On 11/7/11 7:30 PM, Andrew Shore wrote:
> Do you think imposing speed limits really works?

If you were to define the goals, I could answer that question more easily.

> The UK motorway speed limit
> is 70mph, of course, yet much, probably most, traffic travels at in excess
> of 80mph when congestion doesn't prevent it. Interestingly, the few traffic
> police on British motorways take no action against such speeds.

That is uniform modulo numbers throughout the jurisdictions with which I have experience (the US, 
and various European countries).

I have already mentioned how Sarkozy reduced French fatal accident rates permanently by a third 
within a month.

> (though I myself doubt that the effect of an 85mph accident will be much
> more awful than of a 70mph one),

neither of those are very well-defined terms, so I am not sure what you are doubting.

PBL

Peter Bernard Ladkin, Professor of Computer Networks and Distributed Systems,
Faculty of Technology, University of Bielefeld, 33594 Bielefeld, Germany
Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs.uni-bielefeld.de