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> It's the worst kind of selective enforcement - random enforcement. Very similar to the way police behave w/ regards to speeding tickets. Set extremely low sp

• Coding_Cat 8y ago
  >Set extremely low speeds that don't make sense on highways. Allow most people to go 10-15 above. I doubt people really speed because the limits have been set too low and the people know better what is an ideal speed limit. I think people_think_ they know better what the speed limit is, and/or reason "well if 60mph is okay, 75 mph can't be that bad, I'm barely speeding and I'm in a rush". At least, that's the attitude I've seen with people who regularly speed. If you were to raise the speed limit to 75mph, people would just use the same logic to drive 90mph instead.
  • scarface74 8y ago
    http://www.sehinc.com/news/truth-about-speed-limits-explained-engineer http://www.sehinc.com/news/truth-about-speed-limits-explaine... There is no guarantee that a speed limit will have any effect on driving behaviors. The fact is, when driving, most motorists choose a speed in which they personally feel both comfortable and safe.
    • Joeri 8y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn#Travel_speeds https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn#Travel_speeds on a free-flowing section in 1992, the recorded average speed was 132 km/h (82 mph) with 51% of drivers exceeding the recommended speed. The autobahn has a long history proving that people feel comfortable and safe at excessive velocities.
      • scarface74 8y ago
        The autobahn is different. The people who drive on the autobahn self select because they want to drive fast and they have a disproportionate number of cars that can handle the speed. I doubt I would have been driving my first car - a Mercury Tracer - on the autobahn. But 80 miles per hour is not an abnormal speed on the highway. The posted speed limit is so rarely enforced, that it still isn’t a deterrent. For instance, the speed limit on GA 400 is 70. But you’d better be in the slow lane if you only go 70mph. https://www.11alive.com/article/news/local/commuters-respond-to-sheriffs-hilarious-and-true-ga-400-speeding-post/85-540154004 https://www.11alive.com/article/news/local/commuters-respond...
        • philwelch 8y ago
          I'm not sure I understand this point. The autobahn is just the German highway system. Do Germans who don't want to drive fast and don't own fast cars all emigrate to Denmark or something?
          • NegativeLatency 8y ago
            When most Americans talk abou the autobahn like this they actually mean the sections without speed restrictions
            • rconti 8y ago
              So do Germans who want to get from one city to another exit the Autobahn and drive on surface streets to avoid the de-restricted sections? Of course not.
              • gehwartzen 8y ago
                They just get into the correct lane.
          • scarface74 8y ago
            I thought it was understood in context and because Americans usually refer to "the Autobahn" as the parts without speed limits.
  • jchw 8y ago
    Generally in my experience people drive around 70-75 mph regardless of the speed limit. At 50mph some people may lean lower, but it's generally usual to see people on 75mph highways going 75mph. There were some in Michigan.
  • packet_nerd 8y ago
    Just my observation, in my state the highway speed limit is 80 and people drive at right around 80, and drop down to 75 at night. Then, on a Texas road where it was 85, I was surprised to see most people still going about 80. And in a neighboring state where the speed limit is 70 for similar roads, people still drive right around 80. And once I drove through Chicago at night through a stretch where the speed limit was 45, and people were still going 75 - 80... not sure what the deal with 80 is, but it seems to be the sweet spot a lot of the time.
    • zzzeek 8y ago
      it's the cars. the relative motion that is transferred into the cab, the handling, etc. back in the 70s/80s when folks drove huge metal deathtraps with barely any seatbelt that nobody wore anyway, on top of a giant floating weight distribution that would easily spin out, 80mph was an insanely high speed.
  • quasse 8y ago
    > If you were to raise the speed limit to 75mph, people would just use the same logic to drive 90mph instead. Luckily there are plenty of places that have done just that that we can learn from. WI just raised a lot of its highway speed limits to 70mph for example. Anecdotally, people used to drive in the 75mph range before the speed limit was raised and would deal with the occasional ticket for 10 over. In the general case, the average highway speed seems to have stayed at 75mph after the change. I've noticed something similar in South Dakota where the speed limit is 80. I rarely saw someone go more than 5 over, and would frequently encounter people driving at 75mph.
    • zip1234 8y ago
      Also in Michigan, they just raised the speed limit on some Michigan expressways to 75 from 70 because they found that was the speed most people went.
  • chrischen 8y ago
    Perhaps for places with realistic speed limits, but there are places with unrealistic limits: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-12-17/opinion/ct-enforce-speed-limits-edit-1217-jm-20131217_1_speed-limit-70-mph-state-troopers http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-12-17/opinion/ct-enf...
