71–80 of 102 posts
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Most vehicles (and most drivers) aren't capable of safely driving at 90mph, no matter how "empty" the road is.
I’m not sure where you are getting your talking point, but here in Texas, there are stretches of highway where people safely pass at 90-100 mph with no issue. We have a lot of gigantic, straight, barren countryside.
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"Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" applies here. Good luck convincing people to give up their big cars. Or to double their trip length by driving half the speed. This is something that law makers can actually achieve.
Significantly reducing the maximum speed of passenger vehicles would cause millions of Americans to suddenly have untenable commute times. There are a handful of cities here with mass transit systems that aren't an absolute joke. Everyone who lives outside those cities relies on a car. What you're describing would be political suicide.
Basically you always keep enough distance between you and the car in front of you to be able to avoid rear ending them, keep an eye on what's behind you, and resist the urge to road rage. For example, when someone cuts you off you put distance between you, "You're still moving forward".
I was offered that advice by a California Hwy Patrolmen when I was just 16 years old shortly after I got my driver's license. It's worked for me. I'm 65 now and I've never been in an accident or crashed a car, and I've never gotten a ticket. So it's really worked pretty well for me.
I'm personally not ready to want a car that drives for me, but I would like others to have one that would put on the brakes when they get too close behind me.
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People don't want that. Butts are getting bigger and people don't want to drive slow. As a matter of fact I think forcing people to drive slower seems to cause more accidents. I mean moving away from 85th percentile engineering criteria - I mean laws making people drive slower ignoring engineering design. That said, I'll bet even if emergency braking fails to prevent a collision, even slowing down a modest amount wil…
The solution is not to have laws dictating that people drive slower, but to engineer roads so that people naturally drive slower. Add some curves to roads. Add speed bumps in all residential streets and parking lots. Make roads narrower. Add more stop signs or traffic lights.
Stop signs are aggravating if people had to actually stop 'properly' at every single one. No wonder people do a rolling stop most of the time. Many European countries do this the right way and do not have stop signs everywhere but instead have the main road have right of way or rules. To bring up Germany as an example again: in many places where we need stops signs all around, they simply have a rule that says the person to the right is allowed to drive first.
Speed bumps do nothing, except very very locally. You can't have enough of them to actually slow down cars along any reasonably long stretch of road and adding so many that it would will get the locals to NIMBY them into oblivion. I can almost guarantee that. Like put two or three in front of that school, sure. Plaster the entire neighborhood with them? Forget it.
Laws to make cars smaller and drive slower will do 100x more to make crashes less deadly than fancy electronic gizmos. Not to mention all these electronics make the car much more expensive and harder to repair.
A law that prevents any FWD vehicle from going over 90 MPH, or offering significant insurance discounts, would go a long way towards reducing fatalities. There is no reason for any casual motorist to be going 91+MPH on surface streets or highways.
Laws to make cars smaller and drive slower will do 100x more to make crashes less deadly than fancy electronic gizmos. Not to mention all these electronics make the car much more expensive and harder to repair.
The reason cars are so large today is because of safety laws
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There are freeways in Texas with speed limits of 85 MPH. 5 MPH of wiggle room for emergencies seems like a bad idea IMO.
Does emergencies make speeding legal for usual cars? I could imagine police cars or ambulances could be exempt from the rule. Also, adjusting the insurance cost based on the speed limiter seems a balanced policy to me regardless of those freeways.
Except at night to not wake you up they might not have the horn blaring then. But they also understand how much faster to go, when to have the horn enabled even at night, know to approach a red light slowly even if they have right of way and you are supposed to let them pass etc.
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A law that prevents any FWD vehicle from going over 90 MPH, or offering significant insurance discounts, would go a long way towards reducing fatalities. There is no reason for any casual motorist to be going 91+MPH on surface streets or highways.
Also prevent tailgating (have a minimum follow distance to car ahead based on speed, and auto-brake to match that minimum distance) and prevent going faster than the lane to your left while they are at it. The minimum follow distance alone would prevent a LOT of crashes.
Article says, > Unsurprisingly, automakers are unsure whether this is possible I'm in the same camp. I don't think technology will become mature enough in the stated timeline to make sure this is actually possible without creating a huge ton of false positive triggers (phantom braking).
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The solution is not to have laws dictating that people drive slower, but to engineer roads so that people naturally drive slower. Add some curves to roads. Add speed bumps in all residential streets and parking lots. Make roads narrower. Add more stop signs or traffic lights.
Curves to slow down? Sorry but a bunch of curves don't make you drive slower than the 100km/h / 65mph / 70mph speed limit. Germany's Autobahn has many many curves and many of those have no speed limit and you can take them easily at 150+ km/h. Seriously, buy a plane ticket and try it for yourself. It's awesome. Stop signs are aggravating if people had to actually stop 'properly' at every single one. No wonder people…