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Virginia as a whole has some pretty absurdly pro police laws, at least re: driving. The lesser of either 20 over the speed limit or any speed over ~80~ 85 mile

Virginia as a whole has some pretty absurdly pro police laws, at least re: driving. The lesser of either 20 over the speed limit or any speed over ~80~ 85 miles an hour (thanks jmisavage) in Virginia is a misdemeanor, and at least one auto journalist has been jailed in Virginia. https://jalopnik.com/never-speed-in-virginia-lessons-from-my-three-days-in-1613604053 https://jalopnik.com/never-speed-in-virginia-lessons-from-my... It's also the only state to prohibit radar detectors.

cryptonector 5y ago
I thought Connecticut also prohibited radar detectors.
- Wistar 5y ago
  Apparently not. "• Under federal law, the use of radar or laser speed detectors is illegal in all commercial vehicles over 10,000 pounds. • Radar detectors are illegal to use in any vehicle in the District of Columbia. • Radar detectors are illegal to use in any vehicle in the state of Virginia. • Radar detectors are illegal to use in any vehicle while on any military installation." https://k40.com/are-radar-detectors-illegal/ https://k40.com/are-radar-detectors-illegal/
ZoomerCretin 5y ago
Considering the effects of driving at these speeds, I'd say the legal absurdity is the other 49 states not having similar punishments for people who drive at these incredibly dangerous speeds. An enormous amount of people die or acquire permanent, life-altering disabilities at the hands of people who were speeding and crashed.
- casion 5y ago
  This kind of absolute thinking is not helpful. The US is a HUGE place. Each location has different driving conditions, types of roads, driving habits etc... Affluence also factors in significantly both on a community level and personal level. Driving 80mph through a small town with significant environmental debris on the roads where everyone is driving trucks from the 60s? That should be a felony. Driving 80mph on a clean, straight highway where everyone is driving a relatively modern car? There should be _no problem_. Separately, IMO, vehicle should factor in at the judgement level of law enforcement. My car can stop from 60mph in <100ft, will pull >1g on skidpad, has a full bevvy of features to alert me of surrounding conditions and will intervene in certain dangerous scenarios. The idea that such a vehicle should be equally treated as a 1992 unmaintained civic is ridiculous. Yes, the laws should be consistent in a given area, but the application of those laws should be just not blindly applied. There's clearly a boundary to be crossed, but my car going 10mph over is SIGNIFICANTLY less dangerous to the public than that hoopty going the speed limit.
  - earleybird 5y ago
    With you on "driving to the conditions". Although just because your vehicle can stop quickly doesn't mean that unmaintained civic can do the same when you go flying past and then hard brake. My one hope for self driving vehicles is that it normalizes efficient traffic flow.
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    > but my car going 10mph over is SIGNIFICANTLY less dangerous to the public than that hoopty going the speed limit To the driving public, specifically. Pedestrians and cyclists will still be goop on your windshield 50 feet into your 100 foot braking.
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      Of which there are none on the roads where people want to go particularly fast.
      - woodruffw 5y ago
        I take it you've never cycled in Virginia. I have (on "slow" roads no less) and I've had no less than a dozen people buzz me at over 20 miles above the speed limit. (There is no such thing as a road where people "don't want" to go fast, because "fast" is disjointed in meaning: there's the legal speed that drivers regularly and unsafely exceed, and there's the "fast" speed at which drivers perceive how unsafe they're being.)
    - spaethnl 5y ago
      There are typically two kinds of roads these speeds are reached in the US: 1. Expressways, where pedestrians and cyclists are not allowed. They are walled off with specific entrances and exits. 2. Country highways, where pedestrians and cyclists are nearly unheard of, and are typically very easy to spot from a distance and adjust accordingly. There is a third area where these speeds are sometimes reached in urban areas that Strong Towns calls "stroads", and these have a whole host of problems. Going 10mph over the speed limit in these areas probably doesn't make a huge difference, because the are already so pedestrian and cyclist unfriendly to begin with. Not Just Bikes has a great video about them here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM
- hammock 5y ago
  To add to the other comment, your idea ignores the history of speed limits and how they aren’t just for safety. For example how the highways were reduced to 55mph during the 70s oil crisis as an indirect way to ration gasoline. Or how small towns will lower sections of road for the specific purpose of creating a revenue-generating speed trap.
- eganist 5y ago
