The Morality of Speeding

Is speeding -- driving faster than the legal limit -- immoral? Almost everyone does it that I know of, certainly to varying degrees, but the degree cannot be an issue if it is indeed immoral.It is certainly not immoral to drive at whatever speed one chooses along some surface where there are no speed limits, and with roads having difference speed limits it is certainly not any absolute speed that could be immoral. Certainly there is a certain speed on any surface, in a vehicle of one's choice, where exceeding it is reckless and dangerous, but is it immoral to behave in a reckless and dangerous manner? Would the choice of vehicle matter?Would having an accident that hurts no one be immoral?Would having an accident that does hurt someone be immoral?Speeding is certainly illegal \ against the law, but is it immoral?Enjoy.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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Speed limits are among those laws that are based on local external political and social considerations. I don't see how any connection can be made between arbitrary laws and morality.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

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Is speeding -- driving faster than the legal limit -- immoral?

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First of, 'speeding' simply means 'moving fast'. It's only in our age of Newspeak that it came to mean 'driving faster than the legal limit'.Second, something that doesn't cause -or has little potential to cause- harm to self/others cannot and shouldn't be deemed as immoral. So, driving at an appropriate speed for the road, albeit over the speed limit, isn't and shouldn't be wrong. Driving dangerously/drunk/doped, even at below the speed limit, is wrong.Third, the speed limit varies according to region, current government and level of political-correctness. so, if it was immoral that would mean that morality is defined by laws and politicians.Speed limits have nothing to do with morality and everything to do with self-righteousness, hypocricy and social conditioning.'Nuff said.

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the bug and some days you'll be the windscreen."

That of course is the point and purpose of this thread.The purpose of morality (how an individual tries to guide their personal life) and laws (how a community tries to guide the lives of others) are similar yet entirely different.Enjoy.

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I don't know about whether it's immoral or not. All I know is after 5 tickets before I turned 18, I've become a wimpy driver. Probably why my friends don't let me drive... takes forever to get anywhere. Everyone I know tells me I drive like a grandma.Just the other day, I was in a park driving at 25 (the speed limit was 15) when a cop pulled me over. He probably let me go with a warning because tears were about to come out of my eyes.

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With perhaps a hint of traveling at a maximum possible speed. Of course. It can even be thrilling, else there would be no races of any kind. Here I disagree -- roads, even highways, are designed based on a certain speed (usually 10 mph over the posted speed limit IIRC) based on the physics of moving vehicles, so if nothing else they are indicators of the speed capacity of the road.The laws about penalties for speeding is a different matter. Are you saying it is immoral to have such laws? Do they harm those charged with speeding?Enjoy.

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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Here I disagree -- roads, even highways, are designed based on a certain speed (usually 10 mph over the posted speed limit IIRC) based on the physics of moving vehicles, so if nothing else they are indicators of the speed capacity of the road.

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Not in this country, mate. Here, they're indicators of the mentality of the decision-making oligarchy.

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The laws about penalties for speeding is a different matter. Are you saying it is immoral to have such laws?

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Not at all. I'm all for speeding laws which enforce a safe limit for the road. I'm strongly opposed to speeding laws which enforce a few people's self-righteousness and guilt-syndromes.

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Do they harm those charged with speeding?

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considering that driving four times at a few miles over the speed limit will see you lose your license and, by extension for most of us, our job, mortgage, career, family, etc, I'd say that yes they do harm people.Now, inflicting this harm on someone who knowingly endangers other people's lives is one thing. Inflicting this on someone who only drives a few miles above the ridiculously slow speed limit on their way to work is an act of oppression of the innocent. Call it immoral, if you like, I prefer to call it for what it is: ideological persecution by a totalitarian state.

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the bug and some days you'll be the windscreen."

