The way we drive is a self-own

There was a traffic-related study out last week that did the rounds on mainstream media. It was a little buzzy because it found that average drivers who speed save practically no time.

An average person, driving about 28 miles per day, speeding saves just 54 seconds a day, or about six minutes a week. Meanwhile, the study pointed out while drivers are doing this, they’re burning all this extra fuel. It costs them a combined $24 million a day.

Regardless, people in the U.S. speed A LOT. Almost half of all trips in the U.S. in internal combustion engine vehicles involve at least one speeding incident. The average was 11.2 miles over the speed limit.

Speeding is dumb. ESPECIALLY in urban areas (vs. highway driving.) Even on a highway you have to drive for literally hours at a higher-than-you-should drive speed before it adds up to time savings that’s in any way even noticeable. It takes a surprisingly long time to save even a few minutes (we’re talking hundreds of miles.)

Meanwhile, the costs for speeding are quite high. The scientific study I referenced earlier focused a lot on gas, increased fuel costs. That just one cost. The safety costs are much bigger in my opinion. Every year in the U.S. we have 10,000+ deaths that are classified as being “speeding related,” meaning someone was speeding at the time.

We think of speeding as being sort of a victimless crime that everyone winks at but it very much is not that even though we have all been guilty of it, realistically speaking. The forces in a car crash rise exponentially. An increase of even 1 mile per hour increases the risk and severity of a crash by 3 percent. A few miles per hour can literally be the difference between life and death. Speeding also makes it harder to AVOID a crash in the first place, because braking takes longer at higher speeds.

Traffic deaths are still relatively rare, although all too common in the U.S. compared to peer nations (Americans have a 1 in 93 chance of being killed in a car crash over their lifetimes). But for every fatality, in the U.S., there are 8 serious injuries and literally hundreds of minor injuries and property damage type collisions. These incidents will not ruin your life, most of them (thank God) but they will ruin your day or your week. The time savings is frankly not worth it if this even happens to you once. You’ve made yourself poorer and less safe for nothing. (One in three Americans will be seriously injured in a car crash over the course of their lives.)

Still, people will mount a furious opposition campaign if government officials try to rein in speeding. It’s nuts. Speeding gets treated as an entitlement almost, especially going under 10 miles over the speed limit.

I am not sitting here saying (just so people don’t annoyingly argue with me) police should be out there radar-in-hand throwing the book at people going 4 mph over the speed limit, in most circumstances. BUT I do think we should radically shift our whole attitude about this kinda thing because it just doesn’t serve us well. People literally spend months sitting in hospital beds so other people can save 26 seconds on a 22 mile journey? What are we doing here? We’re all poorer and worse off because of this nonsense. Even if we avoid being hurt, and our family does too, we’re still paying out in insurance and disability etc.

Our approach to driving in the U.S. is very individualistic. It’s every man or woman for themselves out there on the roads. You can feel that energy. People feel like they need to be “strategic” and “beat” the guy next to you. And what is your prize? At the end of the day you arrive at a red light 6 seconds before them, having burned fuel and totally wasted your energy.

It’s kind of hard to accept, at the same time, we have to put all this time and energy into driving and we’re basically just brainless cogs, who have no control over anything, but that’s closer to reality. We DO have a good amount of control, however, over how safely we drive. Not only can that protect us getting killed, but more normal everyday headaches like having to ever visit a body shop but also more serious stuff like surgery and orthopedic medicine (another very scary thing imo.)

Again, we don’t have TOTAL control. If some guy in an 18-wheeler dozes off at the wrong time, you could end up in a hospital bed anyway. Traffic is a system and we’re all sort of at its whims. Nobody can totally avoid these kinds of risks. 9I think it would be better if we accepted stronger safety rules and enforcement to reduce this risk, but apparently — and this is annoying and stupid as hell — that’s not acceptable to many people and they’d rather take their changes with random wahoos maybe killing them. Or maybe they are the wahoos themselves.)

Regardless, do not kid yourself that you can “win” your journey somehow by splitting the lane, or passing someone on the right (🙄), or flooring it in a residential area for 45 feet. All of that is just plainly anti-social jerk behavior that doesn’t benefit you or anyone.

What’s really slowing everyone down is traffic lights, when it comes to city driving, or the amount of time we spend stopped. A better system, imo, would minimize driver frustrations by trying to minimize the time they spend uselessly idling at traffic lights, and maximize the time they spend steadily moving at a relatively slow pace.

At a systems level, we can make improvements here. We can time traffic signals to promote this kind of responsible driving. The “green wave” it’s called, and that’s a big win, when traffic signals are timed to serve a series of greens to people traveling the speed limit. We can also replace traffic lights with roundabouts to shorten stopped time plus improve safety (the biggest win-win in transportation planning. The fact that people STILL complain about these is proof positive that people just love to bellyache about new things.) I’m also hopeful, new tech — smart signals — could help reduce wait times at traffic lights, especially during slower periods, like late at night.

In the meantime, all you can do is let go any real sense of control or mastery over everyday car trips. They are painful. I get it. But be smart don’t forget, the real stakes (protecting yours and others’ safety and property) are high, and that’s one thing you actually have control over.