331–340 of 438 posts
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I'm not sure I understand this point. The autobahn is just the German highway system. Do Germans who don't want to drive fast and don't own fast cars all emigrate to Denmark or something?
When most Americans talk abou the autobahn like this they actually mean the sections without speed restrictions
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> It's the worst kind of selective enforcement - random enforcement. Very similar to the way police behave w/ regards to speeding tickets. Set extremely low speeds that don't make sense on highways. Allow most people to go 10-15 above. But then also sometimes choose random people to screw over when it's the end of the month and they need to hit their quotas.
>Set extremely low speeds that don't make sense on highways. Allow most people to go 10-15 above. I doubt people really speed because the limits have been set too low and the people know better what is an ideal speed limit. I think people_think_ they know better what the speed limit is, and/or reason "well if 60mph is okay, 75 mph can't be that bad, I'm barely speeding and I'm in a rush". At least, that's the attitud…
Also, it goes against traffic design principles, even in the US. (see: 85th percentile)
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I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding about how people drive. People don't look at a speed limit and then drive 15 over; they drive the speed they feel comfortable with, regardless of the speed limit. Studies have shown this: Q. Wouldn’t everyone drive faster if the speed limit was raised? A. No, the majority of drivers will not go faster than what they feel is comfortable and safe regardless of the speed l…
> they drive the speed they feel comfortable with, regardless of the speed limit My anecdata does not support this. When roads are not congested, I can see that most drivers accelerate from ~70+mph to ~80+mph right ofter the speed limit sign changes from 60 to 70.
All this proves is that they don't want to go much more than 10 over the limit, AND the speed at which they feel safe is at least (but maybe higher than!) 80mph.
“Your taxes” is such an overloaded term that it’s almost comical to refer to it as if it means the same thing for everyone. There is basically one straight-forward case where the IRS preparing taxes makes sense: that of full time employees whose only income is from their job which issues W2s. For everyone else — which includes: - People working multiple part time jobs - People with non-standard investment portfolios…
Most people have boring taxes. For those people with interesting taxes, they can do them themselves or pay someone else to do them. For the exceptional cases, this is what they already do. Arguing against something that simplifies an act for most people by pointing out that it doesn't apply to everyone does not make sense to me. I think it's almost important to keep in mind that the IRS already does your taxes. If wh…
You might predict otherwise, or you might think the cost is outweighed by the benefit to the people who really do have boring taxes.
But I think the argument makes sense.
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I'm not sure I understand this point. The autobahn is just the German highway system. Do Germans who don't want to drive fast and don't own fast cars all emigrate to Denmark or something?
I thought it was understood in context and because Americans usually refer to "the Autobahn" as the parts without speed limits.
Do people driving on derestricted sections self-select and have cars better able to handle the speeds? Does anyone in Germany only drive on restricted sections?
You comment as if the derestricted sections are just some racetrack in the middle of nowhere for which people self-select. No, they're just roads going from one place to another, like any other road. And Germany doesn't kick out citizens who don't want to drive fast, or offer easy citizenship for those who do.
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If you look at the stopping distances at 80+ mph I don't see how you can argue those speeds are safe.
If you look at the low level of fatalities on the autobahn, I don't see how you can argue those speeds are unsafe.
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Fun fact. Intuit spent just $2.4 million on lobbying per year and $775,000 on campaign contributions: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000026667&c... . If their lobbying dollars are what caused the IRS to stop those programs, you could "outbid" them with just a Kickstarter. Intuit and friends are a red herring: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/grover-norquist/grover-norqui...
I've been told by people that have been involved with lobbying that it's way cheaper than you'd expect. Almost a million in the right congressional races can buy you a lot of stalling in congress. Also, IMHO, few people have messed up US tax policy like Grover Norquist. Even if you don't agree with that particular humble opinion, he is, at the very least, a figure with his own agenda to push. He's far from an unbiase…
My take on this remains what it's been for decades (offensive words, but I'm not sure what would fit better) :
"I'm not surprised that politicians are whores. I'm horribly disappointed that they're cheap sleazy whores."
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As someone who's driven over distances that had notably higher speed limits (EG 75 MPH in extremely rural areas), I have found that /in those areas/ the speed I went //without// looking at the dashboard was more or less very close to the actual speed limit. I was actually driving at the real speed that is safe for a typical small car on such a road in 'ideal' conditions.
Were you able to reproduce this effect on analogous 55mph/65mph roads? Are you sure you aren't just used to driving 75mph on highways in general (ie you're not from Seattle), and found speed limit signs that actually matched? Driving through rural areas you must have experienced the sudden ~30mph sign, signifying a town coming up. Did this "drive what you feel" approach line up there too? When the town was at the bot…
With respect to the engineering safety of the sudden 30mph sign (which I assume is in a rural area on an otherwise small highway); yes that sounds like you're describing what is typically called a "speed trap". A real traffic safety engineering standard SHOULD call for a clearly posted and graduated reduction in speed as approaching the town at a /bare/ minimum. However, a true engineering solution would isolate the town and the highway entirely. The point of the highway is to be a high speed transit corridor and it is inefficient and unsafe to route such a thing through a dense residential or commercial area. Instead there should be an exit system that leads off to a side path for such a town. I would prefer an actual barrier that encloses the typical route and possibly caps or bridges over it (maybe with a park) for existing situations that have developed in days with less good planning. In any such cases a designated detour route should also be constructed such that it is possible for "oversized loads", emergency response teams, and post disaster travel to route around failure in the now enclosed sections.
I'm torn on this issue. On the one hand, in Sweden, taxes are extremely simple to file, and I love it for practical reasons. All work income (even from multiple part time jobs which someone said would be an issue) is declared by the employer, almost all saving/stocks/bonds/other stuff resulting in financial gains are reported by the broker/bank. I think many people don't change any of the data, almost 1 million (out…
> I think everyone ought to know roughly how much they pay. Why do you care? More importantly, why do you want to force people if they don't give a flying fuck? > I guess this is the reason why Grover Norquist of the Norquist pledge [1] tries to stop measures like this [2]. Grover Norquist tries to stop measures like this because he absolutely hates the very concept of taxation and has made it his life's work to make…