  Virginia is ranked 35th in deaths per 100 million miles (0.96), and it's not as if people don't drive either, as it's ranked 12th in miles driven. Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, New York all log more miles driven and less people dead per million miles. So it doesn't really seem like Virginia's insanely restricting laws are actually helping. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/fatal-car-accidents-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/fatal-car-a...
logifail 5y ago
> Virginia as a whole has some pretty absurdly pro police laws, at least re: driving (Full disclosure: have never driven in the USA), but without wishing to sound like a know-all, how about sticking to the speed limit? I've been dinged exactly twice for speeding since getting my licence almost exactly 30 years ago this month. No points in either case. It's not hard, honest. My wife might disagree, but her licence, her problem :)
- sharken 5y ago
  A modern car with cruise control, either adaptive or not, will make the task of keeping to the speed limit a breeze. The only improvement would be that the car always knew the speed limit for any stretch of road.
  - Wistar 5y ago
    Many modern cars have traffic sign recognition systems that extract the speed limit. The BMW system is fairly amazing to watch work as the speed limit display changes juuuust as you pass the sign and are surprisingly good at reading signs that are even partially obscured. Although I can't remember exactly which cars feed the detected speed limit into their adaptive cruise control systems, I think some of the Range Rover models do. Some even allow you to set a percentage or absolute speed value above or below the speed limit that you want the car to travel. Others use a speed limit database and GPS/accelerometer system to establish the speed limit.
    - SOLAR_FIELDS 5y ago
      When I was driving in the EU I had a car that used gps to pull the limit (but never actually enforced that you followed it). It was really cool to hop on the Autobahn and see a symbol for none pop up in the indicator. It looked like a nonsmoking sign without the cigarette in it.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    I haven't used (non-adaptive) cruise control in years. I find that a lot of the time in the Northeast US roads are busy enough that you have to be constantly dropping out of cruise control or end up driving in ways that are suboptimal other than for keeping the cruise control active. To be honest, I just stopped using it at some point and just don't think to use it even when it's a match for conditions. When I get adaptive cruise control--presumably when I eventually get a new car--I may well change my tune.
randombits0 5y ago
> It's also the only state to prohibit radar detectors Which is arguably outside of the state’s jurisdiction. Only the FCC has the authority to regulate the airwaves and specifically transmitters and receivers. I bet that cop’s radar gun has an FCC sticker on it.
- novok 5y ago
  Maybe they are not regulating radio receiver usage, but the just the possession of it, which would be a separate kind of regulatory space.
  - hammock 5y ago
    That is accurate. Your vehicle is not allowed to be equipped with a radar detector that is powered or accessible to the driver. The police even have radar detector detectors.
    - cjrp 5y ago
      I can’t be the only one thinking “so how do you build a radar detector detector detector?”
      - VistaBrokeMyPC 5y ago
        It's basically just a more sensitive radar detector. Instead of picking up the main frequencies radar guns use, it picks up the harmonics emitted by the oscillating crystal inside the radar detectors. All radar detectors leak on harmonic frequencies of the frequency they pick up on, it's just a matter of how much. Those cheap Walmart radar detectors leak so badly they detect each other. Pricier ones are more sophisticated in how they shield.
        function_seven 5y ago
        Could one build an SDR version of a radar detector that doesn't have a detectable oscillator? (Or, if it does, it's oscillating at a much higher frequency?) I'm no RF guy, so I'm clueless on this stuff. But my understanding is that SDRs aren't radio receivers in the traditional sense. That's the whole "SD" part of it, the device scoops up everything and FFTs it or something.
kylehotchkiss 5y ago
I grew up there and remember the fear of hitting 81mph and how the police just hid on the side of the road off 95 and 81 waiting to shove a ticket into your window. My friend once got a ticket for going 81mph downhill on highway 81 in the middle of nowhere southwest VA and had to trek out there for a court date. I don’t ever miss living in Virginia
jmisavage 5y ago
You're out of date as of 2020. Reckless driving is 20 mph over the speed limit or over 85 mph now. It's a class 1 misdemeanor. Most of Virginia has 65 mph as the stated speed limit which usually drops to 55 mph around cities. There are stretches of I-95 and I-81 were the speed limit is 70 mph. But anyone who drives here knows that the speed limit is generally considered the slowest you should go on the road. Speeding around here is common. And for anyone who lives in Richmond people run red lights all the time even in front of cops. We're all just practicing for the next Mad Max movie.
