4 ms·

Mostly I'm talking about surface roads, especially where people go at ~50 mph in a 35 mph zone, without regard for road conditions or other road users. But dri

Mostly I'm talking about surface roads, especially where people go at ~50 mph in a 35 mph zone, without regard for road conditions or other road users. But drivers have developed a sense of entitlement to speed at least 10 mph, and regard the posted speed limit as a speed minimum. But if a car is traveling 65 mph in a 65 mph zone in a center or right lane, and a car behind him traveling at 75 mph swerves recklessly into another lane in order to avoid having to slow down to the posted speed limint, then the responsibility for the risk of that unsafe lane change is the responsibility of the driver who did it, not the car driving at the posted speed limit in the right lane.

u801e 9y ago
> drivers have developed a sense of entitlement to speed at least 10 mph, and regard the posted speed limit as a speed minimum. This is the result of underposting highway speed limits for decades. Had that not happened, then dotted limits would have a lot more respect today.
- panglott 9y ago
  The National Maximum Speed Limit law was passed in 1974 and repealed in 1995. It's been repealed for longer than it was in effect. Virtually all of the lower 48 US states have an interstate speed limit on the order of 70-80 mph.
  - u801e 9y ago
    Yes, though a lot of them have 85th percentile speeds more than 5 mph above the speed limit. And they still have a tendency to randomly reduce the speed limit to 55 mph without any obvious difference in road design (Pennsylvania and Maryland for example). Also, a lot of those states only recently allowed speed limits above 65 mph (far more recently than 1995). So you basically have a generation of motorists who grew up and spent a substantial portion of their driving years with highway speed limits that virtually no one complies with, and that it was okay to drive 5 to 10 mph above the speed limit. This attitude spread to other road types as well meaning that even appropriately posted speed limits (e.g., 25 mph residential streets) have a high degree of noncompliance. It's going to take a while to undo the damage, but that's what happens when traffic control devices are effectively used to "cry wolf". Edit: s/compliance)/noncompliance/

u801e 9y ago

> drivers have developed a sense of entitlement to speed at least 10 mph, and regard the posted speed limit as a speed minimum. This is the result of underposting highway speed limits for decades. Had that not happened, then dotted limits would have a lot more respect today.

panglott 9y ago
The National Maximum Speed Limit law was passed in 1974 and repealed in 1995. It's been repealed for longer than it was in effect. Virtually all of the lower 48 US states have an interstate speed limit on the order of 70-80 mph.
- u801e 9y ago
  Yes, though a lot of them have 85th percentile speeds more than 5 mph above the speed limit. And they still have a tendency to randomly reduce the speed limit to 55 mph without any obvious difference in road design (Pennsylvania and Maryland for example). Also, a lot of those states only recently allowed speed limits above 65 mph (far more recently than 1995). So you basically have a generation of motorists who grew up and spent a substantial portion of their driving years with highway speed limits that virtually no one complies with, and that it was okay to drive 5 to 10 mph above the speed limit. This attitude spread to other road types as well meaning that even appropriately posted speed limits (e.g., 25 mph residential streets) have a high degree of noncompliance. It's going to take a while to undo the damage, but that's what happens when traffic control devices are effectively used to "cry wolf". Edit: s/compliance)/noncompliance/