I think that you are correct, policies that “everyone knows” aren’t “real” tend to reduce the degree to which everyone takes other policies seriously. But I think a lot of the “unreal” policies are in place for reasons of liability, risk management, or other communication tool. Also, seldom are any policy actually absolute or meant to be absolute. Just ask your lawyer, nearly everything in life is negotiable.
What’s more, speed limit policy is geared towards a complex set of goals, politically decided upon in a risk-managed, engineered way. Then voted on by a board of people who might somewhat understand the problem.
You know what is almost never discussed explicitly in politics. “What are our goals here?” and “What tradeoffs do we suspect these different decisions entail?” Making this explicit, and letting people vote on politicians based on all this lucidity would be great, but reading, say, Thomas Schelling, I think it is also utterly impossible.
So we bluff speed limits (and nearly everything), and negotiate about it later.
I think that you are correct, policies that “everyone knows” aren’t “real” tend to reduce the degree to which everyone takes other policies seriously. But I think a lot of the “unreal” policies are in place for reasons of liability, risk management, or other communication tool. Also, seldom are any policy actually absolute or meant to be absolute. Just ask your lawyer, nearly everything in life is negotiable.
What’s more, speed limit policy is geared towards a complex set of goals, politically decided upon in a risk-managed, engineered way. Then voted on by a board of people who might somewhat understand the problem.
You know what is almost never discussed explicitly in politics. “What are our goals here?” and “What tradeoffs do we suspect these different decisions entail?” Making this explicit, and letting people vote on politicians based on all this lucidity would be great, but reading, say, Thomas Schelling, I think it is also utterly impossible.
So we bluff speed limits (and nearly everything), and negotiate about it later.