Or they’ve been using marijuana.
People tend to drive the speed the feel comfortable at. If on a 65 MPH highway most drivers are going 75, raising the speed limit to 75 will not mean that most drivers start going 85. They were comfortable at 75, and will continue to mostly drive that fast (no cite, take it to GQ if you want that kind of stuff). For example, on the highways that are 75 around here, most cars (when permitted by traffic) are going 70-80. On the 65 MPH highways, most cars are going 70-80. There are always some exception, but those aren’t “most drivers” or they wouldn’t be exceptions anymore.
I completely agree about enforcement of neighborhood speed limits. I am far more concerned about somebody going 30-40 in a 25 zone than somebody going 70-80 in a 65 or 55 zone.
I do agree, everybody going 65 where it’s posted 50 doesn’t prove it’s safe at 65. OTOH safety is relative. Total safety from traveling accidents is achieved by not traveling. And I can’t help but think of a practical case, Palisades Interstate Parkway along the west bank of the lower Hudson near NY (city). The NJ sections are posted 50. This is obviously too low relative to other similar roads. Even the NY state portions are posted 55 and if anything the road is more winding as you go north. I’d say the average speed is low 60’s. People in that case are correcting for what they IMO reasonably perceive as a limit that’s out of wack with other limits. It’s not just a matter of whether of it would be safer if everyone went 50, which of course it would be. But on another road 50 might be make the road around as safe as a wider open interstate at 65 or a local street at 25. But I agree the single fact that most people are speeding doesn’t necessarily mean they are right and the limit is wrong.
But my main point before was enough people do what they feel like because that’s just how they roll generally to create serious safety issues. It’s not all about what society thinks is safe, or any thought process at all necessarily. I think society as a whole has a pretty clear consensus now that texting while driving is insanely risky. Maybe not as intense for as long as society’s current aversion to impaired driving, but people know they aren’t supposed to text and drive, and I doubt it’s any more likely you’d find someone who’d speak up even semi-anonymously on a web board to defend their texting while driving than it would be for them to defend buzzed driving. But I still see people texting while drive pretty often.
I don’t think anyone is saying “society” or what people think about speed limits should determine the speed limits on a road.
But one of the recognized methods for determining speed limitson a road is to use the 85th percentile speed (the speed at or below which 85% of the vehicles on the road travel) as a major factor.
I know that was traditionally how speed limits have been set, and is why, in the 60’s, there were highways with no speed limit (because the major cause of accidents was driver fatigue leading to single car accidents, not collisions due to excessive speed). The 55 MPH speed limit was a number driven by fuel savings, not safety (to be really safe, why not 30 MPH? 20? 10?).
I agree that there are stretches of freeway where it probably makes sense to set the speed limit to 80 MPH (for example) based on the 85th percentile measurement. And I agree that if this is set due to measurements, this 85th percentile is not going to suddenly jump higher, because what is being measured is what speed most drivers feel comfortable driving at.
Or they’re not in a hurry. Or they’re driving on a temporary spare. Or they’re lost. Or they’ve come to an exciting part of their audiobook. Or they’ve gotten numerous speeding tickets and are being overly cautious. Or the just saw a herd of deer.
That’s what I was wondering about - do the people posting on here live in states without such laws, or with those laws but they’re not enforced? I think the “slow driving” thing is a new refinement of the driving without due care etc law here, but all the cites I can find are on news sites that require me to give up my firstborn in order to read them.
I remember reading that it was because slow driving is actually properly dangerous, rather than just annoying. Though making people annoyed while they’re driving is probably dangerous in itself.
I’ve seen signs on expressways giving ‘minimum speed’. The speed given as the minimum has always been way below the speed limit – say, 40 where the limit is 65.
Requiring minimum speed on roads that aren’t expressways would make no sense, as those roads are shared by bicycles, horses and horse-drawn equipment, farm equipment, and pedestrians; all of which have a legal right to be there, on any stretch of road that doesn’t provide specific lanes for them.
So far as I can make out from the stuff about the change I could find, ‘slow driving’ is only likely to get you in real trouble- a fine a licence points- if there’s a posted minimum limit. To the best of my recollection, I’ve never seen one of those beasts, and I think they’re only for things like tunnels where visibility makes driving slowly actually dangerous. Maybe if you’re doing something like 20 on a clear motorway (restricted access, so there shouldn’t be vehicles needing to go that slow) without a damn good reason you’d also get it taken seriously, but not just doing 40 in a 60 zone.
I mean, half the roads I regularly travel on are technically a 60 limit, but it’d be madness to try and go much over 20 on them, as they’re single track winding lanes with high stone walls on both sides. It’d be tricky to encourage sane driving on those but enforce a low speed limit on another road that’s officially the same max speed, especially as tractors routinely go that sort of speed on the same roads.
I’ve never known anyone get more than a copper tell them to speed up a bit or pull over and let cars pass often if they must drive that slow on a normal road. Well, except the girl in New Zealand I was getting a lift from who got told to do that and proceeded to argue with the policeman until he got fed up and gave her a ticket he clearly was not initially intending to give, but I’m not sure that counts.
I blew a tire once down in Oklahoma and had to drive about 50 miles on the little doughnut tire where you cant go over 35 and this was on I35 interstate. I did though have my hazards on and stayed in the right lane.
I feel bad for the Amish driving wagons which we see in rural Missouri. Those go about 10 mph and even on a 35 mph road its a hazard plus they are totally open with the kids in back.
You feel bad for them . For living a life they’ve chosen? 
The kids in back didn’t choose that life, though.
They’re playing the hand they were dealt.
Years ago, when I took a road trip around the USA, I saw in a number of places signs posted that said if there were 5 or more cars backed up behind yours then you were legally required to pull over and let traffic pass you. (I think it was 5, but am no longer sure of the number; I don’t see those signs where I usually drive now.)
I saw these in Idaho, Oregon, California, and Nevada recently. And I saw pretty much everyone ignore them. Now I’m in a Pitting mood. :mad:
I am. What is a democracy or a representative republic if not for expressing the desire of the people? If people think that an 85mph speed limit or a .15 BAC limit are okay, even if they are mistaken, then that should be the law. We don’t have a council of betterment lording over us. We The People.
That is a great link. The money quote: “There are two types of drivers: (1) those who get upset when somebody is illegally hanging out in the left passing lane, and (2) those who are blissfully ignorant that hanging out in the passing lane is both illegal and dangerous.“
Not so much in CA, since the left
“Passing lane” is very rare here.
So, the left lane is where you go the fastest, but not necessarily just for passing. If you are going with the flow of traffic there, drive all day in it.
Not a great position to stake out. If a majority of people in Mississippi believe that interracial marriage is morally wrong, they don’t have the right to force that into law.
For just one example.
I don’t have to write a treatise on Con Law do I? The people of Mississippi may not enact such a law because it is contrary to the Supreme Court ruling in Loving v. Virginia that people have a constitutional right to marry someone of the opposite race.
However, in the overwhelming majority of cases where constitutional rights are not in play (like with speed limits and BAC limits) the people can enact whatever law they want.