Article: Man caught at 234km/h

[DrJohnZoidberg]

how is banning speeding and drunk driving going to stop people from speeding and driving drunk.. and how is it going to reduce accidents?.

Do you realise how ridiculous that sounds? Of fkn course it's going to reduce accidents!

Just because it is a law doesn't mean it is right and doesn't mean that people will obey it...

I can find more people who died as a result of religion - lets ban that.... and more people who died of cardiovascular diseases, lets ban red meat...

Your reasoning and logic falls extremely short and it leads me to believe you are still very young and haven't really sat down and thought about these things very thoroughly.

 

[Turbo_Aspiration]

Yes it is so selfish of my to speed when there are no cars on the road and when I am not going to put someone elses live in danger. O how selfish I am for considering that I might injure someone and taking some caution before I decide to speed at 2am in the morning when no one is on the roadas oppose to 4pm during rush hour.

Unless you manage to block off a road, I don't think you can conclude that nobody is on it. If we could always conclude this, there would be no accidents occuring at 2am with more than one vehicle involved.

 

[Nicodeamus]

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457505001247

Read the abstract there. One cannot deny the link between speed and fatal crashes as one cannot deny the link between fatty foods and heart disease (although the risk of being killed by somebody eating fatty foods seems less likely that being killed by somebody drinking and driving or speeding or both).

However, we cannot immediately correlate between speed LIMITS and the fatal crashes. I feel this could be indirectly studies using data regarding South African drivers' attitudes towards speed limits.. data I cannot find and I doubt exists in conclusive form.

When I wrote my transportation engineering exam last year, we were asked whether or not the speed limit reduction by the minister was going to make roads safer, at the end of the day you come to the conclusion that congestion will go up and the level of service (basically the parameter that they use to measure road acceptability and accident occurrence) will decrease. The exact same thing was found if you compare the amount of accidents on the Autobahn as opposed to the ordinary roads in Germany. It is simply not true that high speeds cause more accidents, yes there is a correlation, but there are other issues which people just tend to ignore. The main reason why SA's roads have such as high fatality rate is because we have to few roads and drivers make bad decisions.

Our roads were designed for drivers to make decisions that engineers though they were capable of doing, but in reality the road designs were done at lower capacities nowadays drivers have to make to many quick decisions at a certain time interval and the road geometry cannot allow for that. You will find that most accidents occur due to the road geometry and not the speeding criteria.

Sometimes minimum speed can also be a factor on causing accidents (for example if you drive to slow on a highway).

 

[Nicodeamus]

Do you realise how ridiculous that sounds? Of fkn course it's going to reduce accidents!

why?
How has the speed limit in any way STOPPED people from speeding? ...

Your reasoning and logic falls extremely short and it leads me to believe you are still very young and haven't really sat down and thought about these things very thoroughly.

please point out my faulty premise then...(so far your logic has been "lalalall you're wrong and I am right".

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

If our laws were based on the principles you want road rules to based on we would really live a great society.

You mustn't kill anybody except of course if it doesn't affect anybody, he has no family or friends so its fine. You mustn't steal, unless of course it won't affect those people as they are so rich and all they won't be bothered.

As you can see the line must be drawn somewhere definitively because everybody is going to have a different opinion on where that line should be drawn.

 

[Turbo_Aspiration]

When I wrote my transportation engineering exam last year, we were asked whether or not the speed limit reduction by the minister was going to make roads safer, at the end of the day you come to the conclusion that congestion will go up and the level of service (basically the parameter that they use to measure road acceptability and accident occurrence) will decrease. The exact same thing was found if you compare the amount of accidents on the Autobahn as opposed to the ordinary roads in Germany. It is simply not true that high speeds cause more accidents, yes there is a correlation, but there are other issues which people just tend to ignore. The main reason why SA's roads have such as high fatality rate is because we have to few roads and drivers make bad decisions.

Our roads were designed for drivers to make decisions that engineers though they were capable of doing, but in reality the road designs were done at lower capacities nowadays drivers have to make to many quick decisions at a certain time interval and the road geometry cannot allow for that. You will find that most accidents occur due to the road geometry and not the speeding criteria.

Sometimes minimum speed can also be a factor on causing accidents (for example if you drive to slow on a highway).

