6 ms·

It's absurd that 24 mph in a 35 zone is considered "too slow". This is nearly equivalent to driving 40 km/h in a 60 km/h zone, and there is not a single traffic

It's absurd that 24 mph in a 35 zone is considered "too slow". This is nearly equivalent to driving 40 km/h in a 60 km/h zone, and there is not a single traffic court in any Canadian city that would uphold a ticket being served for that difference. How is this even a thing down there? In a 60 km/h zone here, you'd have to be going 25 km/h to even warrant being pulled over at all (ie: doing 15 mph in 37 mph zone). If 24 mph is too slow for that particular road or neighbourhood, then the speed limit should be 45+ mph, not 35. Clearly the average citizen is already driving 45+, or the "slow" wouldn't even be noticeable. Edit: wait, this is even more absurd. The traffic violation quoted is https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/pubs/vctop/vc/d11/c7/a2/22400 https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/pubs/vctop/vc/d11/c... which mentions "highway". 35 mph or 56 km/h is residential street speed, not highway speed. This whole thing makes no sense to me.

coderdude 11y ago
I'm California USA, driving too slow is considered a hazard. It's kinda fuzzy to be honest. They can still pop you for speeding whenever they want but they're really looking for the person who stands out.
fletchowns 11y ago
In California, if you aren't driving 5 mph over the speed limit, the car behind you is going to tailgate the hell out of you. It's ridiculous, I know.
- agumonkey 11y ago
  I think it's universal behavior. Driving at speed limits gets you angry looks, below speed limit and people wanna hurt you. All that so they can reach the red light earlier.
  - clort 11y ago
    > angry looks I wonder how well the self driving car copes with these. In fact, I wonder how well the self driving car copes with an overly aggressive driver cutting in front and slamming on their brakes just to piss you off. I guess it would handle that better than my mothers elderly neighbour who recently didn't manage to brake in time and hit the twerp, writing off her vehicle in the process. Of course, it was counted as her fault since she struck the car in front..
    - DrScump 11y ago
      I wonder how well the self driving car copes with an overly aggressive driver cutting in front and slamming on their brakes just to piss you off. You really think Google can't afford a Death Ray in each car?
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        Death Ray or a dash cam and sensor logs. Let the insurer handle rest.
    - agumonkey 11y ago
      I'd love to see fringe behavior, I couldn't find anything like these, how their system react to limit cases. I'm sure they're overly conservative and always overstimate margins so they can handle crazy drivers, but surely there's a limit.
    - judk 11y ago
      Sad and interesting. I rear ended a vehicle who turned into my lane, and the officer cited the other driver for an unsafe turn. I guess it depends on officer mood and how long the car was safely in your lane before the breaking. Mostly officer mood. Still, there are lots of completely legal sudden braking activities that would cause a collision over 10% of the time. People don't actually drive totally defensively all the time.
  - lsaferite 11y ago
    I find myself hitting red lights by those precious few seconds the slow driver stole form me more often than not. I just want to get from A to B with as few interruptions as possible. A self-driving car would be... amazing and calm my stress levels greatly.
  - tajen 11y ago
    Speed limits are systematically set 20km/h lower than reasonable.
- developer1 11y ago
  That is normal here too, and it's more like 7-8 mph. So you can receive a ticket for impeding traffic even if the people you are supposedly obstructing would be exceeding the speed limit? Instead of ticketing the slow guy, set up a sting and ticket every person exceeding the limit by more than 6 mph. This whole thing sounds backwards.
  - twblalock 11y ago
    It's a matter of public safety. Holding up a line of cars is likely to result in road rage, or an accident. It's also very rare for slow drivers to get ticketed.
    - DrScump 11y ago
      Except that driving artificially slowly correlates well with being intoxicated... so being slow can call attention to oneself.
    - clort 11y ago
      Incitement to riot is no excuse for rioting, surely? Holding up a line of cars that would otherwise be driving too fast is not going to be the cause of an accident. The cause of the accident would be the driver who was driving too fast!
      - nitrogen 11y ago
        The point of traffic is to run an economy, not to parade at a precise speed for the amusement of deontologically obsessed nannies. If a line of traffic wants to go at speed+5, then the proper speed of traffic is speed+5, and going speed-5 is causing economic harm.
        TeMPOraL 11y ago
        You need to balance it against the amount of disutility from deaths caused by the line going at speed+5 on a road where they were supposed to be going at speed. You need to also add the disutility generated by that line fucking up traffic flow in the nearby area. Seriously, this stuff is to be determined from top down, not from perspective of individual self-interested drivers with zero context, little responsiblity and no interest of ensuring optimum flow. Also, the general culture of aggression and disregard for law is something that is not healthy for neither society, nor economy.
- joedavison 11y ago
  I'd like to see police start giving tickets for tailgating instead of speeding. Speeding alone is rarely very dangerous, especially on roads with few other cars. On the other hand, tailgating is always extremely dangerous, even when the speeds involved are relatively low.
  - threeseed 11y ago
