Please Drive Carefully
This is a paceometer. It’s a device that shows you how much time you’d save by driving faster:
The numbers on the outside indicate speed, while the numbers on the inside indicate the time (in minutes) you could save by increasing your speed.
Have another look at the image and take a second to identify what seems odd about the device.
The numbers around the outside are evenly spaced, but the ones on the inside aren’t. What this means is that increasing your speed by 10mph, from 10mph to 20mph, makes more of a difference to your total journey time than increasing your speed by the same amount from 70mph to 80mph.
Traveling at a speed of 10mph means you’ll cover 10 miles in 1 hour. Accelerating to 20mph, you’ll cover that same distance in 30 minutes (half the time - that’s pretty significant). Yet accelerating from high speeds to higher speeds doesn’t make the same difference. Starting at 70mph and increasing to 80mph, you’d only cover 10 miles in 1 less minute, bringing your journey down from 9 minutes at 70mph to 8 minutes at 80mph.
Driving at higher speeds is more dangerous but makes a minor difference to your actual journey time. Is saving just a few minutes really worth a life?
America’s Killer Cars
In September 2024, the Economist published an article highlighting some reasons behind the increasing death-toll of traffic accidents in America. The main culprit? Weight. American cars are getting heavier, making them more likely to kill passengers traveling in smaller vehicles:
“...for every 10,000 crashes the heaviest vehicles kill 37 people in the other car, compared with 5.7 for cars of a median weight and just 2.6 for the lightest. The situation is getting worse. In 2024, 31% of new cars in America weighed over 5,000lb (2.27 tonnes), compared with 22% in 2018.”
The number of SUV fatalities is fairly steady, but small car occupants are killed more frequently than before. This can be attributed to heavier (deadlier) vehicles on the road.
People buy heavier cars because they’re safer, but this doesn’t improve the collective safety of road-users.
Wear your Seatbelt
44% of passanger vehicle occupants killed in 2022 weren’t wearing a seatbelt.
From the U.S. Department of Transportation National Roadway Safety Strategy (NRSS) Report
The biggest travel risk/risk you take most days
Rats like driving.