- systematical 5y ago
  Richmond police force is understaffed (many have left to Chesterfield and Henrico) and the city has serious crime problems in many neighborhoods.
- xwdv 5y ago
  I regularly drive at speeds in excess of 100mph when highways are empty and waze shows no police. What would be the fate of a person caught at those speeds in Virginia?
  - cryptonector 5y ago
    What if the police use Waze though? Last time I used it -and it was many years ago- it was clearly possible to use it to find speeders using it.
    - xwdv 5y ago
      If a police uses Waze to find me and catch me he can go ahead and just throw me in jail.
    - somehnguy 5y ago
      Can you explain how? Waze doesn't show your speed to others on the map.
      - 5y ago
woodruffw 5y ago
I am someone who's extraordinarily sympathetic to journalists. But I don't think there's really any excuse for going 93 miles an hour on a country road marked for 55, as this author did. Should he have been sent to jail for it? I don't think so. But it's remarkable how acceptable that behavior seems to be.
- warning26 5y ago
  Eh, I don't think speed limits really should exist in any context. If you want people to go slow, design the roads for slower driving, don't just impose arbitrary limits.
  - worik 5y ago
    > Eh, I don't think speed limits really should exist in any context. If you want people to go slow, design the roads for slower driving, don't just impose arbitrary limits. In the realm of ego orientated commenting, this one really stands out. I do not want to put my life in your unregulated hands. I want you regulated to hell and back when you operate a tonne of steel at thirty metres per second heading in my general direction. Actually: Can you, especially you warning26, catch a bus?
    - 1123581321 5y ago
      Narrow roads to improve safety are a proposed (and increasingly adopted) regulation. They’re not privatized roads.
    - neither_color 5y ago
      Are you familiar with the autobahn? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn Parts of highway with unrestricted speed are not only possible, they're not particularly dangerous either.
      - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
        It's a limited access highway, not an ordinary road with at grade intersections and inadequate sight lines.
worik 5y ago
Golly.I read that article. What a hideous person. Who drives so fast on country roads? Very selfish people who do not care about their own lives let alone the lives of others. What a good punishment! Much better than a fine. We should use short prison sentences much more for the sorts of crimes rich privileged reprobates like this do. Then the winging! It seems gaol is not pleasant. Does the writer want sympathy? None from me! I so wish the officer had impounded the car and left these two people on the side of the road. The officer did not. But still the winging!
- tomc1985 5y ago
  The 101 through Sonoma/Humboldt/Mendocino counties is, at some places, a 2-lane highway weaving its way through a twisty curvy Redwood forest at 55-65mph, and up to 75mph when it's a six-lane highway. And here in Southern California I regularly get away with 80-85mph in front of CA highway patrol. Most places I've been to in the US seem to consider 5-10 over the limit to be acceptable. I have even heard of freeways in Texas permitting 80 MPH! So these speeds are not unheard of (maybe on a country road but you'd expect the kind of treatment that guy got for 100MPH+) Judging by your writing you sound British, IMO speed limits in a lot of Europe are ridiculously low; our highway speeds shown in MPH are often a larger number than your highway speeds shown in KPH.
  - jameshart 5y ago
    For someone so ready to leap to conclusions, you don’t sound particularly informed about British attitudes to road speed (notably, Britain still uses mph, not km/h). You might be surprised to discover that outside built up areas in the UK the national speed limit on an undivided road is 60mph. Not an undivided highway - an undivided road. Here’s an example of a random British B road with a 60mph speed limit: https://goo.gl/maps/2jetrMeoWbuTvShN9 https://goo.gl/maps/2jetrMeoWbuTvShN9
    - tomc1985 5y ago
      Most of my experience is on continental Europe, where it seemed like multilane highways topped out at 55-65 km/h. So you're probably right. No need to go on the offensive though. "Gaol" is a pretty dead giveaway of Britishness.
testbjjl 5y ago
I once got a ticket from a Virginia state trooper for driving in the HOV restricted lanes, with two passengers in a two seater. I took the ticket (like there is a choice) thinking I would go to court and contest. While looking for where to appear I came across the FAQ stating no exceptions for two passenger vehicles in the HOV. Nothing illegal, just feels wrongheaded in public safety and service are the priorities of the organization.
- Zak 5y ago
  The purpose of HOV lanes is not safety directly, but reducing traffic and pollution. It is rational with regard to those goals that cars are not granted exceptions for having only two seats. Some of the other exceptions, such as motorcycles and hybrids (but not exceptionally efficient cars with conventional gasoline engines) are less rational.

