United Kingdom

There’s a road near my house that has sections at 30mph, 40, and 50. Most folks drive 45 on all three.

I do. Driving 61 instead of 48 km/h increases your distance to stop at an emergency by almost 8m. This is assuming 300ms reaction time. By the time you would have stopped at 48km/h you would still be ramming whatever it is you're emergency braking for with ~~40km/h~~ 15km/h if you go 61km/h.

Speeding is no joke, please read about how braking distance scales with speed. Especially if you go 50km/h in a 30 you're spelling a death sentence for anyone and anything running into the streets. And no, "they shouldn't run on the street" is not an argument, children and animals will always do unpredictable things, and being inattentive isn't a reason to execute someone

Edit: used km/h instead of m/s in my calculations

If she was caught doing 38mph in a 30, then her car was probably displaying 40 or 41mph as the speedo's always report you going a higher speed than you're going. So I'd say that's pretty bad, especially when you've been caught several times before in such a short space of time.

Just as this this guy says

you dont get a ban for the first instance. This shows repeated offences. Lucky she has the money for a driver.

I have little patience for serial speeders. Gripe all you like, but speed limits save lives.

But the chances of survival being hit at 38mph are significantly lower than at 30, or even 33.

I've been knocked down by a car doing 5mph. My head was embedded in the bonnet, bounced off it, and then I was on the road staring at the underside and tyre of a fortunately stopped car before my puny human brain could figure out what happened.

Being hit, even at 5mph, is not something you'd want, let alone 38.

My idiot sister racked up nine points in six months after moving to the UK. She claimed not to have seen the 40mph sign she blew past at 50. "They're so small!" She only started paying attention when she realised she was one ticket away from a ban.

Pretty sure speeding in that range would net a fixed penalty of 3 points. Also, she would have had the first 3 points discounted via an awareness course. So, in effect this is likely the 5th offense, or less if one or more of the others was serious enough to get 6 points.

This is different in Germany but we learn about tolerance in driving school. Your speedometer can be wrong by about 10% and speed guns can also have errors. A good system accounts for unintentional speeding.

it's not like you can accidentally go around 30% over the limit

When that 30% is 8mph, yes you can

I had my license suspended for 90 days - due to a paperwork error when I was in college. I just had hope I didnt get pulled over at that time because I had no choice but to drive for school and work.

Higher incentive to not speed, then

I suspect you might be telling on yourself here as someone who didn’t drive.

People who go through car education and actually drive learn about system tolerances. Speedometers can be off by up to 10% and radar guns can be off by about the same.

If you actually drive and use cruise control set to 30 and go up a hill to a level section of road, the cruise control will likely bring you up to 33 before it reacts the reduced power needs and brings you down to 30 again.

Cars in real life are not exactly like they are in video games.