I think its by fines actually.... Just got a $609 USD speeding fine... I speed less since then
Intuitive system suggesting correct behaviour is more effective than system encouraging to break law and them punishing for it severely
If a pilot repeatedly ignored their equipment and flew too low over populated areas, they'd lose their license in a hurry. When you pilot large, deadly equipment out in public, that comes with the burden of complying with all regulations, whether they feel necessary or not. If the general public thumbs their nose at this idea, that just underscores that it was a mistake to let pretty much anyone drive whatever they can afford however they want unless a cop is looking. We have to reverse that mistake instead of tinkering around the edges to occasionally slow people down by a tiny bit until they get used to handling even your traffic-calmed section of roadway at high speeds.
yeah, but if you start whatever car based countries biggest dig of the century to reconfigurate it all this minute it'd still take you 30 years and it'd be nice for non car users in the meanwhile to not get killed
Well, that is a lot of money (for me and presumably you), but without proportional (to assets) fining it makes laws pay per use. In otherwords, money is not a good judge of character; people can have disposable income and ignore the same fine that changed your mind about speeding. And as another commentor said, preventing is better than punishment.
Did you read my comment? Fines (unless proportional to personal assets) will not be effective against rich folk (who can afford large obnoxious dangerous cars), effectively creating a pay to use law.
it's enforced by road design, and in some cases our desire to not murder children with our cars. call me autistic (I am) but I follow speed limits in residential areas even if the road is designed like a formula 1 track
There are quite a few 20 mph roads near me where the only incentive to slow down is to avoid being caught be a speed camera.
The roads are wide and straight for long stretches, and going at the 20 mph limit just means you become an obstruction for the rest of traffic, even buses and lorries.
The design of the road and posted speed limits are sending mixed messages.
Yea around here we have 4 or more lane highways with 60mph speed limits. You could almost double that safely if people actually used the lanes properly when not passing. Instead we have to deal with a mix of assholes going all different speeds trying to get around the people going 60 in the left lane and god help you of there's a cop around.
Speaking as a person who does the limit (65 locally) in the right lane, sometimes the second to right lane in case there's a lot of entering/exiting traffic.... 120mph? What? The fuck?
Humans aren't designed to react to things at that speed. You need insane following distances to drive that speed safely. With all that extra following distance you don't get much more throughput (vehicles per unit time). But what you do get is a ton more fatalities, because at that speed, when you meet stationary objects, all you can do is hope you had your affairs in order. No amount of crash safety tests help there.
I gotta say, that if you're the person who's so frustrated about people driving the speed limit on a highway, you're the asshole. Like yeah, sure, they should be in the rightmost lane practicable. That's annoying, but it slows you down by a few mph for a minute or two and that's it.
If you want to move at 120+mph safely to your destination, take high speed rail. If you don't have that in your region, start complaining.
120mph? What? The fuck?
Humans aren't designed to react to things at that speed.
Germany has entered the chat
yeah, where inappropiate speeds on the autobahn, 200kph fits this, is the number one cause for accident and even if somebody doesn't wreck their shit is among the top causes for traffic backing up because traffic flows far worse if you have the 15% of people doing speeds nobody else does
On the bright side, high speed rail is generally not done by city transit agencies, it's done by larger regional groups who hopefully can manage the project better.
Honestly I was thinking more like 100mph. I can pretty easily do 90+ on the roads around me when the roads clear without issue. I don't get pissed at people for doing the speed limit. I get pissed at people that don't use lanes properly and tailgaters. If you aren't passing you should be in the farthest right lane possible until you need to pass. It's my belief that the people that jump on the highway and get 3 lanes over and just squat there not passing anyone that cause most traffic issues.
Honestly I was thinking more like 100mph
I remember doing that for my first (and only) time on the empty highways outside Salt Lake City in the early morning. It was exciting to try but fully concerning. I couldn't imagine doing that around other vehicles.
It's my belief that the people that jump on the highway and get 3 lanes over and just squat there not passing anyone that cause most traffic issues.
I mean, I think it's clear that those are the people who cause the most issues for people who want to break the speed limit. And I fundamentally don't believe you have the right to speed on a highway, and shouldn't complain about missing out on opportunities to speed.
Like, I'm not saying left lane squatters are driving correctly, they should be over in the rightmost lane. But also all the other drivers, including you, should be going the speed limit. Why does one arbitrary rule about lane positioning matter so much to people, while the arbitrary speed limit is fine to ignore? Real talk: they're both arbitrary rules. If you're breaking the speed limit: SHUT UP about the lane squatters.
