So, there’s a balance. If you don’t build enough room to do anything but drive slow to be safe, the moment someone is fast, the chances of a crash are very high.
If you build a road that has too much clearance, you end up with people driving faster, which is okay because there’s more room for people to be out of the way, likely reducing the amount of crashes. The drawback to this is, if people drive faster, the fewer crashes that do occur are at higher speeds, which are more deadly.
So the ratio of number of crashes to severity of crashes is what the end result is.
Granted, I live in the US where single lane country back-roads will have people in trucks going down at 50MPH randomly, so I don’t know if Europeans drive more cautiously. I know their driving tests are more comprehensive for sure.
100% agreed. If I don’t set cruise control, I usually speed on my commute due to me just focusing on the grip of my car, distance to/from other cars, and perceived speed. It’s just hard to gauge speed without checking often on my speedometer, which isn’t as safe. Even just trying to follow at a constant distance in the right lane is difficult because the semi trucks usually end up having wide speed differences at random times, meaning 60mph-80mph depending on the hill usually.