But in certain places the optimal speed to drive at ... may exceed the legal speed limit
I'll make a stronger claim: in many places (e.g. US highways) the optimal speed to drive does exceed the legal speed limit for the simple reason that the probability of an accident is a function of the difference between your speed and the speed of the traffic around you, and the traffic on interstates generally goes faster than the speed limit.
On the other hand I've never been pulled over when doing the same speed as cars around me, and I've been speeding for over a decade at this point.
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.