    Tailgaiting is a vague concept though. One person's idea of tailgaiting is another person's idea of maintaining a safe braking distance. If you tried to for example leave a car's body length distance in most busy cities you would have car after car aggressively cutting in front of you. This is even more dangerous than the original tailgaiting.
    - georgerobinson 11y ago
      In the UK it's not uncommon to see chevrons painted along each lane where in you're meant to keep a minimum of two chevrons from the car in front (http://www.roberthempsall.co.uk/blogimages/keep-apart-2-chevrons-road-sign.jpg http://www.roberthempsall.co.uk/blogimages/keep-apart-2-chev...).
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - pluma 11y ago
      It's not, though. In Germany the minimum safety distance is taught in driving classes and severe violations of it will be fined like any other reckless behaviour. The rule of thumb is "as much of a distance as you pass within two seconds". This scales wonderfully with speed and easily covers the reaction time and breaking duration. Sure, in urban traffic the typical safety distance is usually less than a vehicle length, but with both tailgating and cutting in on someone constituting reckless driving offences, that's not a huge problem.
      - ollie87 11y ago
        It's the same in the UK. You can also be fined for hogging lanes on a motorway, thankfully.
- CamperBob2 11y ago
  Yeah, it's almost as if the speed limits are unreasonably low, or something. Someone should look into that.
- ggreer 11y ago
  To be fair, many of the speed limits are low. Look at street view where the car was pulled over.[1] El Camino Real is a divided boulevard with three lanes in each direction. There are stoplights and dedicated turning lanes. I'm not an aggressive driver, but I've caught myself speeding on that road before. Everything about it makes my mind think, "It's safe to go faster." 1. https://goo.gl/maps/WdfhEAGBsDP2 https://goo.gl/maps/WdfhEAGBsDP2
  - ilyanep 11y ago
    El Camino always seemed to me like it has an absurdly low speed limit, then a friend reminded me that there are unsignaled pedestrian crosswalks along it in Mountain View. It's true that it feels like it ought to be a 45 road, though.
    - DrScump 11y ago
      I don't know of any on El Camino in Mountain View not at a controlled intersection. There are some on ECR in Sunnyvale (e.g. just W of Halford) and two notorious ones in Santa Clara, though. Of course, the County wants to reserve a lane for bus use only now...
    - dickdastardly 11y ago
      Here in Britain, it's entirely lawful and very common to cross 40-60MPH roads without signals. Often the roads don't even have a marked crossing, since you can legally cross wherever you want. It's also not too uncommon to cross a non-motorway 70MPH dual carriageway, when walking outside a city. I don't know if our roads are safer for pedestrians than the USA. They're considerably safer in total, but it seems difficult to compare the US and UK for pedestrians in particular because of the differing laws and distribution of methods of travel. However, they're probably at least in the same ball park, despite our more laissez faire attitude toward pedestrian-road interaction.
      - DanBC 11y ago
        As one example of a crossing which does have warnings: The A417 between Cirencester and Cheltenham is a dual carriageway that has pedestrian footpaths across it. Imagine driving at 70mph toward this: 350 yard warning: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.8078399,-2.0618748,3a,75y,167.44h,96.69t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sKTMpYzvV-A1YmgE5UK7BAw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.8078399,-2.0618748,3a,75y,... actual crossing: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.8051623,-2.0595278,3a,75y,167.44h,96.69t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1saNdFJWBbToa05d8ajkXiXA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.8051623,-2.0595278,3a,75y,... 350 yards at 70 MPH is, I think, 10 seconds.
twblalock 11y ago
In Mountain View, 24 in a 35 zone will cause traffic jams and road rage. It's a busy place.
- judk 11y ago
  And a large part of this is Mountain View's refusal to allow housing and deploy public transit, pushing people into becoming traffic.
threeseed 11y ago
> It's absurd that 24 mph in a 35 zone is considered "too slow" It's absolutely too slow. Majority of people drive at or slightly below the speed limit. Driving that far under causes people to start behaving irrationally resulting in lots of lane changes/tailgaiting etc. This can be dangerous when lots of cars are doing it.
- coderdude 11y ago
  I get this a lot. Sometimes there's a car in the far left lane (the legally unofficial "fast lane") driving much slower than the social norm expects. It causes issues. People need to move when someone is in their way. It's instinct. It screws up the flow.
  - thrownaway2424 11y ago
    Having a speed gradient across the lanes is for limited-access divided highways only. Left lane / right lane == fast lane / slow lane is not applicable to ordinary streets.
    - aianus 11y ago
      Why would you think that? "(b) If a vehicle is being driven at a speed less than the normal speed of traffic moving in the same direction at such time, and is not being driven in the right-hand lane for traffic or as close as practicable to the right-hand edge or curb, it shall constitute prima facie evidence that the driver is operating the vehicle in violation of subdivision (a) of this section." http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=veh&group=21001-22000&file=21650-21664 http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=veh&gr... Says nothing about limited-access divided highways.
      - thrownaway2424 11y ago
        That section has numerous exceptions, as does the referenced "subdivision (a)." The point is there are many valid reasons why someone would come to a dead stop in the left lane of a multilane 2-way road. On a limited-access divided highway there are far fewer reasons, limited only to emergencies, and the left lane can be legitimately considered to be the fast lane.