As speed increases, we can assume that the number of ["quick decisions" needing to be taken during a "certain time interval"] increases as well. One may say the part in brackets defines the speed of quick decisions which need to be made.

Also, the link to that survey posted does point to speed differential. Although they say the much slower speed data is inconclusive, I'm sure it will have a similar effect in accidents where more than 1 vehicle is involved.

 

[Nicodeamus]

If our laws were based on the principles you want road rules to based on we would really live a great society.

You mustn't kill anybody except of course if it doesn't affect anybody, he has no family or friends so its fine. You mustn't steal, unless of course it won't affect those people as they are so rich and all they won't be bothered.

As you can see the line must be drawn somewhere definitively because everybody is going to have a different opinion on where that line should be drawn.

sorry but what they hell are you saying?

 

[Nicodeamus]

As speed increases, we can assume that the number of ["quick decisions" needing to be taken during a "certain time interval"] increases as well. One may say the part in brackets defines the speed of quick decisions which need to be made.

Also, the link to that survey posted does point to speed differential. Although they say the much slower speed data is inconclusive, I'm sure it will have a similar effect in accidents where more than 1 vehicle is involved.

yes, but the despite that the geometry of the road and our heavy congested roads play a major role in the speed. What the study doesn't mention (I'm assuming that a reduction in speed level won't cause congestion on the first world roads that they looked into) is that slower speeds can also have an adherse effect if the congestion increases. It would be better to make a quick decision at 120km/h if cars aren't around you than to make a slow decision at 100km/h when you're getting boxed in by traffic.

There is what is called an optimal density on roads where the maximum free float speed of the highway can be determined, by decrease the speed you move away from this density. It is the same principle as water flowing through a pipe. At 90% full the water flows faster than at a 100% full pipe.

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

why?
How has the speed limit in any way STOPPED people from speeding? ...

Of course!

Look at this map and try and guess where road laws are more strongly enforced:

I am really starting think you are just trolling now. If you cannot understand this simple concept than it is pointless even discussing further.

 

[Nicodeamus]

Of course!

Look at this map and try and guess where road laws are more strongly enforced:

I am really starting think you are just trolling now. If you cannot understand this simple concept than it is pointless even discussing further.

ironically those countries also don't have road congestion problems.... (which is the major cause)! Those countries also have very liberal drugs laws and alcohol laws, ironically it is banned in some of the red countries (odd?).

You're using the correlation causation logical fallacy...

 

[Nicodeamus]

Of course!

Look at this map and try and guess where road laws are more strongly enforced:

.

ironically those countries also don't have road congestion problems.... (which is the major cause)! Those countries also have very liberal drugs laws and alcohol laws, ironically it is banned in some of the red countries (odd?).

You're using the correlation causation logical fallacy...

I am really starting think you are just trolling now. If you cannot understand this simple concept than it is pointless even discussing further

I think you thought you understood something about traffic analysis by doing a quick google search and by using traditional line of thinking until I suggested other reasons and explanations for your dogma.

 

[Turbo_Aspiration]

yes, but the despite that the geometry of the road and our heavy congested roads play a major role in the speed. What the study doesn't mention (I'm assuming that a reduction in speed level won't cause congestion on the first world roads that they looked into) is that slower speeds can also have an adherse effect if the congestion increases. It would be better to make a quick decision at 120km/h if cars aren't around you than to make a slow decision at 100km/h when you're getting boxed in by traffic.

There is what is called an optimal density on roads where the maximum free float speed of the highway can be determined, by decrease the speed you move away from this density. It is the same principle as water flowing through a pipe. At 90% full the water flows faster than at a 100% full pipe.

We may also be moving toward this optimal density you mention if we take the view point that the current speed it too high.

Taking your points into consideration, I still feel that increasing the speed forces more decisions to be made. Considering the rate of bad decision making on our roads, I have to conclude that speeding increases accidents - the result of these bad decisions.

Perhaps we have to agree to disagree.

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

ironically those countries also don't have road congestion problems.... (which is the major cause)! Those countries also have very liberal drugs laws and alcohol laws, ironically it is banned in some of the red countries (odd?).

You're using the correlation causation logical fallacy...