    • dionian 8y ago
      Still true to this day - I've been pulled over for speeding just over 80, and the State Police knocked my recorded speed down to just below 80 so I wouldn't get a very serious "aggravated" speeding ticket (something like 15mph over limit)
  • cortesoft 8y ago
    I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding about how people drive. People don't look at a speed limit and then drive 15 over; they drive the speed they feel comfortable with, regardless of the speed limit. Studies have shown this: Q. Wouldn’t everyone drive faster if the speed limit was raised? A. No, the majority of drivers will not go faster than what they feel is comfortable and safe regardless of the speed limit. For example, an 18-month study following an increase in the speed limit along the New York Thruway from 55 to 65 mph, determined that the average speed of traffic, 68 mph, remained the same. Even a national study conducted by Federal Highway Administration also concluded that raising or lowering the speed limit had practically no effect on actual travel speeds https://www.motorists.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/speed-limit-fact-sheet.pdf https://www.motorists.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/speed-l...
    • dyarosla 8y ago
      I don’t think dismissing the parent comment based on a study is fair. Anecdotally, I drive the way the parent describes, and several comments also corroborate with that. Likely that a non negligible portion of the population drive this way.
      • mikestew 8y ago
        I don’t think dismissing the parent comment based on a study is fair. Well, there's a surprising turn of events on HN: an appeal to discard the findings of a study in favor of one poster's suppositions, and another's anecdata. :-)
        • dyarosla 8y ago
          The irony is def not lost on me ;)
      • cortesoft 8y ago
        If you look at the studies, they actually show this. There is a small percentage of drivers (something like 5-15%) that always try to drive at the speed limit, even if that is lower than the speed they would naturally drive at. This is one of the reasons experts argue that you NEED to set the speed limit at the natural speed people will drive at; otherwise, you will have a big speed difference between the majority who drive at the comfortable, faster, speed, and the 15% who are driving slower at the speed limit. You want the two groups to drive at the same speed.
  • zzzeek 8y ago
    I live in a state that has 55 mph limit, and I've spent lots of time in states that have a 70mph limit. everyone drives the same speed regardless, around 75-80 on a straight and wide highway in the left lane, around 65 in the right lane. the sign means nothing.
  • AcerbicZero 8y ago
    Surprisingly enough, that tends to not be the case - http://www.sehinc.com/news/truth-about-speed-limits-explained-engineer http://www.sehinc.com/news/truth-about-speed-limits-explaine... My personal anecdotal evidence on this, having recently driven cross country on I-80 (mostly 80MPH speed limits) and through Montana on I-90 (Again, mostly 80 MPH) shows that people drive at a speed that is safe for them. My car, and those that also seemed to drive a few MPH over the limit were all newer, highly capable vehicles, and the largest added risk was the chance of running into excessively slow moving traffic. When the visibility dropped, I slowed down, and when the visibility was clear, there was no additional risk in pushing it up a few MPH.
  • imgabe 8y ago
    > If you were to raise the speed limit to 75mph, people would just use the same logic to drive 90mph instead. I've driven in parts of the country where the speed limit is 75 or even 80 and that wasn't my experience. There were not a lot of people blowing past me doing 95.
    • zrobotics 8y ago
      Drive on I25 north of Cheyenne WY on a Sunday, and I guarantee ~50% of out of state cars are going that speed.
  • mikestew 8y ago
    If you were to raise the speed limit to 75mph, people would just use the same logic to drive 90mph instead. This is easily tested in the western U. S., where there exist states with speed limits of 75mph or higher. There's a point at which I quit getting passed, and start being the one doing most of the passing. That point is just a bit north of 80mph. Anecdotally, same point it was when speed limits were lower. IOW, when I'd ride the interstates of AZ or WY twenty years ago, my ratio of passed/passing at 90mph was about the same as it is now. But surely someone has done an actual study on this.
  • volkk 8y ago
    Anecdotally speaking, I've driven a lot and 75-80 is ideal speed for me. When I drove in texas where in certain areas, the speed limit is 80-85, I still drove around 80. Once you hit 85/90, a car just becomes too shaky/unstable feeling.
    • 2trill2spill 8y ago
      > Once you hit 85/90, a car just becomes too shaky/unstable feeling. Not my car, I often look down and see that I'm going 90 when it feels like I'm going 70.