Disagreed. There is a big moral question right here. First, what are the chances of an accident? What are the possible financial damages to other people as a result of an accident? How much will it cost in fuel to get to that speed, and is it moral to waste fuel in such a frivolous endevour. 'Certainly' is out of the window, I'm afraid. It might be immoral, it might not be. Agreed. Morality should not be decided in terms of just speed, but in terms of risk (of which speed is a factor) and the like. That depends. If you crash, then the road might need closing, it might need cleaning, the insurance company might have to pay money out, you might need tap into the public health system to get well or to be buried, your family might be without a breadmaker, the police might need to waste their time (and thus their resources) with you, maybe the fire service etc etc etc.So yes, it can be immoral to drive recklessly and dangerously. In a social world, your actions affect others - which raises questions of morality. Yes, clearly a vehicle that possibly explodes in a nuclear explosion when driven recklessly, or could even just leaks radioactive waste, or just chemical waste, can have an affect on how immoral or moral any action is with that vehicle. Having an accident is not immoral. Driving in such a manner as to potentially cause harm to other individuals or society might be, depending on your moral system, immoral. The faster you drive, the more potential for harm you have. At either end you have 0mph (not immoral at all) and 250mph (very probably immoral in most normal situations). And a sliding scale in between. The speed limits have a variety of rationales behind them - how reasonable they are is one thing, but I think we can agree that they are at least approximately right as an absolute maximum a good deal of the time. In a 30mph zone you may feel that 40mph is OK, but not much above that for example: So approximately right.Generally, I avoid speeding since it is very easy to do so and I see no compelling reason to avoid doing so. It might be debatable that driving over the speed limit is immoral, but it is less debatable that driving reasonably below the speed limit is immoral.

I think that if you're willfully disregarding the potential consequences to others that might come from operating a dangerous vehicle in a risky, reckless manner, you're probably being immoral.But that can happen under the speed limit, too. So I wouldn't say that speeding is strictly immoral on its face. I would say that reckless disregard for the consequences of your actions on other people is.

Changing speed, say from 50 to 51 mph, does not significantly alter any of these factors, for they are not related necessarily to speed per se.What you are claiming as some possible theoretical injurious outcome of speeding is really more about losing control than the speed traveled. All things being equal there is no difference between 10 mph and 100 mph -- so long as the only difference is the speed. But crashing is not necessarily a result of speed, rather it is about losing control or having some part break or malfunction - something that can happen regardless of speeding. I was also comparing (perhaps badly worded) speeding on a road with a speed limit to traveling the same speed on a surface with no speed limit (not necessarily a road or a public surface - perhaps a race track for instance): the surfaces and conditions could be identical with the only difference being a speed limit on one (and exceeded for the sake of the argument) and not on the other ... ie -- does the existence or non-existence of a speed limit change the morality of the behavior? Does the involvement of other people who impose themselves after the fact change the morality? If the reaction of officer A is different from the reaction of officer B is the morality of the behavior they are reacting to different? And is their reaction to the actual speed traveled or is it to the fact of breaking the law or causing an accident that is the issue? And yet clearly these possibilities are unrelated to the issue of speeding per se in any vehicle that is not so encumbered with potential harm. It is not speeding that makes the use of these vehicles immoral, and the choice of vehicle does not then make speeding moral or immoral. Thus if no one is harmed by speeding alone then it is (clearly?) not immoral. Yet traveling at 0 mph could harm others wanting to use a road that you are thus blocking, while traveling 250 mph on the Utah salt flats with no harm done to anyone would not be. As long as others can reasonable pass and are not harmed by delay.Enjoy.

