Does driving in high speeds really cause accidents?

Brett M

No, the high speed is not the CAUSE of the accident.

It does, however, dramatically reduce your ability to avoid an accident by dramatically reducing the time you have available to react to a mistake made by you or another driver. It also reduces the other driver's ability to react to you.

It also dramatically increases the likely hood of severe damage, injury and death.

Overall, not much good can come from speeding.

nschneeberger01

We call things "accidents" because by definition, they don't happen very often. Tens of thousands of people die every year in car accidents (42,884 in 2003) which is a lot of people, but it is not very many considering the vast majority of people who get in cars and drive somewhere everyday. So instead of saying that driving at high speeds cause accidents, it may be more accurate to say that speed is one known factor that significantly increases the probability of an accident. Behind alcohol, excessive speed is one of the top risk factors for accidents.

The chance of getting in an accident greatly increases at high speeds for a number of reasons. First, greater speeds means less time to react to dangerous situations and when you are distracted from the road, you are travelling much farther for each second you play with the radio.

Second, even if you see and react in time, it is a simple matter of physics that the faster you are moving the harder it is to change course. Thus, at high speed, you are less able to corner or avoid obstacles.

Third, at higher speeds, most automobiles (with the exception of Indy cars) generate lift which reduces the amount of weight on the tires, and that reduces friction between the tires and the road. So more momentum and less friction make a standard automobile even harder to turn or change lanes.

Fourth, at high speeds, you are moving much faster than other cars on the road, so you are more likely to have to change lanes or swerve to avoid other cars. Two forces are acting on the car (lift, and momentum) to make changing course at higher speeds more difficult.

Finally, if you do get into an accident at higher speeds, it is more likely to be fatal to you and others. It is a fact that women live longer than men, but most people don't realize that this in part is caused because young men are more likely to kill themselves in cars. There are so many deaths among young men that it changes the average lifespan of all men.

Shanty J

no accidents happen at any speed .. the severity of the accident is determined by the speed....

mike1942f

Since streets are designed with limited sight lines based on the planned speed and since reaction distance is sharply increased with speed making the sightline distance too short for reaction time to kick in, yes speed causes accidents. Further, if a speeding person might manage to avoid an accident if nothing else changed, when other people react by braking, all the distances become less predictable. But beyond that any accidents that occur will be more deadly because energy goes up as the square of the speed.
Further, excessive speed is often a good indicator of a person not driving in the best manner, ignoring several laws including the speed limit.

eastglam

Yes of course driving at high speeds can cause accidents because you have less time to react to any unusual or unforeseen incident. The stopping time is greater.
And if you have a blow out at speed then the consiquences will be far more serious than if driving at say 30 mph.

â™¥Rob's Girlâ™¥

YES. The faster you are driving, the farther your car goes before you can move your foot from the gas to the brake, and the less control you have of your vehicle, and the further it goes before your car turns like you want it to, to avoid whatever you're avoiding.

If you're going 60, that's a mile a minute, which is 88 ft per second. It takes about... oh we'll say 3 seconds for your brain to register there's something wrong, your foot to move to the brake, and then the car to BEGIN stopping. So before you car begins stopping you've already gone 264 feet. If you were going twice that fast, then you would have gone 528 feet in the same amount of time, and probably hit whatever you were trying to avoid. Also, at high speeds, a slight turn of the wheel can make a HUGE difference, and over-correcting can cost you your life.

pie man

no all the time but yes

Al Mac Wheel

Yes

Also if there is an accident, the damage is proportional to the square of the difference in the speeds & that's assuming only two vehicles on an uncrowded road.

Suppose you are going 20 mph and you crash head on to another car that was going 20 mph. The difference is 40 mph. Probably both drivers will survive with only minor injuries. Ok, now do that at 100 mph. Not only will the drivers not survive, their bodies might not even be found.

Ok now, do say 55 mph, and someone hits you on the CORNER of the car, and this causes you to lose control and kind of spin around, and in the spinning, you hit other cars, and now they bouncing around & hitting other cars.

The faster this is going on, the more cars involved, the damage much more.

ShaH

Depends if you're a good driver or not...
If you're not then yes...

autloveswes

its not the speed itself, but its the person behind the wheel of the car that makes the mistake of hitting other people or of people around them hitting them . or other things

prelude_racer06

well, haha...yea if you are in a tight congested freeway or road. But most of the time it can be dangerous because you have a slower time to apply the brakes and stop if someone got in front of you or obstacle got in your way. 1 of the top 10 causes of accidents is excessive speeding.

Pimpin on 18z

u must be dumb.. sorry ah no disrespect here.. use your brain sometimes ah...

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