Sure those other guys are in the wrong too. My point is that killing someone because you didn't want to take a cab home is horrific but so to is killing someone because it's fun to drive fast, to shave 15 minutes off a four hour trip, because you just have to know right now who won the packers game, or because the kids are bickering in the back seat. The resulting injury and death aren't the result of accidents but crimes. Crimes rather more serious than possessing a few grams of cocaine base I might add.
> ...but so to is killing someone because it's fun to drive fast...
How often do you think this happens?
The NHTSA has a talking points primer for prosecutors with a few numbers on unsafe driving. The numbers are outdated, but they give us something to work with: 13,000 people were injured or killed between 1990 and 1997 because of aggressive driving -- a broad category that includes not just speeding, but also tailgating, lane changing, and improper passing.
That's 2,000 people per year for that period, and since that period, the number of vehicular fatalities has fallen off of a cliff: "The 32,367 traffic fatalities in 2011 were the lowest in 62 years" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in...).
Every single time I have looked, I have been unable to find any evidence whatsoever that doing 85mph on the freeway in safe conditions significantly increases the chances of injuring yourself or others vs. doing 70 in the same conditions.
Yet speeding is this one traffic behavior that people really seem to get riled up about.
I have a suspicion that the actual reasons for this are that speeders tend to be unrepentant, and that it's a flagrant breaking of the law -- it's visible and people notice it more than possibly any other driving habit. Those things together seem to trigger some people's moral crusader button.
I won't quite go so far as to defend speeding. I'm never the fastest driver on the road (anymore). But if someone really wants to get going about the dangers of speeding, I'll be happy to point out all of the other driving behaviors that are at least as dangerous -- probably at least one or two of which the person themselves is guilty of, as we all are.
