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The speed limit is America’s most broken law. Why can’t we fix it?
- shusaku 5y ago> Despite the high speeds, the Interstate Highway System is more than twice as safe per mile as almost any other type of road. I wonder how that compares to be speeding ticket issued per hour of driving. I always think of the classic pull over scene being on the interstate.
- bradleyy 5y agoIt's broken because it's wrongheaded and unsafe. e.g. people blocking the left lane are demonstrably causing accidents and unsafe driving. Instead of taking an engineering approach, we let emotions and revenue generation dictate the limits. And that's why I'm a proud Cannonballer: it's a protest against arbitrary speed limits. Nothing like beating the Google estimate by 10 or 11 hours going cross country. And with something like 1 million miles driven, there has been 1 injury, which happened in the 70s. No multiple car crashes. And I can say that people were traveling way above the speed limit the entire time. If you want to tell me that going 100+ west of Tulsa isn't safe in a relatively modern car, I just can't even with you. Arizona? New Mexico? The speed limits there are a joke. They should be unlimited.
- runsonrum 5y agoCertainly not just the USA. Also, unless you are travelling large distances or travelling at criminal speeds, you aren't really saving that much time by speeding.
- 8organicbits 5y agoA developer once asked me if I optimized my short/frequent inner loops or my long/infrequenly run code paths. But I agree. Watching someone weave past me to sit at the same red light or passing them when they pick the wrong lane in traffic always makes me laugh.
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- yummypaint 5y agoYeah if people really want road trips to be over quickly they should just drive below ticketable speed and keep moving. Going 10% faster on the highway for an hour is easily canceled out by a single stop. Within cities, driving even 20% faster routinely results in literally no improvement in transit time because you still catch the same red lights at the same times, but burn more fuel between them.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoWhen I was a kid, there was this smaller town we went through somewhere in the midwest. It had signs that said "traffic lights are synchronized for 25 MPH". Once you figured out that they were telling the truth, you drove 25[1]. If you didn't, you hit every light red. [1] Or at least most people did. We still saw at least one vehicle jackrabbit out of a stop, get up to 35, and then hit the next red light. Over and over. Sigh...
- rjbwork 5y agoSo you drive 50, then ;)
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- Bostonian 5y agoI typically go 5-10 miles above the speed limit, have been driving for 30 years, drive more slowly than probably 60% of drivers, and have never gotten a speeding ticket.
- silisili 5y agoSame. But I usually do 15 to 20% over max instead of 5-10. 10 over in a neighborhood is way different than 10 over on the xway.
- yupyup54133 5y agoAt least in my area, it feels unsafe to drive the speed limit on the interstate because you will be run off the road by impatient truck drivers.
- thatsamonad 5y agoIt’s similar in my area, but not just limited to truck drivers. It’s amazing to me how angry people appear to be when I drive exactly at the speed limit and refuse to tailgate the car in front of me. They seem to think that I’m the one in the wrong for treating speeding hunks of metal that weigh thousands of pounds as dangerous things that can and do kill people.
- torstenvl 5y agoIf you aren't in the right-most lane, then yes, you are wrong. See, e.g., Ind. Code § 35-44.1-2-13; Virg. Code § 46.2-842.1.
- thatsamonad 5y agoTypically I am in the right-most lane. I was taught during drivers education that the left lane is for passing and that you should move back over to the right-most lane whenever possible, especially if you’re a “slow moving” vehicle. But there are drivers who weave through traffic whenever they see an opening and those are the ones who appear to be angriest when they’re behind me in the right-most lane because they were impatient in the other lanes.
- torstenvl 5y agoI am an impatient driver, but I think you're in the right and the other driver is in the wrong. Right lane is slow traffic/merge. Middle lane is travel. Left lane is fast/passing lane.
- Miner49er 5y agoI don't think every state has this law.
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- JoeAltmaier 5y agoIsn't this just wrong? Speeding is 1 in 4 fatal crashes. Something like 1 in 2 is 'running over a pedestrian'. Why can't we fix that? Why don't we talk about that, instead of some marginal issue like speeding?
- sigstoat 5y agoDo you think these things aren't all intertwined? I'll note that the article specifically claims that speeds are too high on local roads, which I'd think you'd appreciate. I see the garbage speed limits (set haphazardly, frequently to generate revenue, etc), as producing a generalized contempt for traffic law, which isn't good for pedestrians.
