One of the striking features of the debate over road safety is the extent to which the opinions of blogosphere residents can be predicted on the basis of political affiliation. Rightwingers, both libertarians and law-and-order types, are in favor both of soft laws (high speed limits etc) and weak law enforcement, and leftwingers the opposite. A number of commentators on both sides have made this point.
So I was interested to see this pro-speeding site [thanks to TJW for the link]. The main argument is fairly standard (everybody speeds, so travelling at the speed limit is dangerous so speed limits should not be enforced). But what’s interesting is this para
In the United States, just two speeding tickets can increase your insurance premiums by 50%! In BC, the penalty points from two speeding tickets will cost you $300.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), a powerful lobby group funded by the US insurance industry, has been the chief opponent of moves to raise speed limits.
Insurance companies in the US (and ICBC in BC) frequently purchase radar and laser guns for police forces to issue more speeding tickets.
which presents an obvious paradox for libertarian supporters of speeding. A fully privatised system would give more power to the insurance companies to impose their own conditions on insured drivers and, if this site is correct, the companies would be keen to tighten the rules.
In my experience, libertarians love the kind of intellectual gymnastics required to produce free-market solutions to puzzles of this kind, so I’m offering it for their enjoyment.
John Quiggin 
Miranda Devine has taken up the cause of the poor, oppressed speeders in today’s SMH. And she uses as her source material ÷ hang on to your hats, ’cause you won’t believe it ÷ a report done by the Centre of Independent Studies!
Obviously, that old tart, Laura Norder, doesn’t titillate our conservatives the way she once did.
“One of the striking features of the debate over road safety is the extent to which the opinions of blogosphere residents can be predicted on the basis of political affiliation.”
Wrong direction of causality, mostly. The only part that runs that way round is how people’s opinions tend to converge under peer pressure/availability of practical expressions (which, I suppose, is what politics is). Nevertheless there do exist people like me with no coherent a priori ideology – and that is in fact the “ideology” that makes true conservatism, not having an ideology, that only appears like one since other ideological views withdraw from it and leave it the appearance of pulling together on what is in fact the left over position. (I should add, these days a genuine ideology has taken over that position and misleads people who think in terms of ideologies that people converging on that ideology are in fact supporters of it rather than accidental fellow travellers.)
No paradox for me John – this is exactly the sort of argument (i.e. that private road owners would want to impost stricter rules) that I have made to the idiot pro-speeders on Tim Blair’s comments site and gotten razed for my pains. Go Google it for yourself. Don’t confuse the rantings of populist conservatives with those of principled liberal advocates of the greater extension of the private property paradigm (incidentally propetarian is almost as good a descriptor as libertarian)
Dave Ricardo
I have read the actual study she cites by the Centre for Independent Studies and I suggest you don’t discount a study because of its associations. Wait for it to come out electronically – it’s pretty detailed and factual. I’m instinctively anti-speeder and though it hasn’t made me reconsider my position (because I don’t think the author, a Professor of Sociology in the UK) doesn’t quite get the economics of tort law right, it was written in objective good faith as far as I can tell. I wrote a study for the Centre a few years ago on freeing up taxi markets – so you’re going to discount that because I wrote it for the Centre? It’s been cited in many places including PC reports and my present employer sees fit to use in taxi-related projects. What are your research credentials, btw?
Here, at least, is a tentative approach to explaining the anecdotal correlation between road safety views and political affiliation.
As suggested in this article, political conservatism (including the libertarian emphasis upon minimal social constraint of individual freedom, regardless of its impact upon the freedoms of others) is more associated with an earlier-evolved set of ‘instincts’ referred to as the ‘dominance’ group of instincts. Political progressiveness, however, is more associated with a later-evolved set of instincts, designated the ‘egalitarian’ or ‘counter-dominance’ instincts. This set of instincts involves a greater consciousness of social cohesiveness and responsibility. Including, no doubt, ‘road safety’ issues.
The interesting thing is that each of us has all these brain structures and the full range of instincts, including both ‘dominance’ and ‘egalitarian’ instincts. What produces political affiliation, in the evolutionary psychology scheme of things, is probably the way an individual most frequently or habitually balances the conflicting ideas that the ‘instincts’ constantly produce.
Jason
you have missed the point of my post. I wasn’t having a go at the CIS. I was having a go at Devine for reflexively promoting the work of the CIS.
As you should know, outfits like the CIS have a stable of tame journalists like Miranda Devine who they rely on to uncritically publicise their work. This makes the CIS happy, and it makes Devine happy because she can fill her column without little effort and even less thought ÷ and she gets to promote her pet ideology as well.
