Projo Cars Blog

I'm coming at this a week late but can't resist. Did you see the op-ed about speeding in The New York Times last Sunday? It was marvelous.

Kent A. Sepkowitz, who is vice-chairman of medicine at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, made the argument that we should "quit building cars that can exceed the speed limit."

"Most cars can travel over 100 miles an hour -- an illegal speed in every state. Our continued, deliberate production of potentially law-breaking devices has no real precedent. We regulate all sorts of items to decrease danger to the public, from baby cribs to bicycle helmets. Yet we continue to produce fast cars despite the lives lost, the tens of billions spent treating accident victims, and a good deal of gasoline wasted. (Speeding, after all, substantially reduces fuel efficiency due to the sheering force of wind.)"

It's a brilliant idea that makes total sense. And it's backed up by an analysis that looks at the way speeding is deemphasized as a major cause of 30 percent of all traffic deaths in the United States, or about 13,000 people a year.

As I said, it's a brilliant idea that makes total sense on paper. And one might imagine a more homogenous society like Denmark or Japan adopting some sort of regulation.
But here in the land of NASCAR and the muscle car, where we cannot even agree on whether we evolved or were created, it's an absolute non-starter.

"Sure, it would take us longer to get from here to there," Septowitz concludes. "But thousands of deaths a year are too great a cost for so adolescent a thrill as speeding."
Tell that to the 60-year olds racing their vintage racing cars at Lime Rock Park a couple of weekends ago!

Cars and speed are synonymous, for heaven's sake! And just as horses were bred for speed and raced before the advent of the motor car - and still are - so cars will always be developed for speed.

I mean, where do you start to put such an idea into practice?

Ding Dong!

- Peter C.T. Elsworth

 Tags  commentary speeding

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