this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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The “faster=more accidents” thing is actually kind of up in the air. Like with many things, it’s a bell curve, but driving a few MPH over the limit appears to be safest. Supposedly because people who drive a little bit faster tend to pay more attention. Sure, there are the outliers like the people who weave through traffic at 100MPH, but only a few over the limit appears safest.
Some of the highest accident rates actually come from people who regularly go under the limit. Because those are the people who are geriatric, distracted, texting, drunk, high, etc. and are going slower because they want the extra stopping distance or don’t want to be pulled over for speeding. Plus there’s all the hazards associated with going slow on the highway, when you’re only doing 45 MPH and traffic is flying past you in the next lane at 75. At that point, you’re practically a moving road hazard.
As far as I can tell that's not at all the case in Sweden where I live, in fact geriatric or slow drivers are very rarely involved in accidents. Intoxicated drivers are extremely rare compared to most other countries. See e.g. https://www.itf-oecd.org/sites/default/files/sweden-road-safety.pdf which says "Inappropriate speed is one of the leading causes of road crashes". You can find more research saying similar things on Google, e.g. that for every 10 km/h increase, the risk of an accident increases by 33 percent.
But it's not just a matter of having a high overall speed. It's also how quickly you accelerate / break. BMW/Audio/Tesla drivers have a high capacity for acceleration and they use it e.g. to overtake in situations when others wouldn't. I suspect the cause/effect is the other way around though: if you're a reckless driver who doesn't care about safety, you're more likely to choose a car that has a lot of power.
I posit that the amount of potential acceleration may be more correlated than the raw speed. Accelerating quickly makes you less predictable to the drivers around you and reduces the control you have over your own car.
Could it be the that nervous and less confident drivers are the ones that drive at or slightly below the speed limit?
Maybe it's not that driving faster is safer but worse drivers drive slower to attempt to compensate.