cryptonector 5y ago

I thought Connecticut also prohibited radar detectors.

Wistar 5y ago
Apparently not. "• Under federal law, the use of radar or laser speed detectors is illegal in all commercial vehicles over 10,000 pounds. • Radar detectors are illegal to use in any vehicle in the District of Columbia. • Radar detectors are illegal to use in any vehicle in the state of Virginia. • Radar detectors are illegal to use in any vehicle while on any military installation." https://k40.com/are-radar-detectors-illegal/ https://k40.com/are-radar-detectors-illegal/

ZoomerCretin 5y ago

Considering the effects of driving at these speeds, I'd say the legal absurdity is the other 49 states not having similar punishments for people who drive at these incredibly dangerous speeds. An enormous amount of people die or acquire permanent, life-altering disabilities at the hands of people who were speeding and crashed.

casion 5y ago
This kind of absolute thinking is not helpful. The US is a HUGE place. Each location has different driving conditions, types of roads, driving habits etc... Affluence also factors in significantly both on a community level and personal level. Driving 80mph through a small town with significant environmental debris on the roads where everyone is driving trucks from the 60s? That should be a felony. Driving 80mph on a clean, straight highway where everyone is driving a relatively modern car? There should be _no problem_. Separately, IMO, vehicle should factor in at the judgement level of law enforcement. My car can stop from 60mph in <100ft, will pull >1g on skidpad, has a full bevvy of features to alert me of surrounding conditions and will intervene in certain dangerous scenarios. The idea that such a vehicle should be equally treated as a 1992 unmaintained civic is ridiculous. Yes, the laws should be consistent in a given area, but the application of those laws should be just not blindly applied. There's clearly a boundary to be crossed, but my car going 10mph over is SIGNIFICANTLY less dangerous to the public than that hoopty going the speed limit.
- earleybird 5y ago
  With you on "driving to the conditions". Although just because your vehicle can stop quickly doesn't mean that unmaintained civic can do the same when you go flying past and then hard brake. My one hope for self driving vehicles is that it normalizes efficient traffic flow.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  > but my car going 10mph over is SIGNIFICANTLY less dangerous to the public than that hoopty going the speed limit To the driving public, specifically. Pedestrians and cyclists will still be goop on your windshield 50 feet into your 100 foot braking.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    Of which there are none on the roads where people want to go particularly fast.
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      I take it you've never cycled in Virginia. I have (on "slow" roads no less) and I've had no less than a dozen people buzz me at over 20 miles above the speed limit. (There is no such thing as a road where people "don't want" to go fast, because "fast" is disjointed in meaning: there's the legal speed that drivers regularly and unsafely exceed, and there's the "fast" speed at which drivers perceive how unsafe they're being.)
  - spaethnl 5y ago
    There are typically two kinds of roads these speeds are reached in the US: 1. Expressways, where pedestrians and cyclists are not allowed. They are walled off with specific entrances and exits. 2. Country highways, where pedestrians and cyclists are nearly unheard of, and are typically very easy to spot from a distance and adjust accordingly. There is a third area where these speeds are sometimes reached in urban areas that Strong Towns calls "stroads", and these have a whole host of problems. Going 10mph over the speed limit in these areas probably doesn't make a huge difference, because the are already so pedestrian and cyclist unfriendly to begin with. Not Just Bikes has a great video about them here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM
hammock 5y ago
To add to the other comment, your idea ignores the history of speed limits and how they aren’t just for safety. For example how the highways were reduced to 55mph during the 70s oil crisis as an indirect way to ration gasoline. Or how small towns will lower sections of road for the specific purpose of creating a revenue-generating speed trap.
eganist 5y ago
Virginia is ranked 35th in deaths per 100 million miles (0.96), and it's not as if people don't drive either, as it's ranked 12th in miles driven. Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, New York all log more miles driven and less people dead per million miles. So it doesn't really seem like Virginia's insanely restricting laws are actually helping. https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/fatal-car-accidents-by-state https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/fatal-car-a...