- JoeAltmaier 5y agoIf 'local roads' mean rural, then no, there aren't many pedestrians there. I'd imagine most pedestrian fatalities are simply crosswalks in town.
- sigstoat 5y agono, that isn't what that means. perhaps commenting on the subject will be more fruitful for you if you familiarize yourself with it.
- JoeAltmaier 5y agoYes I read it. Rereading, I see they use the the term to mean neighborhood streets. Then yes, it's entirely possible the pedestrian carnage has little to do with speed limits, and mostly to do with inadequate crossings. In fact, we know that to be true because only 1/4 of fatal accidents have speed as a factor. I suggest boning up on basic statistics!
- unethical_ban 5y agoI'd say the section of the Constitution defining the structure of the Senate is pretty high up there. Or perhaps the laws that define most Congressional elections as First-past-the-post method instead of something failing fewer voting system criteria. But, headlines have to catch attention, even if it's a boldly foolish and false claim on its face.
- cafard 5y agoI presume the writers meant "most frequently violated."
- Andys 5y agoI sometimes wonder why road fatalities are not measured per-hour of driving instead of per-mile?
- leetcrew 5y agowhy? miles seem like the natural denominator to me. I don't hop in my car to drive 20 minutes and see where I end up. my goal is to drive to a specific location n miles away.
- necovek 5y agoI believe they would mostly correlate with each other, but doing it per hour driven would better surface things like tiredness playing a part (eg. that 5 mile commute back from work can take either 5 minutes in no traffic at 60mph, or an hour or more in heavy traffic — one has a different risk profile from the other). Still I don't think it'd make for a practical difference as long as all the studies are including enough of both types of driving.
- Andys 5y agoBut breaking it down, perhaps there should be stricter speed limit controls in suburbs and cities, and relaxed on inter-city highways?
- necovek 5y agoWe've got that in Serbia, so I imagine it's not that unusual elsewhere either (our lawmakers are not the smartest ones and they usually just copy stuff over :)). Basically, speeding up to 10km/h in the urban area is equivalent to speeding up to 20km/h outside cities as far as fines go (and up to 20km/h in the urban area is an equivalent penalty as for up to 40km/h outside urban areas, and so forth...).
- Andys 5y agoSpecifically for long trips: if I drive on a long trip (say, 10 hours at the speed limit, on high quality highways), given the fixed distance, how does my risk of a fatality change if I drive 20% faster and thus spend 2 hours less in the car?
- slowhand09 5y agoWhy is the speed limit what it is? Why not focus on driver education? Why not focus on feedback? This topic, where a driver is holding back 40 cars trying to get to work on time while he/she drives in a way to prevent anyone from getting past... People get fed up, occasionally doing stupid stuff like passing on the shoulder. How many accidents are caused by roadrage? Traffic on your bumper - move right. I'd much rather have that guy on down the road instead of in my mirror. I once had a car block me on a near empty road for almost 10 miles. We were trying to make a flight, but this guy was bothered that we were doing 10mph over on an empty road. I read a few years ago about a guy blocking a driver who had an accident... while trying to get to the hospital with his pregnant wife. We can all coexist on the road. Rule one - use common sense, be polite. Rule two - don't be a dick. Rule three - let the cops do the policing.
- mensetmanusman 5y agoI wonder what would happen if we set up a micro-transition traffic management future: eg. if you are in the left lane and not actively passing, 1.00$/min (or some percentage of income). If you are switching lanes above some safety/rate threshold, $40.00 per pass, etc. I wonder if you could gamify a safer road.
- bradleyy 5y agoYou have no idea how much I'd be willing to pay for access to the bonus lanes and higher speeds.
- gizmo686 5y agoInsurance. There are insurance companies that will have you download an app from which they monitor your driving and adjust your premiums accordingly.
- seanw444 5y agoMan, that's pretty creepy.
- windows2020 5y agoAmerica's most broken law... Does the author understand the role of states?
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoAnd municipalities.
- helen___keller 5y agoSpeeding is basically a function of road design. Until this year, I lived on a street that was just wide enough for 3 cars. It had street parking on both sides of the road, and allows traffic both ways. Believe me, nobody is speeding on that street.
- wahern 5y agoRoad design and car design. Few people were doing 80mph back when the road noise was deafening and your steering wheel would shimmy. In today's cars you can't tell the difference between 60mph and 80mph.
