top single cause of QALY loss even at current historically low rates) is high enough that I suspect it was originally set way too high and is still unreasonably high given the costs.
I’m a bit concerned about the long-term effects of this plan (especially after laws formally change to disregard the old ‘speed limit’ signs entirely but strictly enforce the ‘max’ ones).
I believe that many current speed limits are much slower than the correct speed to drive at, and I don’t think this is particularly controversial. (I have driven on a perfectly straight, almost-empty six-lane freeway with a posted speed limit of 55).
This did not happen by random chance! Aliens did not land and subtract 10 from every speed limit sign! Existing pressures—revenue pressures from tickets? political pressure from people who don’t like cars driving fast by their house? - lead to speed limits being set too low.
If you switch to this new approach, in the absence of some reason to expect that not to happen again, I’d imagine that once your ‘max’ signs are the limit they will also be set too low.
I think US speed limits are so low in part because of an effort to limit demand for oil in 1973; see Wikipedia.
Even setting aside that ignominious origin, I expect that optimal speeds have significantly increased as technology has improved and so speed limits are probably too low because of inertia.
This assumes speed limits were correctly calibrated at some point. I think the actual cost of road deaths (which are arguably the top single cause of QALY loss even at current historically low rates) is high enough that I suspect it was originally set way too high and is still unreasonably high given the costs.