CyberPitz
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RepiV said:Have you ever seen an Autobahn? They're very narrow, and there are only two lanes. So the speed differential between lanes is often approaching 100mph. Yet somehow they manage to be twice as safe as you guys on your wide slow highways. Because it's not about the speed
Sometimes the unpredictable happens! I have analyzed drivers for nearly 20 years on the road and every once in a while, they do something that does not make sense! Sometimes the only option is to drive off the road - if you are lucky enough to have that option!RepiV said:Things don't "just happen". Things only happen unexpectedly if you didn't observe what was happening well enough. A large part of it is preparing yourself against the "unexpected".
VirusType2 said:In my opinion, the sacrifice of spending slightly more time to travel is worth the significantly increased fuel economy. For the precious resources saved, the decreased pollution, and for the safety.
259 Cars, that must be a world record! Looking forward to the Youtube footage!RepiV said:there is no safety benefit whatsoever.
RepiV said:always be able to stop in the distance you can see to be clear.
There are no such narrow blind turns on any freeway I'm aware of.I completely agree with you on this part at least! Unfortunately, this is not always safe or legal! For example: in a blind turn, you cannot simply go 10 miles per hour (safe speed for your line of sight) or you may receive a ticket or be rear ended!
http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=155577http://www.halflife2.net/forums/showthread.php?t=155577
Driving slower due to adverse conditions does not necessarily make you safer because other people will be speeding, making rear-end collisions a high risk!You're an idiot for driving at 65mph in thick fog.
I guess you posted this after I had already responded.you should be driving no faster than 15 miles an hour. Even that may be too fast. And your rear end collision argument is pointless, because driving at your speeds increase your risk of you hitting someone or something, as clearly demonstrated by you hitting something. Its better to take the smaller risk of being rear ended than to put yourself at a higher risk of running head on into something while trying to avoid being rear ended.
If that's true then lucky it was on a 75 mph section. If it was one where they do 140+ miles per hour, they might have 259 dead people/families....on a section of the Autobahn that was limited to 75mph.
If that's true then lucky it was on a 75 mph section. If it was one where they do 140+ miles per hour, they might have 259 dead people/families.
Yes, obviously it's not an open and shut case where everyone dies, but I suppose I used survival rate to draw my conclusion.What on earth makes you draw that conclusion?
Rear impacts are one of the least fatal types of crashes. However, impact speed of these collisions in the US are generally significantly less than what we might see on the autobahn. Importantly, in a pile-up, the vehicle receiving a rear impact is stopped, which significantly increases impact energy.Rear impacts (1,824,000 crashes, 29.6% of all US crashes, 5.4 % of US fatal crashes)
If you count the survival rate in car crashes above 50 mph it's pretty low too, and goes exponentially down with increase in speed since the impact is going to pack that much more energy.
The same thing goes for Germany's autobahn that is one of the safest highways in the world. There are less accidents, but when they do happen they are usually fatal.
Speed choice
The U.S. Department of transportation's Federal Highway Administration has a webpage documenting a review of speed research.[14] The summary states:
* That the evidence shows that the risk of having a crash is increased both for vehicles traveling slower than the average speed, and for those traveling above the average speed. [Krynn]
* That the risk of being injured increases exponentially with speeds much faster than the median speed.[RepiV]
* That the severity of a crash depends on the vehicle speed change at impact.[RepiV]
* That most crashes related to speed involve speed too fast for the conditions.
This suggests that lowering the speed limit requires tougher enforcement, otherwise, drivers will speed anyway, causing a dangerous situation due to a greater speed differential; exactly why having no speed limit is dangerous.* That there is limited evidence that suggests that lower speed limits result in lower speeds on a system wide basis.
The Road and Traffic Authority (RTA) of the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) asserts speeding (travelling too fast for the prevailing conditions or above the posted speed limit[15]) is a factor in about 40 percent of road deaths.
The RTA also say speeding increases the risk of a crash and its severity.
On another webpage, the RTA qualify their claims by referring to one specific piece of research from 1997, and stating "research has shown that the risk of a crash causing death or injury increases rapidly, even with small increases above an appropriately set speed limit.
Finally, something to think about for RepiV:The total worldwide historical number of car accident fatalities is difficult to estimate. Figures around 17 million have been suggested[37] in 1991, and would have to be significantly higher now, making car driving one of the deadliest undertakings in the history of mankind.
