Speeding Persuasive Speech

The motor vehicle, an invention created with the purpose of getting from point A to point

B at a rate much faster than walking or a horse and buggy. Speed limits have now been placed to

keep our now advanced cars in check, to prevent fatal or life altering accidents. These limits

almost always are broken by common drivers. Breaking these limits have become a part of many

cultures. Cars going at top speeds are seen in movies, TV show, and even in sports such as

NASCAR. So in saying that my group and I impose the question, why is it that drivers tend to go

well above the speed limit, why is going the speed limit frowned upon and seen as people not

knowing how to drive, what kind of people are driving too fast, why has it become a part of

cultures

to put your life at risk by going unnecessarily fast, and most importantly what would
happen if someone were to go the exact speed limit on any sort of road, whether it be county,
highway or state.

Our first part of our experiment started with a series of interviews with the students, and

faculty of Hartsville, and the citizens of the small town. What we found is that the students were

generally the ones to quickly assume that going the speed limit is ridiculous, that if they were

stuck behind someone going the speed they would become frustrated. Surprisingly the younger

faculty members and citizens of Hartsville were also quick to jump to the same conclusion. They

all see it as unnecessary for people to go that slow, especially if the presence of law enforcement

was not there. While we found that younger generations of people believe that going above the

speed limit, older generation prefer to go much slower. They said that it make them feel safer

knowing that they are going the speed limit and are at a less risk of getting into an accident.

First we started out on the normal streets of South Carolina where the average speed was

about 45 miles per hour. We decided for the normal roads to go a little under the speed limit for

more results. The trend in our interviews made its presence in the actual experiment. We were

met by angry drivers the honked relentlessly and even had a tenacious young lady tailgate us

for
about two miles. However elderly people did not mind at all, in fact they went the same pace as
us and consistently stayed there. It seemed as if on the normal roads that older people are
complacent with going slower than normal even though most people go fast.
Next we went onto the highway rods to see if we can get more results. We ended up
receiving even more anger on the highway roads as compared to the normal roads. Surprisingly
though we meet aggression from both young and older people. We theorized it was because
people use these roads to rush to their destination as fast as possible and when they encounter a
slow driver they get easily agitated. On the highway roads we were tailgated honked at and even
yelled at by very aggressive people that were trying to go well above the speed limit. The speed
limit was 60 miles per hour and we decided to go 55, everyone around us however was pushing
70-75 miles per hour.
Through our experimentation we proved that to going fast on any type of road is the
norm. People seemed to get very upset when they encounter a driver that is going below or just
at the speed limit because they feel as if they are not going fast enough. Younger generations of
people are more likely to express anger or aggression but the elderly did show a little anger too.