Old Wolf
Me? Never. My life is like those car commercials where it's always an empty road and nice scenery. I don't think I've ever seen another car, let alone a speeding one trying to tailgate me.
Come on man, the FASTER you're going the HARDER you'll hit, all other factors being equal. Do you not understand that or are you just trying to goad me?
Not if you don't see it over a rise. Junk in the road wouldn't be UNEXPECTED if you KNEW it was there beforehand! The definition of the word speaks for itself. If something is NOT unexpected, how can it BE unexpected? With all due respect, I question how much brainpower I'm facing here on Usenet. I always have to repeat elementary concepts. At first I thought it was just some people being disingenuous but it seems endemic to the medium. Nothing personal, Old Wolf.
My point is that the risk of ALL unexpected hazards is lessened at moderate speeds in nearly every circumstance. I can't waste time elaborating on every what-if scenario.
One of the weirdest excuses I've seen is that you'd "zip past" the unexpected if you were going faster when it happened. Jesus, how stupid can people get? If an event happens *behind* you it's a moot point. Cars aren't cruising around backwards or entering time warps. It's as lame as the claim that speeding is safer because you "get off the road faster."
It's not just the speeder's personal business when other drivers are disabled in high speed crashes. It doesn't matter who is at fault. Physics is what matters, plus human denial of its potential consequences. Speeders are more *likely( to get in trouble and insurance companies raise their rates because statistics prove that. By the time a speeder finally gets end, he's usually had many close calls. Read some of Dunkle's posting history.
Yes I did. By definition, the unexpected is ANYTHING that you don't expect. A blown tire at 100 MPH is much more likely, for example. Birds sometimes seem to come from nowhere. On a controlled course I don't care what you do, but public roads are not video games with 3 lives to waste.
People lay blame when NASA doesn't account for some risk on the Space Shuttle but they get indignant when someone tells them 90 MPH is endangering many more lives on the ground. I don't get it.
He said his crash happened at 30-ish, but if you understand that impacts increases with the square of speed the answer to your question is obvious. All other factors being equal, when you drive faster, you'll hit harder if you can't avoid it, It's all about minimizing risk and not forcing your personal buttessment of said risk onto other drivers. It doesn't matter if others are also speeding. If a pack of cars hits an unexpected fog bank, you'd want the whole pack to be going 70, not 80.
C.T.