Compared with a passenger car occupant, a motorcycle rider is 26 times more likely to die in a crash, based on vehicle miles traveled.
Source: FARS 1997-2001 (Final), 2002 (ARF) FHWA
Yes, obviously it's not an open and shut case where everyone dies, but I suppose I used survival rate to draw my conclusion.
There are many factors that can determine survival in an automobile accident. However, let me say that even though someone crashes and lives does not mean they will just get better like nothing happened. A significant number of cases result in life-long rehabilitation or permanent damage.
More information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_rate
This suggests that lowering the speed limit requires tougher enforcement, otherwise, drivers will speed anyway, causing a dangerous situation due to a greater speed differential; exactly why having no speed limit is dangerous.
Finally, something to think about for RepiV:
Anyone who doesn't know that increased speed = increased risk of death has to be dense...
Increased speed, increased danger, decreased reaction time. How does a pileup start? First one accident, then 258 other cars crash because of the original accident.
Why did this happen in the autobahn? Simple... decreased reaction time. Driving on a highway, if someone slams on their brakes due to an accident you're traveling slower, therefore your stopping distance is shorter and your reaction time is better. If you're going 100+ MPH and there's an accident a mile in front of you, you probably will have less luck avoiding it than if you were going slower.
But then again, some people refute science and say evolution never happened, so I don't expect certain people to understand.
There's actually a pretty crazy store to this last one. We were down Between Wichita and Topeka, and the rain had gotten SO bad, that it was coming down in torrents, with the wind blowing sideways across the road so hard, that I had to slow the vehicle down to 5 miles per hour to avoid all the cars around me. The rain was so bad, I couldn't see more than 2 feet in front of me... and holy hell, it was intense. My heart was racing a mile a minute, cause it got so bad, so unbelievably fast. Happened a second time too. THe picture is of the aftermath of it, of the clouds which I thought were beautiful. Taken from the inside of the vehicle though, not by me... because I was the one driving.
Wow, it's amazing nobody was killed.
And so you fit right in.God there are some imbeciles on this thread. The pile-up has little to do with speed, and everything to do with being able to safely stop in the distance you can see to be clear ahead.
And so you fit right in.
The faster you are going, the more distance you need exponentially. Even more so at high speeds, the three second rule is not going to be sufficient when the braking distance of cars varies wildly.
My car probably stops 5 times faster than an everyday 2 ton truck, and I constantly have someone getting way up my car's ass, even just under light braking.
+ or - roughly 7 miles per hour, I drive the speed limits at all times, which - in the US - are up to 70 miles per hour.RepiV said:and you also by your own admission drive ridiculously slowly.
Traveling at a lower speed [than whatever speed they were driving] could have made all the difference. In this graph you can see that braking distance increases with speed:RepiV said:The pile-up has little to do with speed
The weight differences of motor vehicles on a highway varies from about 450 pounds for a motorcycle to 80,000 lbs for an 18 Wheeler. (the maximum legal weight of a vehicle in the US) An 18 Wheeler can - and does - travel at up to 80 MPH or more.RepiV said:What on earth does this have to do with speed?
I'm not talking about being tailgated, try not to fool yourself. I clearly stated I'm talking about the '3 second rule' or the accepted safe following distance is not sufficient, particularly at greater speeds. The following vehicle could be adhering to the 3 second rule, yet if I were to stop suddenly from 75 miles per hour, the reaction time and increased stopping distance of the following vehicle could mean I would be hit anyway.RepiV said:[driving slowly] leave yourself vulnerable to being tailgated.
While driving in a bunching up of cars increases the risk of an accident, please see Smeed's Law. Here is the introduction:RepiV said:Finally, it's quite probable that the low speed caused the drivers to bunch up too closely together and/or lose concentration which subsequently caused the pile-up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smeed's_lawSmeed's Law, named after R. J. Smeed who first proposed the relationship in 1949, is an empirical rule relating traffic fatalities to traffic congestion as measured by the proxy of motor vehicle registrations and country population. Thus increasing traffic volume leads to a decrease in accidents per vehicle. It was posited after an analysis of figures from a number of countries over several decades.
Smeed published his research for 20 different countries[1], and by his death he had expanded this to 46 countries, all showing this result.