coderdude 11y ago

I'm California USA, driving too slow is considered a hazard. It's kinda fuzzy to be honest. They can still pop you for speeding whenever they want but they're really looking for the person who stands out.

fletchowns 11y ago

In California, if you aren't driving 5 mph over the speed limit, the car behind you is going to tailgate the hell out of you. It's ridiculous, I know.

agumonkey 11y ago
I think it's universal behavior. Driving at speed limits gets you angry looks, below speed limit and people wanna hurt you. All that so they can reach the red light earlier.
- clort 11y ago
  > angry looks I wonder how well the self driving car copes with these. In fact, I wonder how well the self driving car copes with an overly aggressive driver cutting in front and slamming on their brakes just to piss you off. I guess it would handle that better than my mothers elderly neighbour who recently didn't manage to brake in time and hit the twerp, writing off her vehicle in the process. Of course, it was counted as her fault since she struck the car in front..
  - DrScump 11y ago
    I wonder how well the self driving car copes with an overly aggressive driver cutting in front and slamming on their brakes just to piss you off. You really think Google can't afford a Death Ray in each car?
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      Death Ray or a dash cam and sensor logs. Let the insurer handle rest.
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    I'd love to see fringe behavior, I couldn't find anything like these, how their system react to limit cases. I'm sure they're overly conservative and always overstimate margins so they can handle crazy drivers, but surely there's a limit.
  - judk 11y ago
    Sad and interesting. I rear ended a vehicle who turned into my lane, and the officer cited the other driver for an unsafe turn. I guess it depends on officer mood and how long the car was safely in your lane before the breaking. Mostly officer mood. Still, there are lots of completely legal sudden braking activities that would cause a collision over 10% of the time. People don't actually drive totally defensively all the time.
- lsaferite 11y ago
  I find myself hitting red lights by those precious few seconds the slow driver stole form me more often than not. I just want to get from A to B with as few interruptions as possible. A self-driving car would be... amazing and calm my stress levels greatly.
- tajen 11y ago
  Speed limits are systematically set 20km/h lower than reasonable.
developer1 11y ago
That is normal here too, and it's more like 7-8 mph. So you can receive a ticket for impeding traffic even if the people you are supposedly obstructing would be exceeding the speed limit? Instead of ticketing the slow guy, set up a sting and ticket every person exceeding the limit by more than 6 mph. This whole thing sounds backwards.
- twblalock 11y ago
  It's a matter of public safety. Holding up a line of cars is likely to result in road rage, or an accident. It's also very rare for slow drivers to get ticketed.
  - DrScump 11y ago
    Except that driving artificially slowly correlates well with being intoxicated... so being slow can call attention to oneself.
  - clort 11y ago
    Incitement to riot is no excuse for rioting, surely? Holding up a line of cars that would otherwise be driving too fast is not going to be the cause of an accident. The cause of the accident would be the driver who was driving too fast!
    - nitrogen 11y ago
      The point of traffic is to run an economy, not to parade at a precise speed for the amusement of deontologically obsessed nannies. If a line of traffic wants to go at speed+5, then the proper speed of traffic is speed+5, and going speed-5 is causing economic harm.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        You need to balance it against the amount of disutility from deaths caused by the line going at speed+5 on a road where they were supposed to be going at speed. You need to also add the disutility generated by that line fucking up traffic flow in the nearby area. Seriously, this stuff is to be determined from top down, not from perspective of individual self-interested drivers with zero context, little responsiblity and no interest of ensuring optimum flow. Also, the general culture of aggression and disregard for law is something that is not healthy for neither society, nor economy.
