On the surface, driving seems like a competitive activity. Yes drivers cooperate to avoid accidents, but aside from that other cars mainly seem to be in your way – if they take a road space you wanted, it will take you longer to get where you wanted.
According to the WHO 2004 estimates, the total amount of DALYs due to road accidents is 985 per hundred thousand. This compares to a total of 1,384 for cancers for example.I am reading this blog for the first time in years, and I have noticed that Robin has talked about health economics. But maybe this suggests we should be concentrating more on road safety than certain health priorities? The speed vs safety elasticity is certainly an interesting question, but you have to also consider effects of commuting times. Such as behavioural effects - choosing where to live and work.
Some people may actually enjoy their commutes, their private time to listen to music, or chat socially with friends. Perhaps the time spent commuting time lets us process our thoughts for the day. Who knows, but there are lots of questions that can be asked.
Admittedly I'm also an aggressive driver with a turbocharged car and I agree with Robin's behavioural characterisation of aggressive drivers.
Aggressive driving works well inside cities (off the highway.) A study I saw about 5yrs ago found that, worldwide, cities with more aggressive drivers had much higher avg traffic flow.
Only trouble is, aggressive driving only works on highways outside the city grid when the road is relatively empty. When it's congested, traffic jams are almost entirely due to the common aggressive behaviors: tailgating and lane switching. The jam shown in http://www.trafficwaves.org video is caused by a fight between mergers versus blockers (or "cheaters" versus "vigilantes.") If those drivers opened up and tried to attain "zipper" merging, those lanes would flow fast like gear teeth.
If you want to drive fast in congested traffic, the best tactic is to avoid triggering traffic jams: temporarily suppress aggressive behavior. One website likened this to the "Gravel-pit Etiquette" used by professional drivers in large construction projects. In those situations the "cheaters" will end up getting fired. By trying to get a couple positions ahead, they completely foul up the overall flow, and the rapid moving "gear teeth" patterns all grind to a halt.
On congested highways it's *impossible* to drive faster than average. For example, during rush hour the cars are spaced 1-2 seconds apart, so in order to shave 5min off your commute, you'd have to pass 300-600 other drivers. WEIRD, EH? If you're not passing hundreds of other cars, then you're not driving faster. That's where dishonest human nature cuts in: we abandon our goal of actually getting to work earlier. Instead we try to pass a handful of other drivers, and if successful, we congratulate ourselves as if we're winners in a race. In a race, ten positions ahead is significant. You might come in first rather than being ten cars back. But on a commute, ten positions is completely insignificant: it's shaving 10 or 20sec off your commute.
The trick is to judge when aggressive driving works, and when it's counterproductive. On key to this is to notice "race mentality" in yourself. On open highways you can speed, and easily pass hundreds of other drivers in an hour of driving. But as soon as you notice yourself working to get one car ahead, or notice that "my position in line" has become important, that's when attempts to drive faster will only throw a wrench in the gears.
I suspect technology is just as much to blame. When police in the US were given RADAR, it gave them the ability to detect a specific, quantifiable violation that was nearly impossible to contest in court and highly resistant to spurious civil rights complaints, and they pretty much stopped enforcing other traffic laws. Drivers in the US haven't always been as rude or inattentive as they are today. I'd say the widespread adoption of dashcams might turn the tide, but low speed limits generate so much revenue, we'll need to outlaw government entities keeping fine income before that can happen.
You are absolutely right, lane discipline is very important, and Germans are much better drivers than Americans - but this is in part because of the speed limits here which teach bad habits, rude behavior (slow driving in the fast lane) and encourage inattention.
The poor quality of American drivers I have observed since moving here is thus the effect of speed limits, and at the same time it is used as justification of speed limits. Catch 22.
If you assign zero utility to the extra time spent driving unnaturally slowly due to a speed limit, and you assume the the average speeding driver speeds by about 10 miles, all you need to know is the number of miles driven (available from the NHTSA), and the fraction of mileage spent speeding (also should be available from the NHTSA), and then the average utility of time not spent driving ... and presto, you can easily calculate it. Are you game for the exercise?
