Why do people ignore speed limits without caring for the consequences of their speeding?
I think most people speed (I know this is why I do) simply because they don’t believe that breaking the speed limit is actually more dangerous than driving below the speed limit. (And by “more dangerous,” I mean, more likely to have an accident at all; I recognize that between two accidents, one accident where at least one of the cars was breaking the speed limit and in the other accident all cars were obeying the law, the second accident is much more likely to have less serious injuries.) The truth is speed limits are only estimates for what the highest safe speed is for the average driver in the average car. In actuality, I am a young, alert driver with 20/10 vision and I drive a fairly safe 2006 Jetta with traction control, etc., so I can drive safely at a higher rate of speed than can my 68-year-old father who drives an old Honda and is slow to react and needs to wear glasses to correct his vision, for example. In the same way that “age is just a number,” so speed is. Local governm
