An End to All Serious North Carolina Car Accidents? A Thought Experiment
Public policy experts, passionate volunteers at Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), and practically every citizen of North Carolina would no doubt appreciate some magical policy that reduces North Carolina’s car accident rate to 0 or near 0. We all think that such a magical policy is a fiction. And in a practical sense, that may be right. But that doesn’t mean that such a solution doesn’t exist. It’s just that we don’t want to accept it.
That all sounds a little abstract. Consider this argument:
One study suggests that the higher the posted speed limit on a given road, the more, and much worse, accidents will occur. This isn’t always true. But it is a general heuristic that we can use to think about North Carolina car accidents more constructively. In other words, if we could lower speed limits instead of raising them, we should be able to lower accident rates substantially. So, for every road where the speed limit is 60 miles per hour, say we slash that to 55 miles per hour. We should expect accident rates to decrease across the board.
But what if we took this hypothetical to its extreme? What if, instead of slashing from 60 to 55, we slashed from 60 to 10 or 5 miles per hour?
Now, no one wants to drive 10 miles per hour everywhere they go. That would be highly impractical. But it would solve our – or at least nearly solve – the persistent problem of traffic accidents, which take the lives of 40,000 people in the U.S. every year and lead to untold millions of accidents and injuries.
No one would accept this bargain because the price would come too high at the cost of convenience. So, this hypothetical leads us to confront and accept the idea that convenience matters to us, just as safety does. And that we’re collectively negotiating and renegotiating the fine line between “what is convenient for me and North Carolina” and “what is safe for me and the rest of North Carolina.”
For insights into how to deal the aftermath of a car, motorcycle, truck crash, look to a client focused North Carolina auto accident law firm to spell out your strategic options.
More Web Resources:
Lowering speed limits saves lives
how low should we go?