Indeed following distance is the main culprit, yet at lower speeds it could have been avoided. How in the world would you get 259 cars running into the back of each other at - say 35 MPH?RepiV said:Pile-ups aren't caused by speed, they're caused by inadequate following distance and inadequate attention.
http://german.about.com/library/listening/bllisten-sil-autobStudy2.htmGermans defend their right to barrel down the highway as fast as they please
...
massive pileups with multiple fatalities are one consequence.
http://news.smh.com.au/world/up-to-100-cars-involved-autobahn-pileup-20080325-21j7.htmlMarch 25, 2008
Between 50 and 100 vehicles were involved in a pile-up on an autobahn in western Austria
I don't think you can put a blame on simply having a speed limit. If there was no speed limit in this section, then speed differential would be greater, and damage and injury would have gone up almost in tandem with speed.RepiV said:If anything, the fact that this section of the autobahn had a speed limit is more likely to have contributed to the accident than it is to have lessened the consequences of it.
You dispute it and offer absolutely no proof to back your statements.RepiV said:Speed differentials are a good thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collisionDriving faster or slower than the flow of traffic [speed differential] — which may or may not accord with the posted speed limit — has robustly been demonstrated to increase the likelihood and severity of crashes, as shown by the Solomon Curve.[18]
The contributory factor report in the official British road casualty statistics show for 2006, that "exceeding speed limit" (known as "speeding" in the UK) was a contributory factor in 5% of all casualty crashes (14% of all fatal crashes), and that "travelling too fast for conditions" was a contributory factor in 11% of all casualty crashes (18% of all fatal crashes).
http://dailyheadlines.uark.edu/8286.htmgreater speed variation and a higher number of vehicles passing each other, thus compromising safety.
"We found that speed variation and vehicle interactions have a direct impact on highway safety," ... "Data from previous studies and simple logic say that a higher number of interactions among vehicles increases the chances that accidents will occur.
No, the Autobahn is no longer considered one of the safest. Following in the footsteps of the 60-100 car pile up last year, this 259 car pile-up is the worst accident in 240 year history of automobiles.RepiV said:If having no speed limit is dangerous, then why are the autobahns some of the safest motorways in the world and the US highways the most dangerous in the developed world? That very fact alone demonstrates that your rhetoric is illogical - and wrong.
More than 2 million more miles of road than England!England, on the other hand, has just 150,000 miles of road.
Obviously, he was talking about passenger cars, but I'll bite anyway. Flying in a plane, not only do they have air traffic controllers using radar and communication with the planes, 360 degrees of avoidance, and they don't have to stick to a particular line (like a road), but probably most importantly, it is no comparison due to the very low amount of traffic.RepiV said:Then you must be a complete retard if you ever dare to fly on a passenger jet. On a wing and a prayer you might just make it out alive.
RepiV said:Weather that sneaks up on you can be a bitch, one night back in December I was in the car with a couple of friends and we were on a dual-carraigeway (kinda like a highway, sort of) doing about 90 slowly overtaking another car on a slight bend. Then all of a sudden, out of absolutely NOWHERE, the car gets entirely enveloped in this cloud of fog that was completely impossible to see through. It couldn't be seen up ahead, it was just *there* all of a sudden. That was a real heart-in-mouth moment. Fortunately it passed after a couple of seconds or I think we probably would have gone into the barrier.
The worst though is when it occasionally collects in patches at certain points along the road (which follows the the river), because if you're not expecting it you can be on top of it very quickly and can be hard to spot it at night. Not good on a road full of sharp bends if you hit a patch of thick fog at speed...But I thought you believed that all accidents were avoidable! Well, I'd certainly rather hit a surprise patch of fog going 55 mph rather than - quote "100mph (which isn't even that fast)".
I'm probably not even going to waste my time responding to you in the future unless you provide sources or proof for your assumptions. I'm not just accept the word of a man who has never driven an automobile that contradicts over 250 years of automobile history data.
+ or - roughly 7 miles per hour, I drive the speed limits at all times, which - in the US - are up to 70 miles per hour.
I know you like to make things up, but I'm going to have to ask you to point out where I claimed I drive ridiculously slowly.
Traveling at a lower speed [than whatever speed they were driving] could have made all the difference.
The weight differences of motor vehicles on a highway varies from about 450 pounds for a motorcycle to 80,000 lbs for an 18 Wheeler. (the maximum legal weight of a vehicle in the US) An 18 Wheeler can - and does - travel at up to 80 MPH or more.
Not accounting for tire grip here for the sake of the example, weight difference is obviously significant in the stopping distance. Not only that, but the faster we are traveling, the greater the difference stopping distance between two different vehicles. At 15 miles per hour, the stopping distance of two vehicles isn't very significant. At 75 miles per hour, the difference is often substantial.
