Because modern-day vehicles can travel at such a high rate of speed, in which, the driver of that vehicle, doesn’t even really notice how fast the car is traveling, because the ride is often fairly smooth, we don’t seem to comprehend that the faster a vehicle travels, the less time we have to react to adverse events, and further to the point, the greater the velocity of a given vehicle, the more damage that will be done should that vehicle encounter an obstacle, such as another vehicle, or a deer, or a human being.
The bottom line is that most drivers simply want to get to their destination as quickly as they can. Given that the roads that vehicles travel upon lend themselves to driving at a fairly high speed, this signifies that drivers are going to drive their car about as fast as they feel that they can safely handle, limited only by restraints such as vehicle traffic, weather, and speed limits.
The rub when it comes to the speed that cars travel is that those driving the cars have difficulty in conceptualizing how fast they are traveling and thereby how dangerous it can be, when an unforeseen obstacle gets in their way, thereby providing them a limited amount of time to avoid that obstacle or to brake with enough force to slow down the car, sufficiently. In other words, while there are many reasons why we have car accidents, one of the factors why there are so many car accidents is the traveling speed of a car, of which, it has to be said, that the slower a vehicle is traveling, the less potential damage there will be to all that are involved in an accident.
This then would presuppose that when it comes to vehicle safety and because cars travel so fast, more needs to be done to preclude damaging accidents, which signifies that braking power, including the automatic usage of brakes when a collision is imminent, along with more robust safety belts, restraints, airbags, and other safety devices which are being developed or contemplated upon, have a definite role to play. While it could be said, that lowering speed limits would also lower car fatalities and reduce car accidents, the fact of the matter is that today’s drivers routinely violate speed limits, so this probably isn’t going to do enough to change much -- though, the usage of smart speed limits, that take into account weather conditions, traffic patterns, and frequency of accidents on certain stretches of roads, could be of real assistance in this area.
Another thing that would be helpful would be the designing of vehicles that utilize less overall weight to the vehicle while maintaining structural integrity, because the more weight a given vehicle has in conjunction with its speed, the greater the impact there will be when a collision occurs. Indeed, when it comes to vehicles, it has to be said, that while governmental regulations have been of help in improving driver safety, more could be done to increase that safety, by concentrating on the recognition that the traveling speed of vehicles needs to be addressed, more forthrightly.