I’m primarily talking about freeway driving, as I do not typically speed on surface streets (and NEVER on residential streets. People who speed in residential areas are assholes). And I rarely drive freeway stretches that I’m not very familiar with, so I know the conditions of the road I’m driving. And sorry, but I’m not willing to put my life or the life of my child at risk for the sake of the letter of the law.
I should add that in 20 years of driving, I have never been in any kind of accident (when I was driving). I have also gotten exactly two speeding tickets in my life, one when I was 18 and one when I was 19 years old (both were on interstate in the middle of the desert, btw).
Fair enough. But do you really think most of the drivers on the road have a good idea of how good their own driving skills are, and capable of judging what is a safe speed?
Most drivers think they are driving just fine, when it is a statistical fact that half of all drivers are below average drivers. So my answer to that is a resounding “Hell no!”
I don’t think most drivers even notice things like speed limit signs. In fact, bad as the carnage on the roads is, we’re probably lucky it isn’t worse based on the skills of drivers. The guardian angels in North America must be damn near worn out.
Except your speed has some influence on how fast other people drive. You said so yourself - you drive at the speed of traffic, i.e. people around you determine how fast you drive.
If you thought the roads would be safer if other people drove slower, then it would be in your best interest to drive slower yourself. If enough people did this, it would happen.
I remember having to time traffic light phases for an internship and I try to remember that when I’m sitting at a light for “the longest time.” I see people getting antsy and crowding the light when they see the other direction turn yellow. Then they tear out of there like it was a drag race. When that behavior is combined with the last-second red light runners, you get a lot of accidents. The thing is, I consider the ones who tear out on the green guilty as well as the red light runners. In this area, one should KNOW that there’s going to be a late car (or two) and act accordingly.
There are usually people passing me. I try to keep up with traffic, but I intentionally stay on the slower side of the average so that if someone gets pulled over, it isn’t likely to be me.
But yes, there is a group dynamic with driving, especially freeway driving. That said, for the most part the traffic is usually going a safe speed for the road and so I don’t feel like I am driving dangerously by going the speed of traffic. If I felt unsafe, I’d drive at a slower speed where I did feel safe. (And yes, that has happened especially when driving on unfamiliar roads). However, as I’ve said before, I’d much rather get a ticket for speeding and suffer the moral scars of knowing I was breaking the law like a dirty criminal than put myself in the position to be in or cause an accident by driving slower than traffic is flowing. We’ll just have to agree to disagree because I’m not changing my position on that.
Speed limits pre-1973 were often higher than they are today. If a road was designed for 70, and given that cars today are safer than they were back then, it is not at all clear that someone going 68 or 70 in a 65 mph zone, keeping up with traffic, is being unsafe.
As for me, I don’t drive below the average, but I make sure there are at least one or two cars going significantly faster than me. That strategy has led to no speeding tickets since 1972.
Reaction time of human beings haven’t improved during that time. Average driver skill probably hasn’t improved either. On the other hand, the society has become less tolerant of auto accidents. As we demand more safety features on our cars, I think it’s only fair to make the roads safer as well - even if that means lowering the speed limit.
While it is certainly true that human reaction times haven’t changed and that our tolerance for other traffic and accidents has probably gone down, it is also true that cars today are more responsive at maneuvering and braking by a several degrees of magnitude, and if anything, this helps tremendously to prevent accidents when used responsibly in an increasingly traffic-congested world. I don’t believe all the improvements in both active and passive safety systems have contributed to driver complacency so much as congestion has contributed to intolerance of fellow drivers. People drove just as wrecklessly 30-40 years ago as they do now, but with more people driving every year, the cross-section of sociopathic behavior grows larger even though the percentage of them hasn’t changed.
I think a good barometer for this would be speeding. You see, there’s quite a difference between speeding to keep up with the flow of traffic, and speeding/weaving/braking/weaving/speeding to get around the people who are creating that flow. This kind of utterly stupid behavior has no excuse, because at best, it gets you where you’re going about four seconds quicker than the people who aren’t being colossal lane-switching, tailgating shitheads. Speeding is relative to the flow of traffic whether you want to admit it or not, and unless a cop is being a total dickhead looking to fill a ticket quota, they generally tend to think so too, and aren’t going to single you out for keeping up with the flow of traffic. I’ve never been pulled over for going the same speed as the cars around me even when they’re well over the limit. They could, however, make more of an effort to pull over the speedweaving assholes, I think, because there are far too many of them.
Last November I drove up from the Western end of the Pyrinees to Switzerland. Every speed camera I passed on the French highways is indicated in ViaMichelin… and on the road! By HUGE signs. Their point, I think, is really that if you managed to speed in front of something so clearly marked, you shouldn’t even be on the road.
I don’t know how it is in France, but in Spain the fine is for the driver, who has to be recognizable in the picture.
Not if the drivers of those cars want to drive at different speeds.
Say the road is pretty full (i.e., no massive gaps in traffic, no long clear spaces). And say, for argument’s sake, that some drivers want to drive 55, some want to drive 65, and some want to drive 75.
If the people who want to drive 55 stay to the right, the people who want to pass them driving 65 stay in the middle, and the people who want to drive 75 stay on the left, then traffic will surely move faster than if the 55mph crowd spreads itself over all three lanes.
Of course, in a relatively full road, it might not be practical for the faster vehicles to move back into the slower lanes, but at the very least, people who recognize that they are driving more slowly than average should not hog the left hand lane.
So then, by this logic, the left lane should reamain open strictly for drivers of high performance cars to go as fast as they want. That would be great, if the entire highway system was built like the Autobahn. If it were, it would be built to a higher standard, and have much stricter rules of entry for drivers, as well as greater consequences for abusing them. Alas, we are not in Germany. There is nothing wrong with passing around someone in your lane if they aren’t keeping up with traffic flow. What is wrong is speeding, tailgating and weaving from lane to lane. It accomplishes absolutely nothing except proving how much of a sociopath you can be by endangering yourself and others, and the property owned by both.
I’ve always thought it’d be a great idea to have a spike strip pop up when the light turns red. Like the ones they have at parking lots to keep people from driving in the exit. Emergency vehicles would have a remote to drop it so they can pass when needed.
I take it the cameras always get a good photo of the driver? Otherwise, how do they prove who was behind the wheel at the time a moving violation occured?
Just what we want: cars already travelling too fast losing all traction and ability to control the car careening through an intersection. Stinger missles are the better bet, except for the shrapnel.
I don’t speed much, and my one speeding ticket, while kind of a speed-trap kinda thing, was legit so I didn’t complain.
In California, traffic-speed surveys have to be completed every 7 to 10 years to justify the speed limit for a stretch of road, these are usually done with those portable LED signs showing your speed above the existing limit, thus skewing the results. I hate those things.
My scenario is, admittedly, an idealized rather than an actual situation.
But it’s ridiculous to assert that there is no benefit to be gained from trying to maintain some sort of order, even in heavy traffic. The fact is that, is there are people traveling slowly in all three lanes, it either slows everyone down, or it causes people to weave dangerously in and out of traffic. If you can’t go any faster because of traffic in front of you, fair enough. But if you are in the left lane, and a gap starts to open in front of you because you’re going slowly, then you have an obligation to get your ass out of the way so people can pass.
Anyone who wilfully travels slowly in the left lane, and justifies it by arguing that the amount of traffic makes it OK, is a selfish asshole and should be removed from the road, preferably with an explosive device.
