Speed Limits for Dummies

Speed Limit Sign

Although our researchers spend most of their time combing the mother lode of misinformation (aka eHow) for dumbassery, a few of them do rummage around at other sites from time to time. Take, for instance, Hubages.com: that's the second most prolific source of stupidity in our files. The problem with it (and most of the other remaining content farms) is that the indexing is crap. You gotta hand it to Demand Media / Leaf Group for making it easy to find their bushwa. Whatever the case, today we're going to visit a repeat offender from HubPages, one Melvin Porter. This time Melvin's facts are (mostly) correct, it's his presentation and the conclusions he draws from those facts that out staff found lacking. Feast your eyes on "Speeding on the Road Does Not Save that Much Time: A Mathematical Analysis."

Porter's point is pretty simple: being in a hurry doesn't save you time. Melvin's problem? He doesn't prove his point. He opens his topic by complaining that

"To me it happens very often that in a span of about five miles I believe about 25 or more cars would have passed me like I am hardly moving. When I see this I often murmured to myself 'Why are these people driving so fast when I know it will not make that much difference time wise'. [sic]"

Porter's grammatical shortcomings notwithstanding, his logic fails immediately: 25 cars passing one within five miles could be unremarkable in an urban setting or amazing on a back road in the middle of Nevada (where one of our staff once drove for three hours without seeing a single car). But we digress. Melvin proceeds to "prove" that you're not saving time by speeding by explaining how to calculate travel time:

"Some of us know the following simple physics equation to calculate constant speed, 'Speed = Distance / Time' or as words 'speed = distance divided by time' but we need to calculate 'time' in this case. We already know the speed and distant, therefore, we must rearrange the equation to calculate the 'time' required to transverse [sic] the 100 mile distant..." You'd think someone who (sort of) knows the word "traverse" would know that "distant" is an adjective; the noun is "distance." And heaven help anyone stupid enough to need help understanding the division sign... Whatever the case, Porter comes up with an example: two cars traveling 100 miles, one at 65 MPH and one at 75 MPH.

After a torturous interlude, Melvin reveals – Tada! – that the person traveling 75 MPH covers the distance twelve minutes faster. Yes, the math's correct (we checked it). The point, however, isn't proven: the speedster has saved 12/92 minutes, arriving 13% sooner than the other driver. Melvin may think it's "a measly 12 minutes," but hasn't he ever heard that "time is money"?

Porter goes on to bore his readers with a discussion of driving 1000 miles: according to Melvin, his

"Driver B must almost literally drive two times faster than Driver A to see a significant saving [sic] in time..." 

But Melvin: who gets to define a "significant saving [sic] in time"? You define it as getting there in half the time, but others might see it as getting there ten minutes earlier! And BTW, that "almost literally" in there is unnecessary...
No, Melvin blew it: only a moron doesn't know that you'll get there somewhat sooner if you drive faster. What Melvin should have pointed out is that a lead-footed driver loses time having to stop for fuel more often and runs the risk of being ticketed for speeding (which also eats into your time). But no, our Dumbass of the Day had to lecture everyone on fifth-grade math (with sixth-grade grammar). Sheesh!

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