Merit Based Speeding
42 million speeding tickets are given out every year in the United States. That is roughly $6.2 Billion in revenue each year. Tickets are handed out to drivers generally based on the idea that speeding decreases the safety of everyone on the road. Implying that speeding drivers are more dangerous, and the tickets are supposed to incentivize safer driving behaviors. But it is commonly known that small towns give out more tickets than warnings to raise money for the local government.
But speeding isn’t inherently dangerous. And doesn’t necessarily decrease the safety of others around them. Driving dangerously is dangerous. We conflate speeding with danger, when that isn’t the case. Those who lack competent driving skills and knowledge are dangerous. Coupled with speed and their incompetence is magnified.
NASCAR and Formula 1
Competence on the road is largest factors to influence dangerous driving. We know this simply because of sports like NASCAR and Formula 1. Where drivers are racing over 200mph within mere inches of one another. It is entirely a merit based sport. The better driver you are (better handling, faster reaction time), the better driver you are. Yes, there are crashes in these races but that is largely due to the fact they are racing and not the speed.
All day Kyle Busch drives 200mph tactically weaving in and out of cars. Then can get the same speeding ticket you or I would when going 85mph in a 70mph zone on the ride back home. To give one the best drivers in the world a speeding ticket is absurd behavior. Especially since the design of tickets are to dissuade you from reckless driving. That would be implying Kyle is recklessly driving going 45% of the speed drives every day at work. Simply put, Kyle Busch speeding is not dangerous or reckless.
Meritocracy
In a meritocracy, society is run based on the individuals ability or merit. That is how speeding should be enforced. The ones with the most driving merit or ability have the greatest leniency on speeding. So someone like Kyle Busch should almost never get a ticket because he is the top 0.1% of all drivers in the world. We would create a hierarchy of driving competence and the higher you are on the hierarchy the less the speed limit applies to you.
Currently our speeding laws are the complete opposite of a meritocracy. Instead it is a form of homogeneous law enforcement. Implying that one is a danger to society based on speed rather than competence. Regardless of your skills and abilities you are put in the same constraints as everyone else. Speed limits for the competent drivers to cater to the needs of the least competent driver on the road.
Implementation
Having a merit based speed limit would be very utopian. Up to the point only being applicable in your dreams. This is because of implementation. How the hell do you implement a merit based speed limit? How do you know what someone’s skills and abilities in driving before it is too late?
It is easy to say, well if your a NASCAR or F1 driver you’re free to drive as fast as you want. Those are known competent drivers. But for everyone else, the task is much more difficult.
The only way to truly do something like this is yearly driving exams. Because everyone loves going to the DMV. Based on your exam results you get a personalized speed limit based on the road you are driving. But doing this it would be difficult for the police to know who has the right to speed vs those who don’t. It would be nearly impossible.
Although this utopian idea would be nice to have, it really is impractical in every aspect to actually implement. I just think we need to be less strict on speeding laws as it should be more focused on reckless driving rather than speeding. Basically going 100mph on a straightaway highway is not reckless. Swerving in and out of cars and break checking people is reckless. Small town speed limits are good but anything over 45 should be to drive are your own discretion, this would hopefully get closer to a more merit based speeding society.