But in certain places the optimal speed to drive at (i.e. minimizing some linear combination of probability of dying, time spent, fuel used, etc.) may exceed the legal speed limit (i.e. maximizing revenue from speed tickets).
Then again, going fast and then braking right before a radar may itself be quite dangerous.
I think I have seen it claimed that (because driving faster is more dangerous) driving faster, especially near or above the speed limit, is generally a net expected loss in time when you offset low-probability long-time hospital stays against high-probability short-time improvements in travel time.
Back of envelope: your overall accident risk per mile driven is on the order of 10^-6 to 10^-5. Suppose the speed limit is 60mph and you drive for a mile at 70mph, and suppose this gives you an extra 10^-6 chance of an accident. It also saves you 1/7 of a minute....
What can I purchase with $100 that will be the best thing I can buy to make my life better?
I've decided to budget some regular money to improving my life each month. I'd like to start with low hanging fruit for obvious reasons - but when I sat down to think of improvements, I found myself thinking of the same old things I'd already been planning to do anyway... and I'd like out of that rut.
Constraints/more info:
Background:
This is a question I recently posed to my local Less Wrong group and we came up with a few good ideas, so I thought I'd share the discussion with the wider community and see what we can come up with. I'll add the list we came up with later on in the comments...
It'd be great to have a repository of low-hanging fruit for things that can be solved with (relatively affordable) amounts of money. I'd personally like to go through the list - look at candidates that sound like they'd be really useful to me and then make a prioritised list of what to work on first.