"the fatality rate on the German autobahn is essentially the same as on US highways"
Germans also have extremely rigid enforcement of lane discipline laws. I'd love to see that here, but I'm not holding my breath. Unfortunately, without it, autobahn-like speeds are pretty dangerous.
"In 2000, the cost of speeding-related crashes was estimated..."
Take a look at the first sentence of the report you linked, My experience has been that police officers have an unreasonably broad idea of what constitutes "too fast for conditions". NHTSA reports citing that issue are propaganda used to justify speed traps and unreasonably low speed limits, not valid data. I suspect if you could break the data down you'd find that nearly all crashes that don't involve intersecting traffic are attributed to excessive speed, at least in part.
This is somewhat context dependent. Are we assuming the same distance will be covered either way? Are we assuming that while you walk or bike, everyone else will drive? Are we measuring your personal safety or the average person's safety as affected by your decision?
Many cities in europe are largely car-free. I imagine living in one of these and walking would be safer than living in a city with cars and walking, perhaps even driving. Using public transportation would be safer than driving.
Personally I have managed to move to a place where I can walk just a few blocks to work every day, which causes me to exercise regularly and is less stressful for a variety of reasons.
Interesting enough i was helping my 6yo with her homework which included a story which was exactly this lesson. (although not using cars of course). She's in a Chinese school, though.
One confounding factor when trying to figure out the effeciency of higher speed driving is that it requires more attention for a given level of risk. Some of the slower drivers might prefer to be able to devote more of their attention to conversation or a podcast, and therefore prefer to drive in a way that requires fewer decisions.
If the alternative is walking or biking, then the safest thing is to drive. If the alternative is staying home instead of going to a job that would give you a good income, then you are less prepared for health problems and the other vicissitudes of life, and once again you are probably safer driving.
This report estimates that about 30-32% of fatalities are speed related, so the speed-related fatality rate may be something more like 0.35 per 100 million miles.
According to the WHO 2004 estimates, the total amount of DALYs due to road accidents is 985 per hundred thousand. This compares to a total of 1,384 for cancers for example.I am reading this blog for the first time in years, and I have noticed that Robin has talked about health economics. But maybe this suggests we should be concentrating more on road safety than certain health priorities? The speed vs safety elasticity is certainly an interesting question, but you have to also consider effects of commuting times. Such as behavioural effects - choosing where to live and work.
Some people may actually enjoy their commutes, their private time to listen to music, or chat socially with friends. Perhaps the time spent commuting time lets us process our thoughts for the day. Who knows, but there are lots of questions that can be asked.
Admittedly I'm also an aggressive driver with a turbocharged car and I agree with Robin's behavioural characterisation of aggressive drivers.
Aggressive driving works well inside cities (off the highway.) A study I saw about 5yrs ago found that, worldwide, cities with more aggressive drivers had much higher avg traffic flow.
Only trouble is, aggressive driving only works on highways outside the city grid when the road is relatively empty. When it's congested, traffic jams are almost entirely due to the common aggressive behaviors: tailgating and lane switching. The jam shown in http://www.trafficwaves.org video is caused by a fight between mergers versus blockers (or "cheaters" versus "vigilantes.") If those drivers opened up and tried to attain "zipper" merging, those lanes would flow fast like gear teeth.
If you want to drive fast in congested traffic, the best tactic is to avoid triggering traffic jams: temporarily suppress aggressive behavior. One website likened this to the "Gravel-pit Etiquette" used by professional drivers in large construction projects. In those situations the "cheaters" will end up getting fired. By trying to get a couple positions ahead, they completely foul up the overall flow, and the rapid moving "gear teeth" patterns all grind to a halt.
On congested highways it's *impossible* to drive faster than average. For example, during rush hour the cars are spaced 1-2 seconds apart, so in order to shave 5min off your commute, you'd have to pass 300-600 other drivers. WEIRD, EH? If you're not passing hundreds of other cars, then you're not driving faster. That's where dishonest human nature cuts in: we abandon our goal of actually getting to work earlier. Instead we try to pass a handful of other drivers, and if successful, we congratulate ourselves as if we're winners in a race. In a race, ten positions ahead is significant. You might come in first rather than being ten cars back. But on a commute, ten positions is completely insignificant: it's shaving 10 or 20sec off your commute.
