It amazes me the amount of people here who routinely drive well over the speed limit. Are limits in the US too low? Speed limits in the UK seem quite sensible - 70mph on dual or more lane roads, 60 on rural single lane roads, for example. They’re strictly enforced though, with many residential areas and small villages having cameras, bumps, zig zag pavements - there’s more ways to calm traffic than having a policeman parked round the corner. From this thread, it doesn’t sound like any of these are a thing in the US.
In America 85% of drivers believe themselves to be in the top 15% of driving skill, thus driving above the speed limit is safe for them. The speed limit is for the other 85%.
No argument on this. But one side are dicks obeying the speed limit and the other side are dicks who are not. That makes it clear what side are the bigger dicks, which is not a good thing, no matter what some people think.
As someone who used to share the road with coal trucks in eastern Kentucky, it’s not a lot of fun. By getting them to slow down to the speed limit, you’re lessening the chance that coal chunks will fly off their load and smash into your vehicle.
Other than that and generally improving the safety of travel, I wouldn’t expect coal trucks to re-route and become someone else’s problem.
Yes, I believe they often are. We have a section I used to have to drive on to get to work that is a two lane road (each way), very straight, wide shoulders, good visibility, speed limit: 40mph. It’s absurd, but not unusual. Most interstates are 65 these days, which again is stupidly slow in most places. Cars have improved, the quality of the roads have improved, but the speed limits haven’t kept up in response.
And I say this as someone who does not routinely drive over the limit.
Clearly you don’t live in a very small town.
Where I live, a traffic jam is a guy on a tractor talking to someone on a bicycle, stopped in the middle of the road. We have a chief of police but he has no indians. He does have a car.
Tiny towns tend to band together and do things their way. I think it’s charming. But then, I find speeding a nasty lifestyle. I’m a hypermiler myself.
So anyone who wants to get around you is a tailgater you feel justified in blocking their way no matter what? Just one of those double standards you are good with because you don’t care. Good to know.
Well, I had to stop at a store on my way in to work this morning, so I was on “the” road for 2 miles instead of 1/2. I did 45 mph the entire way (@pkbites is correct about 35 being wrong) until I got behind someone doing 35. At that point I was almost to town and a coal truck flew up onto my rear, hit their brakes, and blew their horn. I could see the guy in front of me looking in his rear-view mirror and I’m sure he was laughing.
ETA: It’s amazing to me how this “action” has progressed without any local newspaper or Facebook page. It’s all just word of mouth as far as I can tell.
No, of course not. But the" do as I say, not as I do" stuff is bullshit.
If there really is a speeding truck problem, and I doubt that this is true, the OP skipped over a bunch of options that didn’t require creating a dangerous driving situation.
Besides the ones already pointed out, and if he wanted to do something himself to stop it, he should have done the most effective thing possible:
Film these dozens of speeding trucks and post it online to the trucking company or mine owners websites. Send it in to whatever local news channel broadcasts in your area. Even big city stations love these kind of eyewitness news or hotlines. What he says he’s doing now is not going to work. If this is actually happening, all those drivers are going to think is this little area has a lot of shitty drivers in it.
Read again. He is not going the speed limit. You know, the one he ignored for years because it suited him. He’s purposely driving slow to annoy other drivers. He’s doing it for fun. Not that I think this is actually happening.
Why don’t you try some of the options listed in this thread if it’s such a major problem for you? What you are doing will not work and you are wasting everyone’s time, including your own. You chose probably the least effective and dangerous option yo have. Doesn’t say much for your judgement.
I’ve already mentioned that it is not a problem whatsoever for me. I noticed people driving slow, then heard locals talking about it. I thought it was interesting.
Our home isn’t on/near the road where all this is taking place. In fact, our road is privately owned and marked no trespassing, so I’m only impacted by the situation when I drive.
It seems to be. You opened a thread on it to tell us how much fun it was to personally annoy people. Not to mention your own time you waste by driving under the limit. It’s a cutting off your own nose situation.
It seems to have already worked, in that numerous coal trucks have been driving through his town at a much lower speed than they used to.
Is a letter writing campaign or a news story going to convince the coal company to deliberately reduce their profits by forcing their drivers to go slower?
Who said anything about writing letters? Videos are worth a thousand words. If I have a problem with a company that they are unwilling to solve to my satisfaction, posting about it publicly gets an immediate response and solution. No company wants bad press to get out. Instead he chooses to waste everyone’s time including his own. The worst solution possible, but hey, he’s having a good time.
I thought it was funny and shared it. Initially when I was behind someone driving slowly I was a little pissed off. Then I heard from the owner of the feed store in town that it was being done on purpose to aggravate the coal truck drivers.
Once I knew about I jumped on the bandwagon. I was even driving below the limit, but @pkbites made me see the light and I’m sticking to 45 now.
Wow, your speed limits are set by traffic engineers? Around here, our speed limits are set by:
-
Powerful people complaining about noise to city council. We have a major freeway through the city that inexplicably drops in soeed for a short section, then picks up again. The slow part is where the freeway goes near an expensive part of town. Other than that, everything is the same.
-
Police and/or the city looking to make more revenue.
-
City councillors seeking to punish car driving to encourage more walking, biking and mass transit.
Our speeds on the same roads in the city have just been reduced from 50 or 60 km/h to 40km/h wherever a different speed is not posted. That’s 25 mph in a large city. One freeway used to be 110 km/h, then it was reduced to 100, then to 90.
No traffic engineers made these choices. Politicians did.
Moderator Note
Attack the post, not the poster. This isn’t the Pit.
.
Just for shits and giggles:
The US is the only industrialized nation where traffic deaths are significantly rising. And they were already high to begin with.
(To preemptively shut down the predictable reply:
These are numbers per distance driven.)
And now we have a thread arguing about wether or not it is a good idea to slow down (heavy) traffic driving through town?
I do not know what Americans think is a “acceptable” number of traffic casualties. I cannot imagine the number you actually have is it.
Random aside, but this is not quite correct; it’s a common misconception and a personal minor pet peeve that the disinction is due to the number of lanes. A dual carriageway, which is where the 70mph standard limit comes in (60mph for vans or larger vehicles) actually refers to the two directions of traffic being separated by a central barrier, not the number of lanes. A 2 lane road can still be a single carriageway, and a dual carriageway may have only 1 lane in each direction, or 2, or more.
The fact that most dual carriageways in England are 2 lane roads seems to have led lots of people to mix them up, and quite a few to then get the speed limits wrong when they meet the exceptions…
I’m an American, and I don’t know either what the acceptable number of traffic fatalities is. All I know is that it’s higher than the current actual number. How do I know this? Because there is no significant agitation for new traffic safety measures.
The car industry really did a number on you guys.