I don't think you read what I typed, I didn't say look which countries have less drunk drivers, I said guess where road rules are more strictly governed.

I also don't disagree that road congestion has a role to play, this is not at all however what we are talking about. All I am saying is that more people speeding, more drunk drivers = more accidents. Less speeding, less drunk drivers = fewer accidents. Which scenario seems better to you?

 

[Nicodeamus]

The optimal density is governed mainly by congestion and the maximum carrying capacity of the road network itself. The problem in SA as I said, is that we simply have to few roads for all our cars, We didn't add any new highways in SA since 1980 and yet our traffic doubled, that is mainly we have the amount of accidents that we currently have. It is due to bad planing and a lack of good alternative transport.

 

[Nicodeamus]

I don't think you read what I typed, I didn't say look which countries have less drunk drivers, I said guess where road rules are more strictly governed.

I also don't disagree that road congestion has a role to play, this is not at all however what we are talking about. All I am saying is that more people speeding, more drunk drivers = more accidents. Less speeding, less drunk drivers = fewer accidents. Which scenario seems better to you?

in the countries 'where the laws happen to be more enforced' there also 'happens to be a lot less traffic on the roads'

The reason why they do have less accidents are not mainly because 'they have better enforcement' it is because 'they have less traffic on the road' - fact.

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

in the countries 'where the laws happen to be more enforced' there also 'happens to be a lot less traffic on the roads'

The reason why they do have less accidents are not mainly because 'they have better enforcement' it is because 'they have less traffic on the road' - fact.

I think you are manufacturing facts here. By saying this you are implying that countries like the UK and China have lower traffic density than say Namibia or the DRC.

 

[Nicodeamus]

I think you are manufacturing facts here. By saying this you are implying that countries like the UK and China have lower traffic density than say Namibia or the DRC.

They actually do, the UK and China has a lot more public transport available than Namibia or the DRC. I haven't been to the DRC yet, but I was in Tanzania a year ago, there isn't any traffic control (ie robots) and there are virtually no public transport.

The Uk and China also has better means of controlling congestion (ie robots, stop streets, intersections etc). Namibia's road technology is actually in some regards in a better state than South Africa's.

Traffic density isn't to do with the amount of people on the road, it has to do with the amount of vehicle/km and vehicles per hour (flow) that pass through it.

1 Bus or BRT can reduce traffic density by a helluva lot. There more technologically advanced a country is the better control they have over their traffic.

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

They actually do, the UK and China has a lot more public transport available than Namibia or the DRC. I haven't been to the DRC yet, but I was in Tanzania a year ago, there isn't any traffic control (ie robots) and there are virtually no public transport.

The Uk and China also has better means of controlling congestion (ie robots, stop streets, intersections etc). Namibia's road technology is actually in some regards in a better state than South Africa's.

Traffic density isn't to do with the amount of people on the road, it has to do with the amount of vehicle/km and vehicles per hour (flow) that pass through it.

1 Bus or BRT can reduce traffic density by a helluva lot. There more technologically advanced a country is the better control they have over their traffic.

Yes I agree that these countries have better public transport and have better control methods (therefor stricter regulation), but I don't for one second believe that China has a lower density of vehicles on the road than Namibia or the Congo. I have been trying to find information on this, but I'm coming up empty so if you could provide any confirmation on this I will gladly accept this.

But while I am learning a great deal more about international traffic dynamics, the just of the discussion was regarding whether is is necessary to enforce laws for speeding and drunk driving. If more people get caught and prosecuted for this crimes than it most definitely curb the rate of road accidents. People do not want to go to jail (especially in this country). Corruption is hindering this and it's building a mentality in a lot of people that they'll be fine if they break the law because they can get away with it if they give the cop so money. So this is the governments fault as much as the road users.

 

[Kosmik]

why?
How has the speed limit in any way STOPPED people from speeding? ...

It put this moron in jail didn't it? But go ahead, speed like a bat out of hell, baba wag vir jou.

 

[Nicodeamus]

It put this moron in jail didn't it? But go ahead, speed like a bat out of hell, baba wag vir jou.

wow he speeded, didn't kill anyone now he should be raped in jail? Isn't that fair.....