logifail 5y ago

> Virginia as a whole has some pretty absurdly pro police laws, at least re: driving (Full disclosure: have never driven in the USA), but without wishing to sound like a know-all, how about sticking to the speed limit? I've been dinged exactly twice for speeding since getting my licence almost exactly 30 years ago this month. No points in either case. It's not hard, honest. My wife might disagree, but her licence, her problem :)

sharken 5y ago
A modern car with cruise control, either adaptive or not, will make the task of keeping to the speed limit a breeze. The only improvement would be that the car always knew the speed limit for any stretch of road.
- Wistar 5y ago
  Many modern cars have traffic sign recognition systems that extract the speed limit. The BMW system is fairly amazing to watch work as the speed limit display changes juuuust as you pass the sign and are surprisingly good at reading signs that are even partially obscured. Although I can't remember exactly which cars feed the detected speed limit into their adaptive cruise control systems, I think some of the Range Rover models do. Some even allow you to set a percentage or absolute speed value above or below the speed limit that you want the car to travel. Others use a speed limit database and GPS/accelerometer system to establish the speed limit.
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 5y ago
    When I was driving in the EU I had a car that used gps to pull the limit (but never actually enforced that you followed it). It was really cool to hop on the Autobahn and see a symbol for none pop up in the indicator. It looked like a nonsmoking sign without the cigarette in it.
- ghaff 5y ago
  I haven't used (non-adaptive) cruise control in years. I find that a lot of the time in the Northeast US roads are busy enough that you have to be constantly dropping out of cruise control or end up driving in ways that are suboptimal other than for keeping the cruise control active. To be honest, I just stopped using it at some point and just don't think to use it even when it's a match for conditions. When I get adaptive cruise control--presumably when I eventually get a new car--I may well change my tune.

randombits0 5y ago

> It's also the only state to prohibit radar detectors Which is arguably outside of the state’s jurisdiction. Only the FCC has the authority to regulate the airwaves and specifically transmitters and receivers. I bet that cop’s radar gun has an FCC sticker on it.

novok 5y ago
Maybe they are not regulating radio receiver usage, but the just the possession of it, which would be a separate kind of regulatory space.
- hammock 5y ago
  That is accurate. Your vehicle is not allowed to be equipped with a radar detector that is powered or accessible to the driver. The police even have radar detector detectors.
  - cjrp 5y ago
    I can’t be the only one thinking “so how do you build a radar detector detector detector?”
    - VistaBrokeMyPC 5y ago
      It's basically just a more sensitive radar detector. Instead of picking up the main frequencies radar guns use, it picks up the harmonics emitted by the oscillating crystal inside the radar detectors. All radar detectors leak on harmonic frequencies of the frequency they pick up on, it's just a matter of how much. Those cheap Walmart radar detectors leak so badly they detect each other. Pricier ones are more sophisticated in how they shield.
      - function_seven 5y ago
        Could one build an SDR version of a radar detector that doesn't have a detectable oscillator? (Or, if it does, it's oscillating at a much higher frequency?) I'm no RF guy, so I'm clueless on this stuff. But my understanding is that SDRs aren't radio receivers in the traditional sense. That's the whole "SD" part of it, the device scoops up everything and FFTs it or something.

kylehotchkiss 5y ago

I grew up there and remember the fear of hitting 81mph and how the police just hid on the side of the road off 95 and 81 waiting to shove a ticket into your window. My friend once got a ticket for going 81mph downhill on highway 81 in the middle of nowhere southwest VA and had to trek out there for a court date. I don’t ever miss living in Virginia

jmisavage 5y ago

You're out of date as of 2020. Reckless driving is 20 mph over the speed limit or over 85 mph now. It's a class 1 misdemeanor. Most of Virginia has 65 mph as the stated speed limit which usually drops to 55 mph around cities. There are stretches of I-95 and I-81 were the speed limit is 70 mph. But anyone who drives here knows that the speed limit is generally considered the slowest you should go on the road. Speeding around here is common. And for anyone who lives in Richmond people run red lights all the time even in front of cops. We're all just practicing for the next Mad Max movie.