joedavison 11y ago
I'd like to see police start giving tickets for tailgating instead of speeding. Speeding alone is rarely very dangerous, especially on roads with few other cars. On the other hand, tailgating is always extremely dangerous, even when the speeds involved are relatively low.
- threeseed 11y ago
  Tailgaiting is a vague concept though. One person's idea of tailgaiting is another person's idea of maintaining a safe braking distance. If you tried to for example leave a car's body length distance in most busy cities you would have car after car aggressively cutting in front of you. This is even more dangerous than the original tailgaiting.
  - georgerobinson 11y ago
    In the UK it's not uncommon to see chevrons painted along each lane where in you're meant to keep a minimum of two chevrons from the car in front (http://www.roberthempsall.co.uk/blogimages/keep-apart-2-chevrons-road-sign.jpg http://www.roberthempsall.co.uk/blogimages/keep-apart-2-chev...).
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - pluma 11y ago
    It's not, though. In Germany the minimum safety distance is taught in driving classes and severe violations of it will be fined like any other reckless behaviour. The rule of thumb is "as much of a distance as you pass within two seconds". This scales wonderfully with speed and easily covers the reaction time and breaking duration. Sure, in urban traffic the typical safety distance is usually less than a vehicle length, but with both tailgating and cutting in on someone constituting reckless driving offences, that's not a huge problem.
    - ollie87 11y ago
      It's the same in the UK. You can also be fined for hogging lanes on a motorway, thankfully.
CamperBob2 11y ago
Yeah, it's almost as if the speed limits are unreasonably low, or something. Someone should look into that.
ggreer 11y ago
To be fair, many of the speed limits are low. Look at street view where the car was pulled over.[1] El Camino Real is a divided boulevard with three lanes in each direction. There are stoplights and dedicated turning lanes. I'm not an aggressive driver, but I've caught myself speeding on that road before. Everything about it makes my mind think, "It's safe to go faster." 1. https://goo.gl/maps/WdfhEAGBsDP2 https://goo.gl/maps/WdfhEAGBsDP2
- ilyanep 11y ago
  El Camino always seemed to me like it has an absurdly low speed limit, then a friend reminded me that there are unsignaled pedestrian crosswalks along it in Mountain View. It's true that it feels like it ought to be a 45 road, though.
  - DrScump 11y ago
    I don't know of any on El Camino in Mountain View not at a controlled intersection. There are some on ECR in Sunnyvale (e.g. just W of Halford) and two notorious ones in Santa Clara, though. Of course, the County wants to reserve a lane for bus use only now...
  - dickdastardly 11y ago
    Here in Britain, it's entirely lawful and very common to cross 40-60MPH roads without signals. Often the roads don't even have a marked crossing, since you can legally cross wherever you want. It's also not too uncommon to cross a non-motorway 70MPH dual carriageway, when walking outside a city. I don't know if our roads are safer for pedestrians than the USA. They're considerably safer in total, but it seems difficult to compare the US and UK for pedestrians in particular because of the differing laws and distribution of methods of travel. However, they're probably at least in the same ball park, despite our more laissez faire attitude toward pedestrian-road interaction.
    - DanBC 11y ago
      As one example of a crossing which does have warnings: The A417 between Cirencester and Cheltenham is a dual carriageway that has pedestrian footpaths across it. Imagine driving at 70mph toward this: 350 yard warning: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.8078399,-2.0618748,3a,75y,167.44h,96.69t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sKTMpYzvV-A1YmgE5UK7BAw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.8078399,-2.0618748,3a,75y,... actual crossing: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.8051623,-2.0595278,3a,75y,167.44h,96.69t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1saNdFJWBbToa05d8ajkXiXA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.8051623,-2.0595278,3a,75y,... 350 yards at 70 MPH is, I think, 10 seconds.

