I can’t help but think that our culture-wide experiment in the normalization of deviance when it comes to speed limits (both how they are set and how they are observed) has something to do with this.
A crash at 55 mph would have 40% less energy than at 71 mph.
"At 3 seconds prior to the crash and up to the time of impact with the crash attenuator, the Tesla’s speed increased from 62 to 70.8 mph, with no precrash braking or evasive steering movement detected."
A crash at 55 mph would have 40% less energy than at 71 mph.