It's not clear whether this applies to urban speeding or highway speeding.
Urban speeding does increase accidents because of the large number of unexpected events in an urban setting (pedestrians, cars driving into intersections, etc).
But the main issue I have with speed limit studies is that seem to make this underlying assumption that everyone follows them. If the core group of accident-causing people drive fast/drunk/etc regardless of the rules, then lowering limits/changing rules must have limited effect.
Underlying all this is the government love of speeding taxes. The only problem is, the marginal return on speeding tax decreases as the tax take goes up. Because people decide to obey the limit, the tax take starts to go down. Thus the conundrum for governments - do they set the fines at a level where people are annoyed but don't mind, or do they increase the fines to the point where revenue steeply drops.
Two very good points. I speed like crazy on an open highway when on my motorcycle, but I accelerate very slow and stick to the speed limit when in the city. Too many bicyclists and pedestrians, not to mention intersections. Speeding on an empty and straight freeway has considerably less consequence.
I definitely agree that the worst 20% of drivers create 80% of accidents (made up numbers), which makes most any speed limit conversation null and void.
Urban speeding does increase accidents because of the large number of unexpected events in an urban setting (pedestrians, cars driving into intersections, etc).
But the main issue I have with speed limit studies is that seem to make this underlying assumption that everyone follows them. If the core group of accident-causing people drive fast/drunk/etc regardless of the rules, then lowering limits/changing rules must have limited effect.
Underlying all this is the government love of speeding taxes. The only problem is, the marginal return on speeding tax decreases as the tax take goes up. Because people decide to obey the limit, the tax take starts to go down. Thus the conundrum for governments - do they set the fines at a level where people are annoyed but don't mind, or do they increase the fines to the point where revenue steeply drops.