This whole thread confirms it. Speed limits are always a burden for reckless drivers, but never an issue for people like me who drive under the limit. They should reflect on themselves about that but I doubt they are capable of it.
You’re not American, are you? The number of roads marked 55 mph on which nearly every vehicle is moving 75 mph is very high. Driving under the speed limit would be hazardous to yourself and everyone else.
Other countries tend to follow the 85th percentile for setting speed limits, so driving under the speed limit is actually safe there. People in them do not realize that a road that would be 140 km/h in Europe is 90 km/h in the U.S.
I have tried driving at the speed limit in NYS. So many near collisions occurred from other drivers cutting me off that it was clear that the speed limit is unsafe.
This also explains why the best engineers are also the best at admitting what they don't know. Which is something we have worked into our interviews - amazing how easy it is to spot a poor engineer by asking what their latest failure was.
I think that's the opposite of Dunning-Kruger — impostor syndrome, or maybe "curse of knowledge".
When skilled people either underestimate how hard it is to do something, or gauge a complex task that they have expertise in as easier than it actually is.
This is generally true for actions at every level of risk. Designing around how humans will actually behave is better than trying to artificially restrict everyone's behavior preemptively.
There is a difference between design that tries to prevent someone from shooting themselves in the foot (designing around how users interact), and design that seeks to influence or limit their behavior. The former is safety, the latter is manipulation or restriction.
Giving system owners RBAC controls so they can choose who is an admin, versus not giving system owners admin privileges at all.
But more importantly, the point of my comment is that the axiom that everyone thinks themselves competent enough, is true at every level of risk. No matter how low risk something is, someone can and will still overestimate their capabilities and muck it up. If we're using that as justification to impose restrictions, there would be no actions that someone could not justify restricting.
That seems like the result of a normal skill level distribution that allows some people to take more advanced actions at the same risk level. Interesting how there is never a push to punish people who actually cause wrecks with this technology.
Every boy racer thinks “look at me, controlling the vehicle easily at 90mph! I’m clearly amongst the high-skilled group!” but the skill that actually matters is reaction time to sudden unexpected hazards (and consequent need for stopping distance) and I don’t think most people get enough practice at that to be materially better than average at it.
> the skill that actually matters is reaction time to sudden unexpected hazards (and consequent need for stopping distance)
More important than that is actually learning to predict hazards. Over years of experience, what was unexpected becomes hedging risks. Tight corners in residential areas, parked cars blocking visibility, managing distance not just from the car in front of you but behind you. That obviously requires slowing down in those sections.
One of the few places unrestricted speed makes sense, is a fully enclosed highway with very little traffic and enough lanes, during the daytime.
I see those rarely, mostly (SoCal) I see people going much faster than other traffic on a 6 to 12 lane freeway that is packed with cars, cutting people off, swerving across lanes, not signaling, treating driving like a video game except the people they kill don't get to restart the game.
More like a normal cognitive level distribution that let some people put themselves and bystanders in unnecessary danger because they "know" they can handle it.
