My point is that driving at 160 km/h on a fairly empty highway in a manner that is respectful of others is not particularly dangerous. In fact it’s pretty relaxed and routine in Germany for the middle lane of 3 lane derestricted autobahn. The right lane goes 130 km/h, middle lane goes 160 km/h, left lane stays mostly empty except for the occasional person passing. People keep their distance, slow down when there’s traffic in the distance ahead, and strictly adhere to keeping right except to pass. On most modern cars, stopping distance and fuel economy are also pretty reasonable at 160 km/h. I will admit people flying by at over 200 km/h in the left lane can be scary, and stopping distance and fuel economy become terrible for most cars at 200 km/h, though it generally works safely there because of the strict lane etiquette, coupled with people maintaining distance and slowing down in advance when traffic is ahead.

A bigger danger than speeding on clear highways is things like tailgating, weaving between lanes, aggressive passing, and distracted driving. This often happens below speed limits, and is not the focus of automated speed enforcement systems.

In Ontario, Canada, we have wide, well maintained, and well engineered highways that have unreasonably low speed limits of 90 or 100 km/h. While there are times when it’s necessary to drive more slowly (bad weather, traffic ahead), strictly enforcing such limits on wide clear highways in good weather would be silly. People here generally drive 120-130 km/h because cars are designed to operate safely and efficiently at these speeds. Strictly enforcing unreasonably low speed limits would just breed contempt from drivers, so currently the police are lenient with the speeds people actually drive. Strict enforcement of speed limits could be more reasonable if they set realistic speed limits, perhaps variable ones depending on the weather and traffic conditions.