Miranda didn’t even have to go to the effort of finding a congenial think tank. She is just carrying on where her daddy Frank, a shameless booster of CIS and all its works, left off.
I assume a fully privatised system would allow you to not be insured at all. Problem solved?
Don’t insure your car, if someone hits you and it’s their fault, pursue civil action. If it’s my fault, bad luck.
My car isn’t insured. Compulsory 3rd party only. It would cost me $400+ a year to insure it, yet I could buy a replacement for $1200.
If enough people chose not to insure their cars at all, I’m sure the insurance industry would consider a change in policy.
So, Yobs, let’s day we a system with no insurance at all. Someone hits you and turns you intp a quadriplegic, causing millions of dollars of medical bills, refitting your house for wheel chair, lost income etc.
You sue. But they have no assets. So you get nothing.
That’s OK with you, is it?
Remember that in the utopia of conservatives who believe themselves to be libertarians, you’re not allowed to sue anybody either, Dave (certainly, if you do sue someone, you’re not allowed to use the services of a “trial lawyer”)
In a fully-privatised system, insurance coys would treat with road-owners on the best mode of regulating road users. The insurers would seek to have lower speed limits in place, to reduce the number and severity of accidents. Presumably, road owners would cotrol the vehicle registration process, with only registered vehicles allowed onto roads, which would then be automaticly tolled.
The road users might well prefer higher-speed limits, but since those speedier vehicles would tend to have worse insurance records, they would attract higher insurance premiums, or fail to acquire road registration. The road owners would be aware of this, and would prefer to prevent the high-speed, high-risk road users from using private roads.
The situation is analagous to credit-rating agencies advising banks to not loan money to credit risks.
Thus a libertarian road system might well reduce the liberty of risky road users.
I should also say that the enforcement policies of the Bracks Government and Victoria Police have changed my driving behaviour, although Iâm getting older and more mature so that is likely to also influence my attitude.
I’ll happily reduce my speed, keep to the left, give way, and remain a safe distance from the car in front. I just don’t believe that the attention to my speedo, necessarily at the expense to my awareness of my surroundings, is making me any safer.
I hate it how people also tailgate me when Iâm travelling the limit, in the left lane, didn’t just out in front, and am driving in a predictable, constant manner. If you speed your punished with a fine but if you don’t speed you are punished by some prick who is implicitly using the threat of force to get you to exceed the limit.
Another issue is police speeding. I assume that this can only be justified if two conditions are met: (1) the additional risk to other motorists due to speeding is less than the risk of harm should the police not make it to a location on time and (2) the additional risk is minimised to the maximum extent possible by better training of officers, special right of way rules, sirens and lights and highly maintained vehicles. But if thatâs the case, why are some police speeding and even using their lights to U-turn or go through a red light when no intersecting traffic is around? I’ve even seen them speed TO the police station.
If speeding is unsafe and dangerous, then why does the government tolerate it from its law-enforcement officers?
Funny — I too, though a younger man, find that my driving behavior has changed over the past year — I think it is partly as a result of reading this site. Most of the driving I do is on city streets and I tend to keep below the speed limit now, as compared with a year ago when I generally drove well above it. On freeways I still speed but I think not as much.
Dave: Where did I say we should have a system with no insurance at all? I said it should be optional.
“One of the striking features of the debate over road safety is the extent to which the opinions of blogosphere residents can be predicted on the basis of political affiliation.”
Conservatives tend to be from high-income backgrounds, therefore they tend to have faster cars, which would be a waste of money if they never got them above 100km/h. That’s why they’re inclined to value their own liberty to speed more highly than they value someone else’s liberty to arrive home from work alive. Simple enough, really.
That’s just crazy talk Dan. I teach apprentices, nearly all of them from lesser income families, and they all rock up to school in hot-rod Commodores and Falcons and drive like loons.
On second thought, I assume you’re kidding.
If somebody is tailgating you, then ignore them. My experience has been that if you speed up then they will simply tailgate you at the higher speed, simply increasing the danger to both of you.
Eventually your tailgater will get bored and will overtake or will pull back.
One of the keys to good driving is not to let other drivers panic you into a foolish action or box you into a situation where you have no out.
As to increased speed limits making people travel faster? I think it relies on the average human being 100% efficient with increasing driving speed. There will always be people who will not feel comfortable driving at such a high spped. There will also be people who are unable to properly control their vehicles at high speed (think a cornering Landcruiser) and who will cause other drivers to take self-protective action.
Given the truly enormous complexity of the typical workday traffic flow, purely arithmetic solutions like increasing maximum traffic speed by 20% will not have anything like the effect you would expect.