It's not equal though. Speed limits at least on the highways around here are set way lower than what is actually safe so of course people will ignore them. As long as they're being safe (not tailgating, passing on the left, using turn signals, etc) they're not affecting anyone else. If you're squatting in a passing lane then you are actually impeding other traffic. If the speed limits were actually appropriate I would agree with you
"Impeding traffic" is quite the euphemism for "forcing people to slow down and drive the speed limit." Call it what it is, a mild inconvenience that you wouldn't even experience if you were following the rules that you're upset about people breaking!
And the people who are "speeding but still being safe" do impact others too. It makes it much more dangerous for drivers doing the limit to merge into the left lanes in case of stopped vehicles, slow trucks, and merging traffic.
Again, the speed limits usually aren't appropriate for the highways they're applied to so they don't make sense unlike rules regarding lane usage. If they did I wouldn't be complaining. It's also not anyone besides law enforcement's job to enforce them. By doing so you are creating an unsafe situation by packing all the traffic together.
If you need to merge into the left lane you simply wait for the faster traffic to go by. Are you suggesting that it's dangerous to cut people off? Because yea, it should be.
I think the core issue here is that you believe that it should be common and accepted for individuals to decide whether traffic rules "make sense" and ignore them based on their own individual assessment. I think that's absurd.
It's not my individual assessment. It's a well known fact that highways are engineered for higher speeds than the speed limits are set for.
You could almost double that safely if people actually used the lanes properly when not passing.
big if
"Well if people were just better" is a theoretical panacea to nigh all imaginable societal ills and it has never actually improved anything
130 km/h (or 80 mph) seems to be the international consensus on what a maximum safe speed is on a well-maintained modern highway.
I can't really make sense of what you're saying. If the road is straight and wide but also has a low speed limit, that's not sending mixed signals. Rather, it's suggesting that you should drive slow even though your instinct tells you that you could drive quickly, presumably because there are either obstacles creating blind points that could lead to pedestrian or bicycle involved accidents, small children playing nearby, or cars turning onto or from side roads that you might strike if you're driving at the speed that your gut tells you is safe.
In other words, you shouldn't trust your gut when deciding how fast is safe on a road because your gut is often mistaken about the finer points of road design.
Also, you wrote that a slow driver would be an obstruction to other vehicles including trucks. I think you were wording that as a bad thing, but in reality it's a good thing. One reasonable driver can force a dozen bad drivers to slow down.
The solution to this problem is not to say fuck it and legalize faster speeds is the point
It's the same or higher here in the US based on my personal experience.
I feel like some reddit brain would say "oh we'll just enforce this digitally once everyone drives a self driving car"
given how many times computers fuck up and just randomly turn off or some shit, I still think humans (some of them at least) are more dependable
15% is not a hard success rate to beat but. This isn't dickriding self driving cars, that shit is never going to work without fucking everyone outside of a car over more, but that's kind of the point, the answer to this problem is not cars (any version)
In the US speed limits are set by 85% of traffic speed on a road. So if the road was set for 30mph, and then you changed it to 20MPH with no other changes, you will immediately get 85% of drivers breaking the "limit."
Another way to say it is that UK's department for transport has incompetently designed 85% of their 20mph roads.
UK highways departments have had essentially zero budget for 2+ decades now. There's no funding to completely retrofit every single residential street to match the new signage. Most of them are already incredibly narrow and tight compared to your average North American street.
Hmm, sounds like the infrastructure for personal vehicles is pretty unsustainable, perhaps we should start closing off streets so that traffic will naturally be limited to locals only thus solving the problem from the demand side.
I think it's important to note that the US approach to speed limits is absolute fucking garbage and maybe one should be able to expect people piloting a vehicle to actually read and follow speed limits
I don't think you realise how old some roads are in the UK. They predate the concept of a department of transport by a long time, in cases like they can only work with what they have.
Cars aren't good at going slow. They need a "chill mode" setting where light pressure on the accelerator for 2 seconds doesn't move you from 20-30mph before you realize it. I like going the speed limit and have a hard time only going 20 on some roads because it's just so dang easy to accidentally bump up to 30mph. Automatic transmission problems
Love my manual transmission. Toss er in 4th, hold slight pressure on the gas, cruise at the speed limit without any interference. If you let off you even slow down instead of coast.
Same. Speeding tickets are so fucking expensive where I live. Guaranteed to be at least $300 at a minimum. I can't afford that, so I barely go over to mitigate the effect of being the slowest driver on the road. In general though, idgaf.
I also drive a Prius, so it's at least somewhat expected ha