The trick is to judge when aggressive driving works, and when it's counterproductive. On key to this is to notice "race mentality" in yourself. On open highways you can speed, and easily pass hundreds of other drivers in an hour of driving. But as soon as you notice yourself working to get one car ahead, or notice that "my position in line" has become important, that's when attempts to drive faster will only throw a wrench in the gears.
I suspect technology is just as much to blame. When police in the US were given RADAR, it gave them the ability to detect a specific, quantifiable violation that was nearly impossible to contest in court and highly resistant to spurious civil rights complaints, and they pretty much stopped enforcing other traffic laws. Drivers in the US haven't always been as rude or inattentive as they are today. I'd say the widespread adoption of dashcams might turn the tide, but low speed limits generate so much revenue, we'll need to outlaw government entities keeping fine income before that can happen.
Hail Captain Awesome.
You are absolutely right, lane discipline is very important, and Germans are much better drivers than Americans - but this is in part because of the speed limits here which teach bad habits, rude behavior (slow driving in the fast lane) and encourage inattention.
The poor quality of American drivers I have observed since moving here is thus the effect of speed limits, and at the same time it is used as justification of speed limits. Catch 22.
If you assign zero utility to the extra time spent driving unnaturally slowly due to a speed limit, and you assume the the average speeding driver speeds by about 10 miles, all you need to know is the number of miles driven (available from the NHTSA), and the fraction of mileage spent speeding (also should be available from the NHTSA), and then the average utility of time not spent driving ... and presto, you can easily calculate it. Are you game for the exercise?
"the fatality rate on the German autobahn is essentially the same as on US highways"
Germans also have extremely rigid enforcement of lane discipline laws. I'd love to see that here, but I'm not holding my breath. Unfortunately, without it, autobahn-like speeds are pretty dangerous.
"In 2000, the cost of speeding-related crashes was estimated..."
Take a look at the first sentence of the report you linked, My experience has been that police officers have an unreasonably broad idea of what constitutes "too fast for conditions". NHTSA reports citing that issue are propaganda used to justify speed traps and unreasonably low speed limits, not valid data. I suspect if you could break the data down you'd find that nearly all crashes that don't involve intersecting traffic are attributed to excessive speed, at least in part.
I don't recommend "cheating" by cutting into lines.
lane ending/late merge: In this case, merging at the end's actually better for traffic. An exit only lane is very different though.
This is somewhat context dependent. Are we assuming the same distance will be covered either way? Are we assuming that while you walk or bike, everyone else will drive? Are we measuring your personal safety or the average person's safety as affected by your decision?
Many cities in europe are largely car-free. I imagine living in one of these and walking would be safer than living in a city with cars and walking, perhaps even driving. Using public transportation would be safer than driving.
Personally I have managed to move to a place where I can walk just a few blocks to work every day, which causes me to exercise regularly and is less stressful for a variety of reasons.
Agree.
Interesting enough i was helping my 6yo with her homework which included a story which was exactly this lesson. (although not using cars of course). She's in a Chinese school, though.
Trucks are driven by professionals who are the opposite of aggressive drivers.
Right -- they camp the passing lane rather than help traffic flow smoothly.
At least where i live.
One confounding factor when trying to figure out the effeciency of higher speed driving is that it requires more attention for a given level of risk. Some of the slower drivers might prefer to be able to devote more of their attention to conversation or a podcast, and therefore prefer to drive in a way that requires fewer decisions.
If the alternative is walking or biking, then the safest thing is to drive. If the alternative is staying home instead of going to a job that would give you a good income, then you are less prepared for health problems and the other vicissitudes of life, and once again you are probably safer driving.
An even better factoid comes from this report:
. In 2000, the cost of speeding-related crashes was estimated to be $40.4 billion — $76,865 per minute or $1,281 per second.
Now all we need is a good estimate of the benefits of speeding in 2000.
(well, plus a few other cost estimates: increased fuel consumption, for one)
This report estimates that about 30-32% of fatalities are speed related, so the speed-related fatality rate may be something more like 0.35 per 100 million miles.