Whether or not 100% enforcement is ever possible, I think speeding is penalized only because it's an easy thing to objectively measure, even if you can't get 100% of it. This is sort of the McNamara Fallacy in action.
But the really dangerous people on the highway aren't typical speeders who might go say 85-90mph when the speed limit is 55-65 mph. In traffic that isn't dense and clustered, high speeds in and of themselves are not a big problem.
The really dangerous people on the highway are those who aggressively change lanes in dense traffic, weaving in and out of traffic trying to find the narrowest possible gap to slip through where no safe passing gap exists. This is much harder to objectively track and measure unless a cop happens to sneak up on the dangerous driver and sees them firsthand.
Counterintuitively, I believe that the highways are made far less safe from speed limits because this tends to cluster up all traffic together so impatient people (who are going to exist no matter what) are compelled to dangerously weave in and out of dense clusters of cars which is the most likely thing to cause an accident.
If you made one or two lanes available with no speed limit so the aggressive drivers could be free to have their way and don't have to interact through slow drivers, I'd bet that most problems on the road would be solved. You want to create a situation where impatient people don't have to interact with the slower drivers.
But the really dangerous people on the highway aren't typical speeders who might go say 85-90mph when the speed limit is 55-65 mph. In traffic that isn't dense and clustered, high speeds in and of themselves are not a big problem.
The really dangerous people on the highway are those who aggressively change lanes in dense traffic, weaving in and out of traffic trying to find the narrowest possible gap to slip through where no safe passing gap exists. This is much harder to objectively track and measure unless a cop happens to sneak up on the dangerous driver and sees them firsthand.
Counterintuitively, I believe that the highways are made far less safe from speed limits because this tends to cluster up all traffic together so impatient people (who are going to exist no matter what) are compelled to dangerously weave in and out of dense clusters of cars which is the most likely thing to cause an accident.
If you made one or two lanes available with no speed limit so the aggressive drivers could be free to have their way and don't have to interact through slow drivers, I'd bet that most problems on the road would be solved. You want to create a situation where impatient people don't have to interact with the slower drivers.