放纵疾驰，英年早逝
英文部分选自经济学人Leaders版块
Road safety
道路安全
France’s contentious speed-limit reduction is a model for others
法国限速值下调虽惹争议，此举却应为各国之典范
WHILE Emmanuel Macron’s conflict with the strikers may be the hottest topic of conversation in French cities, la France profonde is exercised about another aspect of presidential authority. From July 1st, the limit on single-carriageway rural roads will be reduced from 90kph (55mph) to 80kph (see article). The government maintains that this will save 300-400 lives a year. But opinion amid the pastis and the boules is solidly against the reduction.
正当埃马纽埃尔·马克龙 (Emmanuel Macron) 与罢工者之间的矛盾成为城中最热议的话题时，总统权威的另外一面却在法国乡间得到体现。自七月一日起，乡间单幅公路的限速值降将从原来的每小时九十公里（55英里） 下调至每小时八十公里。政府坚称此举一年将能挽回三四百条人命。但是老百姓在茶余饭后却表达了对限速值下调的坚决反对。
注：
1.single carriageway
单幅公路指的是对向车道之间没有隔离带/绿化带，对向车流靠路面上所画交通线进行分隔
2.dual carriageway
双幅公路指的是对向车道之间有隔离带/绿化带，对向车流靠路面的隔离带进行分隔
This decision is no Jupiterian decree, imposed arbitrarily by the powers in Paris on resentful rurals. Humanity’s love of speed needs to be tempered by considerations of safety and pollution. So the government set the costs of reducing the speed limit on various sorts of roads against the benefits, and found that the sums came out in favour of a lower limit. Such cost-benefit analyses may seem cold-hearted. They involve putting a price on life and balancing it against time gained. But France is right to make a decision involving such trade-offs. Would that other countries were so rational.
该项决策并非“丘比特式”的法令。巴黎当局权力机关恣意强制推行该项决策，无视忿忿不平的农村人民。但是出于对人身安全和环境污染的考虑，政府又不得不对人类追求速度与激情的天性稍加遏制。因此政府把在各类道路下调限速值所产生的成本与收益进行比较，最终总结出成本较低的限速值。这种成本收益分析看似冷血。他们给生命标价，把价格和人活于世的时间对等比照。但是法国当局做出包含此种得失权衡的决定是正确的。希望其他国家也能明智如法国。
注：
1.Jupiterian :
朱庇特是古罗马神话中的众神之王，相当于希腊神话中的宙斯，他统管天、地、诸神，其特点是威严、专横统治国家。相关新闻 法国第一夫人谈马克龙“朱庇特”：
http://mini.eastday.com/mobile/170615081817976.html
2.Jupiterian decree
http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-france-macron-20171003-story.html
Macron once said he wanted to be a "Jupiterian" leader, unchallenged and detached from trivialities, like the Roman god of the skies. But the mundane challenges of governing — and a series of public relations missteps — have dragged the political neophyte swiftly down to earth.
Because road deaths have neither much annual variation nor a politically interesting cause, they get little attention. Yet they are still the world’s eighth-biggest cause of death. Even in rich countries, where they are in long-term decline, they remain significant. That is particularly true in America, where 40,327 people died on the roads in 2016, around the same number as were killed by breast cancer. Road deaths have fallen more slowly in America than in the rest of the rich world—by less in percentage terms between 1972 and 2011 than in any of the other 25 countries studied in a paper in the American Journal of Public Health. Had they fallen as fast as in the top seven performers, America would have avoided 20,000 deaths a year.
因为道路死亡数每年不会有太大的变动，也不是一个让人感兴趣的政治问题，所以很少得到关注。但它依然是世界上第八大死亡原因。长期以来，虽然道路死亡人数在发达国家有所下降，但依然数目庞大。在美国尤其如此，2016年有40327人死于交通事故，和死于乳腺癌的人数大致相当。根据《美国公共健康期刊（American Journal of Public Health）》的一篇论文对1972年至2011年期间美国和其他25个发达国家的道路死亡人数下降百分率的研究，发现美国的降幅比其他发达国家都小，道路死亡数下降速度最慢。如果美国的道路死亡下降速度能和该研究中最快的七个国家一样，每年就能避免2万人的死亡。
That is partly because speed limits have been going up in America, offsetting the gains from safer cars. In 1974, in response to the oil crisis, the federal government took control of speed limits and set them at 55mph; the law was relaxed in 1987 and repealed in 1995, with power to set speed limits being returned to the states. Since then they have, by and large, been rising. Six states now have maximums of 80mph; in Texas, the maximum is 85mph.
