Speed is an impact multiplier when the accident happens, but I doubt speed in and of itself is the root cause of most accidents. The article itself points to Speed causing 14% of costs vs. Alcohol + Distraction accounting for 49% of costs. Another study showed speeding was involved in 9% of property-damage-only crashes and 13% of crashes with injuries or fatalities in 2021[1].
I'd rather law enforcement spend their limited time cracking down on drunk driving and all the various distractions that actually tend to lead to accidents, rather than the easy job of "farming" people going 10mph over the limit for steady revenue, or nerfing cars to some arbitrary limit. And not just drunk driving. I took a bus ride the other day and just people-watched into cars, and about 60-80% of drivers were scrolling on their smartphones (in-hand) while driving. If you fined every single one of them $100 every time they picked up their phones, you could probably fully fund your city's public safety budget. Maybe the entire city's budget.
NHTSA says here [0] that it's a factor in 29% of fatalities.
I think there's also reason to suspect that number is underreported. The responding officer has to make the judgement on the scene that speed was a factor and decide to write that down on the accident report.
We should really be doing a lot more tracking of this kind of data using telemetry in the cars themselves (ideally as required by insurance).
A lot of speed-induced accidents probably happen below the posted speed limit, but above whatever speed is safe given the conditions of the road at that moment (wet, icy, foggy, etc.)
To borrow the form of the GP comment, there is no particular reason a phone should allow itself to be used when its owner is driving a car. Creating some arrangement of sensors and systems that could lock the phones of drivers may not be straight forward and would require buy-in from both phone manufacturers and car manufacturers, but seems possible in principle. The car could scan the drivers' face, then interrogate nearby phones, asking them if the driver's face matches the phone's owner. The phone could then lock itself if it does. There would be technical and privacy hurdles to overcome, but nothing impossible.
I'd rather law enforcement spend their limited time cracking down on drunk driving and all the various distractions that actually tend to lead to accidents, rather than the easy job of "farming" people going 10mph over the limit for steady revenue, or nerfing cars to some arbitrary limit. And not just drunk driving. I took a bus ride the other day and just people-watched into cars, and about 60-80% of drivers were scrolling on their smartphones (in-hand) while driving. If you fined every single one of them $100 every time they picked up their phones, you could probably fully fund your city's public safety budget. Maybe the entire city's budget.
1: https://www.nhtsa.gov/crash-data-systems/crash-report-sampli...