On February 27th, the Twitter account faustianwigger posted this video of a driver weaving in and out of traffic at breakneck speeds. While the video was originally posted by the YouTube channel wheres981, faustian champions the driving style, and a concerning number of others do too. Reckless drivers are shamelessly exposing their speeder culture online, and it is as dangerous as it is extraordinarily idiotic. 


Advertisement





Just one day after sharing this video, faustian made another post claiming to have crashed his car. He also stated that he was uninsured, and would be starting a GoFundMe to pay for the damages. However, the image he posted actually comes from this 2013 Reddit post, and the tweet was likely designed to troll his critics. 





As demonstrated by these posts, speeding culture is not just drivers driving recklessly, but also using a warped interpretation of data to justify their actions. The relationship between speed and accidents is more nuanced than you might think, and as these speeders like to point out, excessively slow drivers are technically involved in and cause more accidents than faster drivers. It is also true that raising the speed limit on a road does not typically lead to a higher frequency of accidents, and roads like Germany's Autobahn are significantly safer than America's highways. 



However, the safest speed is neither fast nor slow, but the same speed as everybody else. Accidents don't increase with higher speed limits, as long as everyone goes with the flow of traffic. And when ad campaigns shove "speed kills" down our throats, they have a point. Accidents at higher speeds will always result in more fatalities, for every car involved; hence why speed limits stay where they do. The Autobahn works because of Germany's exceptionally strict left-lane passing policy; something absent from any road in the United States, (and if you've ever driven it you know it's a traffic jam most of the time anyway). 


Faustian also posted a since-deleted video of himself driving even more recklessly than the initial clip, and wheres981's YouTube channel consists of utterly ludicrous speed runs, including a compilation of fleeing from the police. So when these guys brag that what they're doing is safe, just remember that it is not, and never will be safer than just going with the flow. 






And if you wondered what kind of people we're dealing with, here is the pinned tweet at the top of faustianwigger's Twitter page.