As I was driving to work this morning–stuck behind a slow-moving vehicle–I began wonder about something. What do people generally consider to be more of a danger on the highway–people who are driving too fast, or people who are driving too slowly.
I will eliminate, for the sake of this question, people driving at idiotic speeds grossly over the speed limit and young guys on their crotch rockets. I will consider those people driving, say, 10-20 percent above or below the speed limits.
My common habit is to drive–when conditions allow–about 10 percent faster than the posted speed (for instance, 110 km/hr where the posted speed limit is 100 km/hr). People who drive faster than that don’t bother me a lot–they pass and they’re gone.
People who drive significantly slower, however, may not be more dangerous but they are a nuisance.
Slow drivers (I mean well below the speed limit) prompt impatience, which leads to foolish driving decisions. (I know I’m responsible for my own attitude and I don’t let my emotions determine how I drive.) But still, people get impatient when stuck behind a slow-mover–who often is an old man in a hat. And that can cause problems. So–too much speed may cause more accidents than driving too slowly, but, while speed kills, driving too slowly causes irritation and impatience and irritation and impatience kills.
I sense slow drivers may be nervous and that bothers me too.
The one time speed worries me are the guys on crotch rockets who can drive faster than I can react.
What do you folks think?
I’m so embarrassed, I meant too slow, not two slow.
I tend to drive on the slower side; I’m in no hurry to get anywhere, my fuel economy is better, and I have more reaction time in case something happens ahead of me.
I believe that in multiple lane settings, accidents are due to lane changes and the speed difference between cars.
Germany’s Autobahn has no speed limit, It also the best record for safety and trafic flow.
It seems to me that a “fast” driver will pose a hazard only to a few people at any time. Any disruption of the traffic pattern he causes will be of brief duration. On the other hand, a “slow” driver will cause traffic to bunch up behind him, posing a hazard to more people at once. This disruption will tend to last longer, depending on how quickly other drivers are able to safely pass this rolling obstruction.
Unless the fast driver is travelling at a speed where he has insufficient time to react to hazards which may present themselves, I suspect that the slow diver poses a greater hazard to himself and others, both in the number of people and the amount of time each person is exposed to the hazard.
–SSgtBaloo
That’s not exactly correct. Parts of it, mainly urban and construction areas, have a lmit between 80 and 120 km/h.
They say the safest speed to drive is the speed at which most of the rest of traffic is moving.
If you are involved in a collision, the faster you were going the more dangerous the collision is.
Depends on the situation, imo. When traffic is sparse and there’s plenty of room to get around a slow-moving vehicle, too fast is more dangerous because it greatly reduces your reaction time. When traffic is really heavy, though, too slow is more dangerous. You might not be in an accident, but you’re far more likely to cause one. Heavy traffic in the other lane gives fewer opportunities to merge anyway, and the cars further back are going to snap them up, so the cars immediately behind the slow one will have pretty much no chances to change lanes and move on. They sit there, trapped, until they get so frustrated and impatient that they do something stupid and dangerous. And then somebody gets hurt.
Shall we assume you are not referring to the fast driver who gets into an accident and slows/stops all traffic for hours on end as a result of the accident?
I wonder, too, how many slow drivers actually endanger others directly as opposed to fast drivers? For this question don’t blame the slow driver for your own impatience.
I wonder about this question too, and it’s this situation that prompts it. For some reason, a few people get it into their head that doing 10-20 km/hr under the limit in the slow lane is a good idea… in an area that most people do 10-20 over as par for the course. You can’t easily change lanes to get out of the way for merging traffic because the fast lane is now going as much as 40 km/hr faster than you.
I always wait for a good break in the fast lane, but sometimes it so happens that you need to be in the fast lane–for example, not all off-ramps are on the right (slow) side. But if you say screw it and drive in the fast lane in anticipation of your cut off far ahead, you need to speed or risk having someone on your tail end getting mad at you, or even attempting to pass you on the right. (And if a number of people all get that idea, no one from the slow lane can move over to allow merging traffic, plus, the fast lane gets backed up.) On and on it goes.
Too fast is more dangerous. There’s nothing inherently dangerous in going too slow – it’s only a problem because people might be unwilling to travel at that speed, too.
The OP must have been driving on 237 this morning with me. This road has two regular lanes and one carpool lane. Someone in the slow lane was going about 10 mph slower than the limit, 20 mph slower than the flow of traffic. No problem - except someone in the left lane was pacing her. To make it worse, he pulls over to the right lane which becomes exit only after slowing up all the traffic for miles. :wally I got off at the same exit - he didn’t look like a pinhead from the outside, and I manfully resisted telling him what I thought of him. I think he was far more dangerous than the people going 10 mph above the limit. It is being slow in a place where you shouldn’t be that is dangerous - I don’t think the person going slow in the slow lane was dangerous at all.
Sometimes, too slow can be quite dangerous, especially when someone decides to slow down for no discernable reason, causing a back up behind them.
Stay with the flow of traffic. That’s the safest way to drive. If most people are going 75 in a 70mph zone, the guy going 40 in the passing lane (the minimum, or as I’ve seen 60-40-75-25-50 in the space of a few minutes) may cause a problem.