Originally posted by: rahvin
Originally posted by: Mill
Appeal to authority fallacy. I'll respond, however. No, I don't know more, but then again you refused to entertain what was written. It clearly stated that those were the bare-min maximum speeds they were comfortable with, and not what the highway was capable of.
Oh so you think you know debate tactics do you? You assert that:
I don't care what the AASHTO says -- their idea is using the design speed, which as I just pointed out, is a pretty outdated method.
And when I point out the irony that you think YOU have more understanding of the subject than the thousands of highway designers in this country that compose AASHTO. An organization whose collective experience in highway design is probably in excess of a million years. You call it a fallacy? Nice try at dismissing it buddy.
Originally posted by: Mill
So you are going to ignore the Florida study in which speeding was 2.2% of the ACTUAL or even correlated cause of accidents? The sample size was 13,000 ACCIDENTS. You refuse to admit that the NHTSA is biased to the side of extreme caution.
Yes I'm going to ignore it, you source is hearsay. Provide a valid link to the study so that I can analyze the parameters of the study instead of relying on the opinion of Gary Witzenburg of ConsumerGuide.com with unknown qualifications published on the internet with no attribution of source. If you think such a source is proof of anything you are an idiot.
Originally posted by: Mill
I don't know what's so hard to understand about people driving less reduces the density of vehicles on the highway. Most highway accidents are not single car. You have less cars, less density, and likely less accidents. You know, you could reduce the highway speeds to 35 and drop the accident rate even more according to your logic, but we all know that its not viable. Secondly, you're throwing out a specific 6 year sector.
I'm throwing out a signficant blip in the data because I couldn't cut and paste the whole fvcking table and had to hand type it. Anyone with an ounce of ability to read and comprehend will note that Fatalities per Million VMT has been in steady decline since 1960, this is because of the mandated safety improvements and general trend towards safer vehicles. What IS significant about the 6 year block I posted as opposed to the other years is that instead of the .1 to .2 drop that was normal 1974 saw a drop of .6, three times the average over 30 years. That IS statistically significant. Oh and your hearsay assertian of your parents anecdotal experience of the number of drivers on the highways is evidence of nothing. Show me the number of VMT driven those years as I don't care to look myself although IIRC correctly it only flattened the growth and didn't drop the number of miles that year. Afterall not going on the sunday drive had no effect on the commute of the average worker.
Originally posted by: Mill
How about a comparison to when they raised the speed limits again, or any of the years in between? Why, because it would destory your argument! Fatalities per million mile had been falling SINCE the 1960's, and fell all the way up until 1997, even though Speed limits were changed in 1995. How could that be? How could fatalities continue to drop after limits were raised.
Vehicles and roadways continue to get safer, but this is where knowing how to read statistics comes into play. If for example you paid attention to total fatalities you would note that they had been in steady decline since the introduction of the airbag (mandatory) and anti-lock brakes but increased (to 1990 levels) in the years following the dropping of the federal 55mph limit. In fact I remember quite clearly that the number of accidents went up quite signficiantly following the raise because at the time I didn't believe they would.
Originally posted by: Mill
Considering Wikipedia basically said that. They said the design limits were extremely low numbers accounting for the WORST case scenarios on the WORST stretch of the road. I don't see how you can refuse to read that or accept it. Secondly, you are incapable of posting the FULL statistics which show that there was a decrease in highway deaths *regardless* of the speed limit.
You know, wikipedia isn't a bad source for more commonly studied things like History. But if you think you can rely on it for technical information you are sadly mistaken. I'm a highway designer who has spent his entire career designing high speed highways in both rural and urban settings. I have designed many miles of highway that millions of people drive on every single day. I know far better than you or wikipedia what the typical designer designs for considering I'm actually a designer. In a typical FHWA funded interstate or rural highway the design speed will be no more than 70mph. Horizontal and vertical curves will not exceed that 70mph design if it adds a single fvcking dollar to the cost of the construction. On a typical facility that mean 49 out of 50 curves are going to be at exactly the minimum to achieve that design speed.
For a driver traveling at 95mph on a facility designed for 70mph that means the design stopping sight distance needed for the driver is going to be FAR in excess of what the facility provides and the driver is risking their life and the life of everyone on the faclity with them.
Originally posted by: Mill
Bullsh!t. Here's the MINIMUM -- not maximum -- design speeds:
As discussed in Chapter 3, most States and localities have adopted a range of acceptable design speeds for each of the major classes of highways and streets (i.e., freeway, other arterial, collector, and local). Table 4.2 illustrates typical minimum design speeds for various types of highways located in level, rolling, and mountainous terrain.
You're flat out wrong.
There you go again talking about sh!t that you don't even understand the context of the words used. The about 95 page pamphlet you are referenceing is a general primmer whose purpose I don't really know except as maybe somthing to give politicians and the public that they can read and maybe understand (or more than likely an excuse for the FHWA to waste some money on producing worthless publications). Now if you moved your bolding ONE word back and included that rather critical word "typical" and pondered on it a moment you might gain a slight insight (although probably not).
"Typical minimum" as used in highway design publications means that it's recommended that when the decision to set the design speed for the facility is made it's recommended by the FHWA that the interstate system be designed at no less than 70mph. I really have no idea why they put that 80mph in this little pamphlet because 80mph is absent from all the design tables in the green book. To use a higher design speed than 70mph the designer would be required to hand calculate the 70 different paramters that are important to apply the correct design unless they are in a state like Montana that provides the required design data for higher speeds (at one point Montana used to design facilities for 120mph IIRC).
Originally posted by: Mill
I see you refuse to counter evidence to the contary of your opinion. Secondly, I stated that speed differential from a failure to yield is what caused accidents and congestion. Hence why I proposed that it be illegal or frowned upon to pass to the right, slower traffic ALWAYS yields to faster traffic, and that is is enforced and regulated. What you, however, refuse to do is provide any evidence counter to this. Not only did you cherry-pick your data, but digging in your on links and sites prove you wrong. The design minimums were 70+ on flat terrain, and that's the MINIMUM, so the max could fairly well be HIGHER.
Speed differential causes accidents. There is no question about that. Placing cars with 30mph differences in speeds in the same proximity is INCREDIBLY dangerous. Trying to enforce yeilding will do almost nothing to reduce that risk becuase a differential that high will reduce reaction time, manuvering distances and would more than likely double the number of fatalities on our highways.
Originally posted by: Mill
I've refuted everything you've put out there.
The only thing you have refuted is your own intelligence.
Now if you would like I could ask my supervisor what the design speed is on the facility in question as he was likely involved in the design of it at one time. I'm not from the east coast so I could be wrong but it is my professional understanding that because the eastern interstates were designed early in the construction of the interstate system many of the facilities were designed for 65 or even 55mph and have remained so. I know for a fact that quite a number of facilities in NJ (the first constructed segments of the interstate system) were designed at 55mph and remain so to this day.
But lets get back to the point of this little discussion. Driving 95mph on any interstate in this country that was designed for 70mph IS dangerous. Your attempt to assert that it is safe is nothing more than the uneducated and ill informed opinion of a lay person but as you pointed out earlier, you think you know better than professional designers who spend their careers trying to make our intersates safe.