Comment on Followup on the vehicle "kill switch" mandated by the Infrastructure Bill
HelixDab2@lemm.ee 5 months agoNo situation requires you to put your life above others.
Demonstrably false in the case of emergency vehicles. Going faster is not necessarily a risk; the autobahn has generally lower rates of accidents than the US interstates, despite people routinely driving >140mph.
Speed limits have always been a compromise between utility and lethality. You could nearly eliminate all accidents by having speed limits be no more than 20mph in any place. But it’s recognized that this isn’t practical, so we set speed limits at 25mph in school zones, 35 in residential/city roads, 45 on rural roads, 55 on unlimited access highways, and 65/70 on most interstates. Higher utility–an emergency–necessitates taking more risk.
If someone will die if you don’t break the speed limit, versus someone might die if you do, you’re probably going to break the speed limit.
Mojojojo1993@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Emergency vehicles cause quite a lot of fatalities. They are also taught how to drive at speed and motorway driving should have less crashes. It’s intersection and corners that causes issues.
Not American so no. Not how all places operate.
People break the limit all the time. Speed isn’t really the problem with drivers. It’s attention. Speed is a factor as you can’t react as fast but phones and other issues.
Sources. My dad was a firefighter for 30 years.