- wolrah 5y agoBingo. This is why we have things like the 85th percentile rule. There is no such thing as a road with a speeding problem, just a road that is designed for and thus encourages higher speeds than the posted limit. When that happens, you have to change one of those two things. Either fix the road to match the desired speed, or raise the posted limit to be appropriate for the road as it exists. Anyone who simply advocates for stricter enforcement of the limits as they stand without changing anything does not understand the problem.
- Miner49er 5y agoI'm not convinced. I'm from a rural area with very wide roads, virtually no pedestrians, great visibility. Basically everyone went the speed limit or under. At most 5 over. Where I am now the roads are much narrower, less visibility, overall just not as good for going fast. Despite this, the speed limits seem to be higher and more people speed. Almost everyone does. Go to most small towns in the US and people drive slower (despite the fact there's less traffic). This makes me think speeding is a culture thing, and with the right enforcement the culture could be changed.
- wolrah 5y agoI am also from a rural area, I've spent the better part of the last two decades driving through farmland on roads with no posted limit to get to anywhere. The legal speed limit on such roads is 45 MPH but for the most part on the flat, straight segments traffic goes 55ish. County Sheriff doesn't care until somewhere in the 60s unless they're looking to pull you over. If you're on a road that goes through a town just barely large enough to have a police department, you can guarantee that the road suddenly gains a posted limit of 35 MPH without changing in any significant way and that there will be strict enforcement which may or may not be biased towards those with non-local tags. The exception is the state of Indiana. I don't know what they put in the water there, but no one in Indiana seems to have noticed that interstate highways are no longer stuck with the double nickel. Of course they also have the most bare minimum 2+2 interstate where one dawdler refusing to pass a semi can tie up traffic for miles on end.
- voakbasda 5y agoCorruption. The police and courts stand to profit handsomely from the existing system. The legislatures cooperate because those groups will make their lives difficult in other ways. Quid pro quo, Clarice.
- librarianscott 5y agoA simple if speed >= speed limit, then slowly apply brakes, would be so controversial, even if we exempted cop cars and ambulances. Because "freedom." Same with guns and if location == school zone, then don't fire.
- windows2020 5y agoIf by 'freedom' you're referring to the freedom to overtake a vehicle, the freedom to escape a dangerous situation, or the freedom to rush to the hospital, I'd agree.
- librarianscott 5y agoOkay, so if I changed the software to prevent speeding only if you are in a school zone, would you be okay to lose your freedom to speed in the school zone, or do you still contend that you need to speed to escape your dangerous situation or rush to the hospital?
- helloworld11 5y agoOf course, it's automatically about "muh freedom" and implicitly insulting a whole culture. No reason to think that maybe, just maybe, speed limits as they stand in many places are arbitrary, overly low and specifically designed as revenue machines for vaguely corrupt municipal, state and other regional governments. The majority of people who moderately speed (a majority of people in general) have perfectly reasonable use of their faculties and judgement. They're not going over the speed limit because they're just freedom-obsessed assholes. They're doing it because their slightly elevated speed is more reasonable and relatively safe.
- librarianscott 5y agoOkay, so if I changed my software to allow you to speed everywhere except school zones, are you okay with that, or does is it still seem like a revenue machine or a thwart on your reasonable speeding?
- captainredbeard 5y ago
- bequanna 5y ago> More than 1 in 4 fatal crashes in the United States involve at least one speeding driver, making speeding a factor in nearly 10,000 deaths each year, in addition to an unknowable number of injuries. We hear this statistic all the time from law enforcement and I smell BS. Is there some quantitative method being used to determine if speed was a factor? More likely, this is some checkbox on a form an officer checks almost by default when filing a report. The article goes on to later discuss the difficulty in correlating speed limit and deaths. Perhaps this is difficult to determine because the correlation is low or non existent at the speeds most drivers drive (5-10 mph over limit.)
- bradleyy 5y ago96% of all deaths in America, the person ate potatoes within the last 4 days. Because we eat lots of potatoes. Correlation only.
- leetcrew 5y agoI would guess that at least one out of four drivers is exceeding the speed limit at all times, so the fact that one out of four fatal crashes involves speeding doesn't say much. it's odd to start off the article with such a weak statistic and say nothing about how tenuous the causal link is, but the the rest of the article does a pretty good job exploring the absurdity of US speed limits.