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I grew up in Great Britain, and over the past five years I’ve split my time between England and the United States. I’ve long found driving in the U.S. to be both annoying and boring. Annoying because of lots of unnecessary waits at stop signs and stoplights, and because of the need to obsess over speed when not waiting. Boring, scenery apart, because to avoid speeding tickets, I feel compelled to set the cruise control on long trips, driving at the same mind-numbing rate, regardless of road conditions.

This guy must be bored and annoyed the most with the cheap gas prices here compared to what he pays in his beloved homeland.

No, thats not what he is saying. Did you read the artical closely?

He is saying as a behaviorist that we are trained to look at signs not the road. We have no choice of course because the speed changes are rapid, illogical, confusing. If you are paying attention to the road you may very well not see a speed change. A safe and effective driver drives at the speed the conditions warrant, not the speed of signs. But the USA has two very troubling habits.

1. An excessive concern about what other people are doing.
2. an obsession to shape the behavior of others.

As a result of inclination number one we need to make sure that everyone who is employed is “busy”. Thus Police with no emergency calls have to be seen doing something... Anything... So we have them checking speeds with Radars. As a result of inclination number 2 we regulate everything.

He is a smart guy and he is right. But nothing will raise the hackles of Joe Bag O Donuts more than to suggest that we could get by with less regulation and still be safe. Why that almost sounds disrespectful and un-American to even suggest that. In fact I have been accused of being a liberal just for daring to suggest that we dismantle the traffic code and start over. Most people due to there great mistrust of their neighbors expect to see carnage in the streets if traffic laws are dismantled and we just use simple guiding principals to regulate traffic.

I found the article to be interesting. I think most of us drive on roads where the speed limit could be higher. Still, I think speed limits are set for the lowest common denominator on the roads.

But, he kind of lost me at this point towards the end:

“Detailed statistics show that as of 2003, fatalities per mile traveled were 36 percent greater in the U.S. than they were in the U.K. Traffic deaths per million people show an even greater disparity through 2006, the most recent year for which full statistics are available. If the U.S. death rate were the same as the U.K.’s, roughly 6,000 fewer Americans would die each year—that’s half again as many Americans as have died in Iraq in the past five years.”

Although he does give the statistics in deaths/million, he directly contradicts the “Smeed’s Law” that he explained earlier wherein the rate of fatalities is directly linked to the number people and the number of cars. America has a much higher population than the U.K., and likewise has a larger number of cars on the road. So, his conclusion should be that America has more road fatalities than England because there are more Americans and more cars on the road in America, not that America has more road signs. Plus, if Smeed’s Law is a law of exponential order, America's fatalities would far exceed those of the U.K. simply based on the larger population of the U.S.

Just my 2 cents. I still think his propositions are worth considering here.