    • grkvlt 8y ago
      I think Ferrari, Porsche, et al would beg to differ. Most high end Mercedes, Audi or BMW cars are limited to 155 mph but you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference in ride quality between the top 50 mph of the range and the bottom 50. If your car gets shaky and unstable when you hit 90 mph then I'm sorry but you just don't have a very good vehicle.
      • volkk 8y ago
        you can't assume that most of the general population has these cars, though. a 2013 camry going 90 MPH is not something i want to be in, nor do i trust anyone going that fast to be in control of their vehicle and making high speed decisions
        • dingaling 8y ago
          I've been up to 130mph as a passenger in mid-2000s Kia Magentis saloon ( Camry-sized sedan ) on a track and it was rock-solid. Car chassis are very performant nowadays.
      • Aramgutang 8y ago
        The car is not all that's at play here. Road surface quality is a huge factor. I've pushed a rental Merc past 180 km/h (110 mph) on a reasonably well-paved outback road, and it was downright unpleasant to drive at that speed from the vibration. On a smoother highway I would guess it'd still become unpleasant past 200 km/h (125 mph). Personally, I also found driving at those speeds too mentally taxing. The lack of time to react, the lack of maneuverability, and the huge braking distance were just too stressful. You couldn't let your thoughts, let alone your eyes, off the road for even a second. On that particular trip, I had driven for 18 hours (excluding short breaks and a 3-hour nap), most of it at ~100 km/h. If I had the option of driving 180 km/h the whole time and save 8 hours, I would not take it. That said, if there were no speed limits, I'd probably drive 130-150 km/h (80-95 mph), depending on the road, which isn't far from what volkk said.
  • gwbas1c 8y ago
    It's regional. I've seen an interview on MA TV with a State Trooper where the cop basically said that 5-10 over was totally OK on a newly-opened freeway. Then again, MA speed limits tend to be lower than surrounding states.
  • closeparen 8y ago
    Many speed limits were set at a particular percentile of observed speeds early in the road’s life, then lowered in the 1970s to conserve fuel. Safety-oriented calibration is less common than you’d think. Drivers mostly go the speed they are comfortable with, which is a function of the roadway’s design and conditions. Traffic engineers are learning that you can’t just slap a 30mph limit sign on something that feels like an interstate highway, but must instead use the road’s physical characteristics to slow drivers down.
  • rconti 8y ago
    That's not what the evidence shows. Also, it goes against traffic design principles, even in the US. (see: 85th percentile)
• jonny_eh 8y ago
  Cops don't set speed limits.
  • dontparticipate 8y ago
    Sure, but the people that are responsible for their revenue do. There is an incentive by both parties to keep the speed limits lower than they need to be as long as that means the police department doesn't need to fund its operations through regular taxation. Police chiefs often have easier access to city councils and they pretty clearly aren't lobbying for increased speed limits.
• deleted 8y ago
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• PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
  Except it isn't random. Some cops just look for the fastest cars while others will look for out of state license plates. And some will even go as far as basing it off of the demographics of the driver. We would never tolerate a speed limit that allows difference races to go different max speeds, but allowing selective enforcement by cops enables any cop to do this.
  • superhuzza 8y ago
    Exactly right. Michelle Alexander explains these racial consequences of selective law enforcement in The New Jim Crowe.
  • mjevans 8y ago
    Speed is just a red herring anyway; as you said it's all about selective enforcement. I'd rather there were NOT any speed limit enforcement at all UNLESS there's another infraction. Even more ideally self-driving cars would just save us. However until then I'd prefer that laws like Washington State's 'keep right except to pass' were strongly enforced.
    • drewmol 8y ago
      >However until then I'd prefer that laws like Washington State's 'keep right except to pass' were strongly enforced. I recently drove from Tuscon, AZ to Cleveland, OH. All 8 states I drove through have them, but somewhere around Misouri signs get smaller and less frequent, and they stop being strictly enforced. Ohio recently started pushing to enforce this law. It seems as exits get more frequent and less lanes are available, (road maintenance in 4 season territory costs a lot, so there are more 2 lane highway spans than 3-4) lots of drivers decide that the speed limit +x MPH is fast enough for everyone, FU if you're behind me. I'd guess it added +/- 8 hours to the trip.
  • King-Aaron 8y ago
    > some will even go as far as basing it off of the demographics of the driver My experience as a young lad with a high powered Nissan Skyline certainly reflected this many years ago. I had almost-daily "random vehicle and license checks"...