One of the newest videos to come out of Volkswagen's "fun theory" initiative involves trying to get people to go the speed limit. As with the other projects that have come out of this the idea was to use fun to get people to do something good. Here is what happened.
Its a nice idea where speed limits are in place at proper levels in order to make road travel safe and efficient. Of course anybody whose ever driven on an American highway ever knows that speed limits aren't always in place at proper levels in order to make road travel safe and efficient. Case and point.
As the video shows if you drive the speed limit, which is almost always lower than the flow of traffic, it is actually far more dangerous than speeding. Of course that begs the question of why speed limits are so low. The answer to that question is also the reason for the ultimate downfall of the scheme in the first video.
Governments don't set speed limits in order to protect people on the roads they set them to protect their own purse strings. Speeding tickets are consistent supply of money for governments and they aren't about to change speed limits just because they're unfair or incredibly absurd. Similarly they aren't about to share the revenues from those tickets with people just cause they aren't speeding.