1."A faster moving car spends less time on the road."
True, but it still covers the same distance, and objects such as cars and pedestrians have less time to move aside.( If you were traveling at lets say 1,000 MPH almost nothing could avoid being hit by you.) As speed increases the turning radius of your vehicle increases. (Think of the turning circle of a military jet). The factors of stopping distance, turning radius, kinetic energy, and slower objects inability to avoid you actually multiply together mathematically which makes the original kinetic energy hypothesis incredibly conservative.
2. "A faster moving vehicle also makes more noise and is more noticeable to pedestrians and other drivers."
Unfortunately our Insights are very quiet and their low CD means they don?t make much wind noise. Also unfortunately my car is a grey colour which is not that noticeable. Fortunately, In Canada we must drive with our lights on, and this really does help!
3. "One could also argue that a faster moving driver would be more alert."
I have to agree with you there. That is one of the reasons I really like manual transmissions. Automatics put me to sleep! Boring. :roll: The Insight handling tends to keep one alert too.
I didn"t want to frighten anyone. I like to drive fast myself, and I believe that our cars are safer than average and handle better than average. Arguing for the case for speed in an Insight is the fact that our cars have a low CD. As a result higher speeds do not carry the same heavy penalty with regard to overcoming wind resistance as a boxier vehicle. If EPA highway ratings were done at 90 MPH, cars like the Insight (.25 CD) would be waaaaaay ahead of everything except the Prius II (.26 CD)