I'm not talking about being tailgated, try not to fool yourself. I clearly stated I'm talking about the '3 second rule' or the accepted safe following distance is not sufficient, particularly at greater speeds. The following vehicle could be adhering to the 3 second rule, yet if I were to stop suddenly from 75 miles per hour, the reaction time and stopping distance of the following vehicle could mean I would be hit anyway.
By the way, in the past, I've frequently been tailgated when I was going 80 in a 65, in which case I get out of the way as soon as it's clear.
While driving in a bunching up of cars can increase the risk of an accident, please see Smeed's Law. Here is the introduction:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smeed's_law
More cars on the road, more congestion = less accidents ... not necessarily bunched up, which obviously increases the risk of an accident, even in a 0-5 mph grid-lock.
Indeed following distance is the main culprit, yet at lower speeds it could have been avoided.
How in the world would you get 259 cars running into the back of each other at - say 35 MPH?
You don't get 259 cars running into the back of each other because they were going too slow. That doesn't even make sense.
Don't mistake what I'm saying. Accidents are often blamed on speed, speed is never the direct cause of any accident, it just makes all the other factors including reaction time, stopping distance and tire grip more on the verge of their limits, and impact damage and risk of property damage and bodily harm increases with speed. Therefore, lower speeds inherently do alleviate risks of these factors.
http://german.about.com/library/listening/bllisten-sil-autobStudy2.htm
This isn't the first time this has happened!
http://news.smh.com.au/world/up-to-100-cars-involved-autobahn-pileup-20080325-21j7.html
I don't think you can put a blame on simply having a speed limit. If there was no speed limit in this section, then speed differential would be greater, and damage and injury would have gone up almost in tandem with speed.
It's obvious the accident was due to driving too fast for conditions. If the speed limit was lower and strictly enforced, then perhaps this massive accident could have been avoided.
You dispute it and offer absolutely no proof to back your statements.
Speed differential is what makes 'same direction' accidents dangerous. If two cars are traveling at almost identical speed and direction, a collision would produce a slight tap. However if two cars are traveling parallel at significantly different speeds, the collision impact would be the difference of the two speeds. Car 1 @ 180 mph hits Car 2 @ 90 miles per hour = the impact would be like hitting a stopped vehicle at 90 mph.
More on speed differential:
http://dailyheadlines.uark.edu/8286.htm
To break it down. Varying speeds = increases passing instances which increases chances for an accident and increases impact speed!
This data is for a speed differential of only 10 miles per hour! Imagine passing an 80 MPH car at nearly 200 MPH.
No, the Autobahn is no longer considered one of the safest. Following in the footsteps of the 60-100 car pile up last year, this 259 car pile-up is the worst accident in 240 year history of automobiles.
Also, you're going to have to stop making up facts with no source. The US road system is not the most dangerous in the world. In fact, I've got a long list right here of the worlds most dangerous roads, and The US doesn't even make the list.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/travel/2007-08-13-roads-chart_N.htm
Here is another source with 40 of the most dangerous roads that, while has several US roads ranked starting at 19th, you'll see that England has several roads listed as well. Don't forget that The US has a much larger system of roads
than any other country.
According to the New York Times:
The present road situation in the United States may be briefly summed up as follows: In mileage we have the most tremendous system of roads which any country has ever possessed since the world began. According to a careful road census the length of all of our roads amounts to 2,155,000 miles.
More than 2 million more miles of road than England!
In the past decade, many changes have been made that are quickly making US roads safer. However, you don't just replace 2 million miles of roads, it takes time.
Obviously, he was talking about passenger cars, but I'll bite anyway. Flying in a plane, not only do they have air traffic controllers using radar and communication with the planes, 360 degrees of avoidance, and they don't have to stick to a particular line (like a road), but probably most importantly, it is no comparison due to the very low amount of traffic.
I'm probably not even going to waste my time responding to you in the future unless you provide sources or proof for your assumptions. I'm not just accept the word of a man who has never driven an automobile that contradicts over 250 years of automobile history data.
And so you fit right in.
The faster you are going, the more distance you need exponentially. Even more so at high speeds, the three second rule is not going to be sufficient when the braking distance of cars varies wildly.
My car probably stops 5 times faster than an everyday 2 ton truck, and I constantly have someone getting way up my car's ass, even just under light braking.