Shocking drivers with road-death statistics leads to more crashes(economist.com)

Shocking drivers with road-death statistics leads to more crashes

https://www.economist.com/united-states/2022/06/16/shocking-drivers-with-road-death-statistics-leads-to-more-crashes

1 comments

I can't read the article and see the arguments presented because of the paywall, but I'd say that I think the biggest cause of avoidable highway accidents is probably because faster/impatient drivers are basically forced to interact with slower/patient drivers.

What you see happen if you drive any long distance is that slowpokes tend to hang out in the passing lane close to other cars all day long and block off the normal flow of traffic. Human nature being what it is, this compels faster/impatient drivers to endlessly lane swap and weave around to try and find that narrow sliver of space to get around them. IMO these aggressive lane changes that come about because slow people are blocking off the passing lane are the biggest cause of avoidable problems and causes of road rage.

I have no issue if somebody wants to drive 50 mph on the highway or 100 mph, just drive in the appropriate lane for your speed. You have to find some way to keep the fast and the slow people with as few interactions as possible.

What I'd like to see beta-tested is having one lane on the highway that's basically a lane with almost no rules other than perhaps a high minimum speed: you can basically drive as fast as you want in that lane. The other lanes could have fairly normal driving rules apply. I suspect that something like this that would reduce the interactions between fast and slow drivers would reduce the number of accidents more than anything else you could reasonably do.