Speeding causes thousands of deaths each year in almost every country. Going two or three kilometers over the limit might not hurt anyone, but moving significantly faster than the speed limit can kill, and not just because you might lose control of the car.
Speeding is dangerous firstly because cars are not really designed to travel at high speeds. Though your car may be capable of high speeds, that extra horsepower is there so you can get up hills, not so that you can drive quickly on flat roads. At high speeds, your brake mechanism may overheat and fail. If your car is moving to quickly, it may simply be incapable of an emergency stop.
Speeding is also unsafe for your fellow drivers. When you move too quickly, they may accidently merge into your car, because you move in and out of their blind spots too quickly for them to react. Remember that people’s reaction times are appropriate to running speeds, not car speeds. Even though we have adjusted to cars, we simply can’t react properly to something that moves at 180kph.
Furthermore, accidents that occur at high speeds are almost always fatal, even if the participants are wearing seat belts and their airbags inflate. Innocent people die because people drive too quickly and cause accidents.
Finally, speeding is dangerous because the driver has much less control of the car. Most lanes are too narrow for high speeds, so a slight turn of the steering wheel may move you out of your lane and into oncoming traffic. Once you start skidding in a car, you can’t stop, it’s almost always impossible to regain control of the car, especially if you skid at high speeds. Also, though you might have a lot of faith in your reaction time and driving abilities, your reflexes are also not designed to react as quickly as you are driving. Inevitably, you’ll be forced to pay attention to some things over others: you simply can’t take in everything that is happening on the road at each moment.
In rainy weather, the risks of speeding grow even more; wheels can’t grip wet ground as easily, and it is much harder to maintain control of the car.
An accident in a speeding car is more likely and more dangerous than an accident at the speed limit is; so don’t imagine that you can always control the car at high speeds. You can’t.