Benefits of a Limitless Highway
Of all the senseless laws, speeding may be one of them. Still, it is a legal reality, and speeding is a social norm, worldwide. When we saw this article about a driver caught speeding at 172 m.p.h. in a Porsche Turbo, we couldn’t help but smile. Nice ride, nice speed. See the article here: BBC News.
The reason we analyse the story in this edition of BeyondTheKM isn’t because we are jealous (we are), rather the analysis to be made is the correlation to automotive advancement and the speed limit.
Point one: speed kills. A legal argument that is commonly made by legislators is that increasing speed limits increases the number of deaths related to speed. We have never seen irrefutable studies to this point, but we have to concede that driving, in general and at any speed, can kill. We can generally assume that a positive correlation exists between the increased speed and increased deadly accidents. It is also true that despite increased speed limits over the years, cars have gotten safer and deaths from speed is not correlated to that increase in some cases from 55 mph to 75 mph in many US states.
Point two: countries with high speed limits or none at all have a competitive business advantage. Talk to any Japanese GT race car driver and they will argue that Japan which has a lower average speed limit than Germany is slower to develop new car technologies related to performance and handling than their German counterparts. The anecdotal argument is simple. In a country with roads where people can travel 300 KM per hour, people will travel that, even at the risk of spending a little bit more on petrol. At those speeds, drivers must be better trained (a solution for legislators everywhere) and car companies must produce better cars.
We think that the advantages in handling, performance, and technology that Germans have over Asian and American counterparts give them an advantage in the marketplace. This is the reason why buyers will pay so much for BMW M, Audi S, and AMG series vehicles. Cars are better built, stiffer, have better engines and brakes because consumers demand to drive 300 KPH. Simple as that.
Lexus has recently launched an AMG division of it’s own called the F series. It seems that while decades behind the Germans, the Japanese are finally getting the hint. Speed may kill, but it also pays.