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Comment by willcipriano | Hacker News Reader

Works with technology as well, the speed limits in your neighborhood were probably set when cars had drum brakes and poor visibility.

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Works with technology as well, the speed limits in your neighborhood were probably set when cars had drum brakes and poor visibility.

Speed limits are far more complicated than that.

They're used to reduce noise, create gaps in traffic so people can make left turns, give pedestrians time to cross a street, encourage people to see nearby businesses, and a hundred other reasons.

I've read a number of traffic studies in the last few decades. Some of them are fascinating in their technical depth.

Cars still kill people at high speed, human bodies haven't adapted to get hit by cars better.

The cars have adapted to hit people better though, at least for a given size of car. See Euro NCAP pedestrian test. Cars have softer front ends, and they even pop up on impact to give a softer landing for the pedestrian. Also, automatic emergency braking systems.

Automatic brakes, driver warning systems, better medicine to treat you if you do get hit. Less alcoholism and drunk driving. Radial tires, led headlamps, automatic windshield wipers, daytime running lights, ABS, airbags, hell I think a lot of cars didn't even have seatbelts standard back when some of these were set.

Can't even get 5 more mph on the highway.

The reflex of people didn't got faster so while some could probably use some reasonable bump it's not as much as you think.

Nah, physics didn't change in the years since, and neither has human reaction time, both things that have a much more significant impact on road safety than modern rubber or brakes.

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