451–460 of 525 posts
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The speed limit is an upper bound. If you cannot safely pass someone without speeding, slowing down is generally an option too. If you're speeding to escape a homicidal maniac, challenge the ticket later.
In at least parts of the US, it is not an upper bound. You can exceed the posted limit to pass.
If you're doing this consistently, over several kilometers, you're just speeding.
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Gosh isn't that the truth. I remember reading on reddit years ago about a "study" where college students drove on freeways in a wall, one in each lane, going exactly the speed limit no faster and no slower. It backed up traffic for miles. Where I am in Southern California the freeway speed limit in most places is 65 MPH. EVERYONE drives over 65 MPH on the freeways. I think you are more likely to get pulled over on th…
fund, since I can't figure out how to edit and correct that typo
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Fact is that people drive that speed regularly on German autobahns without any widespread carnage. Driving aggressively when below the speed limit, or being distracted, is far more dangerous than just driving quickly on a clear road. The emphasis on speed is mainly because it’s easy to measure and enforce. There’s standard etiquette there to slow down when there are vehicles in the distance ahead or curves or imperfe…
In Germany not all drivers want to go fast even on unlimited sections. And people are much more respectful (both fast drivers and slow drivers) of who use which lanes and to not push you if you are in the right lane. Statistically you would be safer anyway at 130km/h on that same highway than at 160km/h. Lets compare apples to apples.
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This is funny, but in repeated cases the authorities would require the car owner to keep a driving log for that car. So this wouldn't work for very long.
Really? They can require that in Germany? Imagine if they did that in the US, I suspect most drivers here are unable to read.
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not sure why this is downvoted. I have found it quite hard to find good research tying speeding to accidents. the best you get from NHTSA is accidents where speeding "was a factor". the fraction of accidents where speed was a factor is surprisingly low (around 25% IIRC), and I'm pretty sure they count speeding as a "factor" whenever someone happened to be speeding right before the incident. I'm inclined to think spee…
When allowing for a reasonable margin of error, speeding is also one of the fairer ways of enforcing traffic offenses. Anyone can be inattentive and touch a wheel to the lane line once. If it happens repeatedly, the driver is likely distracted or impaired. but one time can be a simple mistake that doesn't require intervention unless it leads to a crash or other conflict. A driver exceeding the speed limit by 20%, to…
I think we could have a much better discussion (and perhaps policy) if we distinguished more clearly between driving near pedestrians and driving on limited-access roads. I'm actually a big fan of speed cameras in cities and other dense areas, since they allow me to drive at what I consider a safe speed (at or below the posted limit) without worrying about cars flying past me at a high relative speed. on US highways, the situation is kind of absurd. I can exceed the posted limit by 50% without coming close to the limit of my car's mechanical grip. if I have a good line of sight and there's minimal traffic, why shouldn't I?
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I sometimes flash people on roads where there are no speed traps. This way I achieve two things: defeating the usefulness of flashing people as a warning and also possibly making people drive slower than they would.
So you object to people speeding illegally, yet you have no problem with using your lights to illegally distract other drivers? How curious!
Also, around here, it's incredibly common to flash your lights to remind oncoming traffic to turn off their high-beams. It's a form of communication, and not all communication is distraction.
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Bravo. I'm going to do this when I start driving again.
Check the laws in your local area first. Intentionally dazzling other drivers may be illegal and can carry a much higher fine (sometimes 10x more) than speeding, depending on country.
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IDK to me that sounds like downplaying the issue. Drunk driving is not ok, not even in remote parts of Scotland. As for driving 35 in a 30 zone... I can agree that it's not much of an issue if it's next to a school and you drive in the middle of the night: there won't be any children entering or leaving the school at that time. But generally, these racers drive way faster, and don't give a fuck about any of these rul…
The thing is expectations and boundaries. As a participant of traffic you need to be able to feel secure, regardless of day or night. So in your example (and I live near a school and 30 km/hour street near it), if there is hardly any traffic at night you don't expect anyone either. Which might make someone driving 50 km/hour even more dangerous than when everyone is driving too hard constantly during day.
> To the inevitable dismay of U.K. street racers who > primarily partake in their favorite illegal motorsport > after hours, the TruCam II also features night mode > whereas the first TruCam, which has already reportedly > been in use for the past six years, only worked during the > daytime. I think this really comes down to the letter of the law vs the spirit of it. To the spirit of the law, i.e. saving third-party…
Sorry, you’re totally wrong. The spirit of the law is not just to save third party lives. When you cause an accident, you drain society’s emergency response resources (and increase the premiums of those in your insurance pool). 35mph vs 30mph is a terrible example - this is the scenario where pedestrians and cyclists are most likely to be around. 75mph vs 70mph would have been a better example. Driving at night is mo…
There’s too much focus on the easy to measure speed problem. I’m not saying inappropriate speed should not be enforced against but i strongly believe more effort should be applied to avoid the more common cause of major road traffic incidents - inattention. You can’t easily measure inattention but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. The solution doesn’t only have to be in penalties, it could be in making it harder t…
Inattention is hard to measure and results in accidents that are made much worse by excessive speed, which is easy to measure. If the goal is to reduce overall traffic victims, then investing in speed control seems like the low hanging fruit. The energy of vehicle (thus, the energy absorbed during impact by every object contained or hit) is proportinal with the square of the speed. Meanwhile, the reaction time availa…
Sure but there's no free lunch here. If you trade off speed in the non-accident cases, which is by far the majority of all miles driven, then there's a cost to that.
It happens to be a really hard to measure cost so it's always completely ignored. How would you even begin to measure the cost to the nation of traffic arriving 5 minutes later? Not all 5 minute delays are equal, e.g the cost of delay to an ambulance rushing to hospital is different to the increased cost of delivering packages.
>> the reaction time available
In fairness, you could make the reaction time measurable in hours and it'd be insufficient to prevent some inattention caused road incidents.
Another problem with only looking at speed is the unintended consequence of drivers de-rating the risks. E.g. if a vehicle was limited to 5mph, this as you know is slow enough to be fairly unlikely to cause a pedestrian death even if there is an impact, it would have the un-wanted effect that some drivers would view the risks as lower and would be inclined to engage in more risky behaviours, e.g. taking their eyes off the road to turn around and argue with a child in the back seat where in 20mph traffic they might choose instead to just speak to the child.
>> So the overall probability of accidents
No that doesn't hold. We don't have more accidents on the fastest roads in the UK.