twblalock 11y ago

In Mountain View, 24 in a 35 zone will cause traffic jams and road rage. It's a busy place.

judk 11y ago
And a large part of this is Mountain View's refusal to allow housing and deploy public transit, pushing people into becoming traffic.

threeseed 11y ago

> It's absurd that 24 mph in a 35 zone is considered "too slow" It's absolutely too slow. Majority of people drive at or slightly below the speed limit. Driving that far under causes people to start behaving irrationally resulting in lots of lane changes/tailgaiting etc. This can be dangerous when lots of cars are doing it.

coderdude 11y ago
I get this a lot. Sometimes there's a car in the far left lane (the legally unofficial "fast lane") driving much slower than the social norm expects. It causes issues. People need to move when someone is in their way. It's instinct. It screws up the flow.
- thrownaway2424 11y ago
  Having a speed gradient across the lanes is for limited-access divided highways only. Left lane / right lane == fast lane / slow lane is not applicable to ordinary streets.
  - aianus 11y ago
    Why would you think that? "(b) If a vehicle is being driven at a speed less than the normal speed of traffic moving in the same direction at such time, and is not being driven in the right-hand lane for traffic or as close as practicable to the right-hand edge or curb, it shall constitute prima facie evidence that the driver is operating the vehicle in violation of subdivision (a) of this section." http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=veh&group=21001-22000&file=21650-21664 http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=veh&gr... Says nothing about limited-access divided highways.
    - thrownaway2424 11y ago
      That section has numerous exceptions, as does the referenced "subdivision (a)." The point is there are many valid reasons why someone would come to a dead stop in the left lane of a multilane 2-way road. On a limited-access divided highway there are far fewer reasons, limited only to emergencies, and the left lane can be legitimately considered to be the fast lane.