From: Martin.Ehrenstein@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Martin Ehrenstein)
Subject: Re: Curve-Smoothing (was: Holiday Road Period)
Organization: Dept. of Comp. Sci., Victoria Uni. of Wellington, New Zealand.
Keywords: bad driving!
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 15:56:29 GMT


In article <1993Jan21.104459.5564@cs.aukuni.ac.nz>, jeremy@cs.aukuni.ac.nz (Jeremy Gibbons) writes:
|> In <C12zLL.7pI@animal.gcs.co.nz> joe@animal.gcs.co.nz (Joe Kuzak) writes:
|> 
|> >Porshe made an interesting investigation on accident frequency and found
|> >that more distance is travelled between prangs on German autobahns than
|> >on lesser class roads. This despite the fantastic speeds some family cars
|> >get up to these days.  This investigation was done to shut the greens up
|> >who wanted speed limits.
|> 
|> That's a totally bogus argument. Autobahns are safer because they have no
|> junctions etc, not because of the higher speed! They would be safer still
|> if speeds were kept reasonable.

I disagree. It's not quite easy to argue with you because you put quite
a lot of stuff into two and a half lines of text.

You appear to assume that speeds on the Autobahns are unreasonably high.
Do you say it is plainly unreasonable that the typical speed is higher
than in other contries? Or do you have some of the spectacular pile-ups
in mind involving vehicles traveling at say 80kph in fog? Or are you
concerned about say drivers from the "New Federal States of Germany",
or maybe Belgium having difficulties to judge relative speeds of following
vehicles in the rear vision mirror at first?

Well from a veteran of the so called NATO rally, a rather informal event
for males aged about 18 to 20 yrs taking place every Friday afternoon
(southbound) and Sunday late at night (northbound) involving continuous
driving near top speed for several hundred k's, some general comments:

The Green main argument for a tougher speed limit was that harmful exhaust
emissions are way higher at 130kph than at 100kph (it could be by a factor
of two). (Wear and tear on the engine and gearbox is pretty bad too).

Coincidentally, according to the theoretical driving test the speed limit
is 130kph -- fortunately it is a recommended only limit :) I understand that
you are automatically responsible in case of an accident at higher speed. 

On the other hand there is a section of two lane highway (one lane each
direction, no median barrier) on the approach to the Fehmarn Sud (sp?)
bridge where the speed limit is 120kph. There must have been a pretty good
reason to convince the average stick-by-the-rules German bureocrat ;) (sp?)
to allow a higher limit than generally allowed for a road of that type.
The only one I can think of is the risk of drivers falling asleep on a over
10km level straight.

Getting back to NZ I've got the suspicion that the M.O.T. mightn't bother
stopping you at 120kph on say Desert Road, but you'd get a ticket for
115kph in Nauranga Gorge or on the Bombay Hills.

Martin E

What I miss most from the good old days when I just had my license and there
was no limit, is the 'principle of least inconvenience', regardless whether
that means pulling into the slow lane behind a truck when traveling at 130kph
to let past the Porsche (vith headlights on and continuously indicating),
or stopping to let somebody safely reverse into a tricky parking spot.
-- 
martine@comp.vuw.ac.nz      Martin Ehrenstein       martin@romeo.anu.edu.au
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