Am I Too Hard on GM?

By Kevin

The folks at the GM Fastlane blog don't understand people who don't wear seatbelts:

I know it is not just me. Many of my friends in safety, law enforcement, and public health cannot understand the view that a decision to not wear a safety belt is in some sense a personal "right."
Do you ever get the feeling that you must -- MUST -- comment on something? I did, and posted a few choice paragraphs below that:
[Y]our concern for safety rings utterly false to my ears.

If you were truly concerned for safety above all else, and you honestly want to reduce deaths, then you would put a regulator on your new cars that won't let them go above, say, 75mph.

No, you might object, consumers don't want to be told how fast they can drive! Well, fancy that! Maybe consumers don't want to be told when to wear seatbelts either...

Under GM's logic, a driver has no "right" to risk his own life by not wearing a seat-belt, but he does have a "right" to risk his life -- and the lives of others -- by speeding. How's that?

-- September 6, 2005 3:51 PM |

Comments

Buzzcut wrote:

The fallacy of your illogic is that driving 75mph on a highway is no more dangerous than driving 65, or 55.

And it is legal to drive 75 in some places. Montana has no daytime speed limit.

Also, were the Feds not pushing seatbelts and their use, GM might not even provide them in its cars! I don't think that GM is the nexis of the problem.

-- September 7, 2005 11:42 AM ∞

Kevin Brancato wrote:

Sadly, Montana now does have a daytime speed limit of 75 mph for cars and light trucks, and 65 for heavy trucks. If the legislation isn't enforced, then the law could really be that there is no speed limit.

Point taken about the GM not being attuned to safety, although the relationship between speed and accidents is not tenuous, even though it is indirect. Now, I don't think, and you didn't accuse me of believing, that posting lower speed limits will lower accident rates. That's precisely the opposite of the truth. Instead, I'm arguing that making it physically impossible to speed will lower accident rates. How? Well, I'm arguing that going 85 or 95 is more dangerous than going 75 or 65, especially when the vast majority of the traffic flow is going 65 or 75. In short: SPEED VARIANCE KILLS. An automatic speed regulator would enforce homogeneity at the right end of the speed distribution and increase traffic flow. (However, I don't see how automakers could make those on the left end of the distribution drive any faster, even though that is a larger problem.)

And I think the data -- study after study -- support this position, although I have no emotional attachment to the argument, and would like to be proven wrong.

-- September 7, 2005 12:47 PM ∞

Buzzcut wrote:

I don't disagree that speed variance kills. I do disagree that putting a limiter on all cars will decrease the variance. Outside of the big cities, I don't find a lot of speeders. In fact, setting the cruise at 75, I find that I pass the vast majority of people. Doing my normal 80 to 90 (yes, I'm one of those unreformed speeding bastards), I have found that I can go long distances (Chicago to Detroit, Chicago to Indy, etc.) without ever being passed. Set the cruise at 80, and you are at the far, far tail of the bell curve.

Of course, within major metropolitan areas, that's another story. In Chicago, you're either stuck in traffic or driving 80 just to keep up. There is no in between!

It is kind of strange that people drive slower out on the open road than locally.

-- September 7, 2005 6:47 PM ∞

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