Indeed. We just have to agree what price we are prepared to pay for it. We could get pretty close by putting all the freight onto the railway network and all the passengers onto public transport (not currently completely accident-free, but already better than private cars and would be even better still if we limited it to, say, 10mph in built up areas and 30mph inter-city). But that would be an unacceptable price.
The fact is that while every traffic accident death is a tragedy, the numbers are small enough to be largely insignificant. Here’s the 2015 data for causes of death for males (as far as traffic accidents go they’re the same for females).
They only appear in this table at all for younger people and that’s because the death rates from anything whatsoever are so very low at these ages. So the bottom line is that further restriction would impact almost everyone but would save almost no-one.
If we want to do something about traffic-related deaths then have a think about air pollution. It damages people when they’re young and kills them when they’re older. It’s worst in cities because that’s where the congestion forces the huge volumes of traffic to dawdle for ages.
Some good news.
From what I’ve read, like start stop systems, the speed restriction software will have the facility to be fully deactivated each time the engine is started.
So you’ll be able to break the speed limit as required without any alerts getting in your way.
of course along with all the others - deactivate lane departure warning, deactivate traction control, lower suspension, deactivate auto start-stop, open the exhaust valve.
Mind you I am sure that all the button presses will be replaced by in-car Alexa commands. “Alexa deactivate nanny state”.
The population wide health effects of long term exposure to poor air quality or environmental noise are each responsible for more annual deaths, however the foreable change to EV and HV which would significantly benefit both of these is not due until 2030…
Can you code out folk in the rear seats on the way back from the Turan shouting “open the exhaust”, “press the sport plus button” and “come on overtake”
Drivers in Sicily are total loons, given all the roads are limited to 50kph (apart from the tiny amount of Auto Strada)…when we were there a few years back, on a country road we were being overtaken and when I glanced sideways saw we were three abreast - the guy overtaking me was also being overtaken!!