这个问题部分原因是美国最高时速一直在上涨，抵消了更安全汽车带来的好处。1974年，为应对石油危机，联邦政府掌握了最高时速的制定权并将之设定在55英里/时，该法规在1987年被放宽，并于1995年被废除，同时，制定最高时速标准的权力也返还给各州。从那时起，最高时速大体上一直在升高。现在有6个州的最高时速是80英里/时，而在德克萨斯州，最高时速已达85英里/时。
No doubt America’s size, self-image and love of freedom lie behind those increases, but they have also been encouraged by the way speed limits are set. The main factor which state authorities look at is how fast people drive. Speed limits are set at the 85th percentile of prevailing speeds. That has the advantage of keeping the law in line with the behaviour of the majority of drivers. But, as the National Transportation Safety Board pointed out in a report last year, it can lead to an “undesirable cycle” whereby the speed limit goes up, so people drive faster, so the speed limit is raised. A cost-benefit analysis of increases from 1987 to 1996 carried out by an academic suggests that they should not have been allowed. It seems likely that current limits on many roads are too high.
毫无疑问，美国广阔的面积、美国人的自我形象和对自由的热爱是限速标准不断提高的原因，但同时它们也受到了限速上调方式的影响。限速标准设置为85%的司机不超过的速度。这样做的好处是使法律与大部分驾驶员的行为保持一致。但是，正如国家交通运输安全委员会去年在一篇报道中指出，这样做会导致“恶性循环”：当限速提高，人们就开得越快，最后限速又提高。，
一位学者对1987年至1996年的上调进行了成本效益分析，认为
限速压根不应该被提高。目前许多道路的限速都太高了。
Of course, down is not always the right direction for speed limits. In the end, the only really safe speed for a car is zero, but people are prepared to take risks to get about, and speed limits need to take that into account. “Vision Zero”, an initiative which started in Sweden and is spreading, envisages the abolition of road deaths, which is implausible: even self-driving cars, which are likely to be far safer than fallible (especially when drunk) humans, are sometimes going to kill people.
当然，向下调并不总是对速度限制的正确导向。毕竟唯一真正安全的汽车速度是零，人们开车上路就已经准备好承担风险，设定限速时要明白这一点。。“零愿景”是一项由瑞典发起，正在传向世界的计划，旨在消除道路死亡，而这是难以实现的：即使是自动驾驶型汽车，比会犯错的人（尤其是酒后驾车者）安全的多，有时也会使人丧命。
注：Vision Zero is a multi-national road traffic safety project that aims to achieve a highway system with no fatalities or serious injuries involving road traffic. It started in Sweden and was approved by their parliament in October 1997.
[
A core principle of the vision is that 'Life and health can never be exchanged for other benefits within the society' rather than the more conventional comparison between costs and benefits, where a monetary value is placed on life and health, and then that value is used to decide how much money to spend on a road network towards the benefit of decreasing how much risk.
Countries value lives differently. Britain sets the price below the French level of €3m ($3.5m), America’s federal government above. Whatever its level, that number needs to be fed into a reckoning of the costs and benefits of speed. Only then should people be allowed to step on it.
各国对生命的标价不同。法国的交通事故死亡赔偿金额为300万欧元（合350万美元），比英国高，比美国低。无论高低，只有把这个数字纳入限速设定的成本收益估算中，才敢让人们践行规则，踩下油门。
注：
1.feed something into something to put information into a computer over a period of time
例句：Figures are fed into the computer, which then predicts the likely profit.
2.step on it (
also
step on the gas
American English
)
spoken
to drive faster
翻译
组：
Wesley，男，自由职业，经济学人铁粉
Cyrus，男， 口译民工，经济学人爱好者
Aileen，女，大四数学狗，经济学人粉丝
Doris，女，法律学习者，经济学人爱好者
校核组：
Eva , 女，经贸翻译学生，经济学粉丝
Samantha，女，滑冰狂人，邓伦未婚妻
