"The estimates suggest that slowing down slightly by about three kilometres an hour would cost average drivers about three minutes daily in trip time, but save them about three hours annually in overall survival,"

My spidey-sense tingles every time they change units in the middle of a sentence.

Assuming this 3 minutes per day is an average over the whole year - 3 minutes per day * 365 days = 1095 minutes, or about 18.25 hours / year.  

So let's rephrase that: "The estimates suggest that slowing down slightly by about three kilometres an hour would cost average drivers about 18 hours annually in trip time, but save them about three hours annually in overall survival".

Every hour spent behind the wheel represents a 20-minute loss in life expectancy...

< speed = fewer speeding tickets.  < speed = fewer accidents

Fewer tickets + fewer accidents = Big Savings On Your Car Insurance

Minty fresh

I used to live in a very rural area, about 15 miles from the nearest town (and pretty much the entire 15 mile drive was through the countryside).  Now I live in an urban/suburban mixed area and drive about 7.5 miles to work through a very built up residential/commercial area.  When I lived in the rural area I would frequently speed, but never got into an accident (other than hitting some deer, which probably would have happened anyway).  In the urban area I generally drive at or under the speed limit, but have been rear-ended twice (my wife was hit once when I wasn't with her, and she's an even more cautious driver than me).  My point?  It's all about context.  Speeding in one set of traffic conditions might be perfectly safe, while in another set it might not matter what you do because you're going to get hit no matter what.  This quote from the article sums it up:

"Even on a short trip, your risk of a serious crash is a function of two factors: No. 1 is your skill and No. 2 is the skill of every other driver out there on the road with you at the time," he said. "Even a short trip can put you into contact with 100 other drivers, any one of which can ruin your life forever."

The lesson to be taken from that is, in my mind, the opposite of what they're suggesting - basically, whether you slow down or not doesn't matter as much as whether the incompetent drivers out there slow down.  If you live in an urban area, where you're interacting with many other cars on the road, what other people do is probably going to have far more of an impact than what you yourself do.  A broad request for everyone to slow down probably won't make much difference, because the people already driving responsibly will be the ones that slow up, while the incompetents will just keep speeding and causing accidents.

Ce n'est pas une pipe. C'est une signature.

The more you drive, the less intelligent you are.