> Speed is just one of many factors, and perhaps the least significant, in the frequency and probability of traffic accidents. Speed is absolutely a factor in the severity of an accident, but not the probability of one after accounting for all other variables.

That's because you are afflicted with Car Brain and are only thinking about speeding affecting other cars and not speeding affecting acidents involving cars and pedestrians or cyclists. Municipalities going to "war on speed" are protecting human lives of people outside of the car.

High pedestrian traffic areas, such as school zones or city down town areas with one way traffic lanes enjoy the lowest speed limits because external factors are more important than the vehicle that is driving. These aren't areas where people are most frequently cited for speed violations, though, because those external factors are generally enough to enforce low speeds naturally.

Freeways, where drivers are overwhelmingly more likely to be cited for speed violations, are not high pedestrian areas.

Keeping sufficient distance doesn’t account for other lanes, where people could be entering or exiting your lane. Keeping all cars moving within 20-30 mph of each other make everything else more predictable. Saying that speed is not related to probability is just false. You can mitigate risks at higher speeds to a point, but higher speed is more risky just by the fact of human reaction times and that roads are not a simplistic system where the only factor is distance to the car directly in front of you.

> Keeping sufficient distance doesn’t account for other lanes, where people could be entering or exiting your lane.

That is already accounted for in existing traffic laws, such as failure to yield or failure to signal.

You accept speed as a huge factor in the severity of an accident but cannot understand the war against speeding?

The speed limits are set artificially low to try to reduce fleet fuel consumption, yet are well known to increase the probability of accidents since they violate the 85th percentile principle. Attempts to enforce the artificially low speed limits cause more collisions while claiming to be intended to prevent collisions. Given that, it makes perfect sense why he cannot understand it. It is unfit for its stated purpose.

Even more severe than high speed is driving while sleepy, but nobody is proposing a law to regulate sleep. Also more severe than speed is the mass of vehicle. Severity is also far more impacted by vehicle mass, but I don't see any movement towards regulating vehicles be as heavy as possible.

I can come up with many more examples to illustrate the stupidity of focusing on severity and speed versus frequency and probability.

Limiting the speed of chronic speeders doesn't seem like it maximizes tax revenue, though.