systematical 5y ago
Richmond police force is understaffed (many have left to Chesterfield and Henrico) and the city has serious crime problems in many neighborhoods.
xwdv 5y ago
I regularly drive at speeds in excess of 100mph when highways are empty and waze shows no police. What would be the fate of a person caught at those speeds in Virginia?
- cryptonector 5y ago
  What if the police use Waze though? Last time I used it -and it was many years ago- it was clearly possible to use it to find speeders using it.
  - xwdv 5y ago
    If a police uses Waze to find me and catch me he can go ahead and just throw me in jail.
  - somehnguy 5y ago
    Can you explain how? Waze doesn't show your speed to others on the map.
    - 5y ago

woodruffw 5y ago

I am someone who's extraordinarily sympathetic to journalists. But I don't think there's really any excuse for going 93 miles an hour on a country road marked for 55, as this author did. Should he have been sent to jail for it? I don't think so. But it's remarkable how acceptable that behavior seems to be.

warning26 5y ago
Eh, I don't think speed limits really should exist in any context. If you want people to go slow, design the roads for slower driving, don't just impose arbitrary limits.
- worik 5y ago
  > Eh, I don't think speed limits really should exist in any context. If you want people to go slow, design the roads for slower driving, don't just impose arbitrary limits. In the realm of ego orientated commenting, this one really stands out. I do not want to put my life in your unregulated hands. I want you regulated to hell and back when you operate a tonne of steel at thirty metres per second heading in my general direction. Actually: Can you, especially you warning26, catch a bus?
  - 1123581321 5y ago
    Narrow roads to improve safety are a proposed (and increasingly adopted) regulation. They’re not privatized roads.
  - neither_color 5y ago
    Are you familiar with the autobahn? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn Parts of highway with unrestricted speed are not only possible, they're not particularly dangerous either.
    - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
      It's a limited access highway, not an ordinary road with at grade intersections and inadequate sight lines.

worik 5y ago

Golly.I read that article. What a hideous person. Who drives so fast on country roads? Very selfish people who do not care about their own lives let alone the lives of others. What a good punishment! Much better than a fine. We should use short prison sentences much more for the sorts of crimes rich privileged reprobates like this do. Then the winging! It seems gaol is not pleasant. Does the writer want sympathy? None from me! I so wish the officer had impounded the car and left these two people on the side of the road. The officer did not. But still the winging!

tomc1985 5y ago
The 101 through Sonoma/Humboldt/Mendocino counties is, at some places, a 2-lane highway weaving its way through a twisty curvy Redwood forest at 55-65mph, and up to 75mph when it's a six-lane highway. And here in Southern California I regularly get away with 80-85mph in front of CA highway patrol. Most places I've been to in the US seem to consider 5-10 over the limit to be acceptable. I have even heard of freeways in Texas permitting 80 MPH! So these speeds are not unheard of (maybe on a country road but you'd expect the kind of treatment that guy got for 100MPH+) Judging by your writing you sound British, IMO speed limits in a lot of Europe are ridiculously low; our highway speeds shown in MPH are often a larger number than your highway speeds shown in KPH.
- jameshart 5y ago
  For someone so ready to leap to conclusions, you don’t sound particularly informed about British attitudes to road speed (notably, Britain still uses mph, not km/h). You might be surprised to discover that outside built up areas in the UK the national speed limit on an undivided road is 60mph. Not an undivided highway - an undivided road. Here’s an example of a random British B road with a 60mph speed limit: https://goo.gl/maps/2jetrMeoWbuTvShN9 https://goo.gl/maps/2jetrMeoWbuTvShN9
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    Most of my experience is on continental Europe, where it seemed like multilane highways topped out at 55-65 km/h. So you're probably right. No need to go on the offensive though. "Gaol" is a pretty dead giveaway of Britishness.

testbjjl 5y ago

I once got a ticket from a Virginia state trooper for driving in the HOV restricted lanes, with two passengers in a two seater. I took the ticket (like there is a choice) thinking I would go to court and contest. While looking for where to appear I came across the FAQ stating no exceptions for two passenger vehicles in the HOV. Nothing illegal, just feels wrongheaded in public safety and service are the priorities of the organization.

Zak 5y ago
The purpose of HOV lanes is not safety directly, but reducing traffic and pollution. It is rational with regard to those goals that cars are not granted exceptions for having only two seats. Some of the other exceptions, such as motorcycles and hybrids (but not exceptionally efficient cars with conventional gasoline engines) are less rational.