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Well, I agree that changing your speed by only one part in 50 does not generally significantly alter these factors. That is why most people agree that if you change your speed by a factor of 1 in ten, things do start to change significantly. Remember your kinetic energy equations? No - I'm talking about combining the loss of control with speed. The faster you go, the higher the chances of you losing control become, and the more energetic any resulting collision will be. A 1 ton vehicle travelling at 10mph has about 10KJ of kinetic energy.
A 1 ton behicle travelling at 100mph has about 1MJ of kinetic energy. That is a significant difference. Right - but is more likely to happen as you tax the vehicle more. Travelling at 10mph with my hands on the steering wheel and I sneeze. I swerve a bit at worst. Travelling at 500mph with my hands on the steering wheel and I sneeze and I die and the vehicle (millions of pounds of investment) is wiped out. Look at Richard Hammond. His tyre burst while travelling at 280mph and he almost died and he had to be rescued by helicopter and be cared for -the vehicle was heavily damaged.I would say that compared with travelling down a runway at 10mph, an argument can be made that one act is less moral than another. One cannot say they are certainly morally equal acts. We would also have to weigh up the good of Hammond's incident which because of a campaign of his, resulted in (possibly temporary) increased funding by members of the public into medical helicopter response units. I was referring to accidents. A serious accident can result in police
involvement, or the fire service having to clean the roads which have been covered in debris and oil etc. This costs the public money, and the fire service/police could use that time and money for other things which might be considered 'better'. If as a result of your reckless or dangerous behaviour 170 man hours of emergency services is consumed - it could be argued that this makes reckless and dangerous behaviour immoral. This also includes playing silly buggers on a railway line that leads to the closure of the line and police time pursuing and prosecuting the miscreants. One might argue that it isn't speed per se - but you spoke of travelling at a speed that is considered reckless and dangerous. If it is reckless and dangerous, then that is a different kind of speed than sensible and safe driving speed. Correct - the important case is, is speeding in any given situation reckless or dangerous? It is reckless (and arrogant), however, for a lay person to think they are qualified to know what the maximum speed is that would make something dangerous and reckless on the fly, all the time.For instance, the road is quiet, its early afternoon and the speed limit is 20. You travel at 40 judging the road conditions to permit for that. Unexpectedly a cyclist emerges out of a hidden alley you had never known was there - he is a young boy eager to get home and he crosses into your path. The reason why authorities had put the speed limit at 20 was because it was in an area that was often utilized by school kids on the routes to and from school and the school had closed early today. Assuming you were on a road at 0mph which had traffic on it. I didn't bother disclaiming it entirely, I'm sure you get the drift. Assuming that no harm is done. However, driving at 250mph is renowned for being dangerous. If something did go wrong at that speed...well watch the video posted above to see what happens. I don't prevent them from passing, though on most roads I travel on, it is not safe to overtake. If I am driving considerably under the speed limit due to unfamiliarity I will pull over to let people pass. If I am driving near the speed limit I see no need to pull over. I feel no moral obligation to increase the risk to myself or others by either increasing my speed (and facilitate the subsequent speed of people following), or hamper my own timeliness by pulling over to accommodate for their appointments.

But it is still the losing of control that is the real issue, if control is not lost then no foul. Only if there is loss of control, which can still have lethal results for either. So let's stipulate that no loss of control is involved, no accident, no cause to involve other people. The issue is just speed.Is it immoral to go faster than the speed limit on a clear unobstructed road with optimum weather conditions? Is it more immoral to go 10mph over a 40kph limit (+25%) versus 100kph limit (+10%)?Or let's put it another way: is the setting of speed limits on roads due to some intrinsic immorality of speeding?abe: Is the purpose of speed limits and speeding laws to enforce a moral position on speeding?Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : abe

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RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
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Unrealistic. Accidents are called accidents because they are unintended. They are also unforeseeable. One can never know when a catastrophic event might occur. And it's also impossible to predict when another driver might do something stupid, or lose control of their vehicle.The immorality of driving at a dangerously high speed derives in part from the fact that it's impossible to simply stipulate away accidents.

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Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for a temporary security will lose both, and deserve neither. -- Benjamin FranklinWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat

But the issue is not driving at dangerously high speeds, but rather speeding. Why is 30 MPH moral and 31MPH immoral?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

It is equally impossible to simply stipulate away accidents in the absence of driving at dangerously high speed (unless we consider anything over 5mph to be so), for the issue of speeding or not does not define whether an accident occurs or not. Whether we are speeding or not.But let us also consider comparing behavior in the past tense, after it has happened. In this situation we can stipulate that the behavior in consideration did not involve accident.Is the purpose of speed limits and laws to enforce some inherent morality regarding speed? If this were so, then would not there be only one speed limit?Enjoy.

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