6 ms·

I'd argue speeding is even worse, but to each their own.

by pesfandiar 3y ago

genman 3y ago
I would argue that general population disagrees with this. +/- 20% tolerance is completely acceptable.
- Arrath 3y ago
  Much like Doctors having a rather different definition of 'binge drinking' or 'heavy drinking' than most of the public, general (dis)agreement may not mean terribly much in the end.
  - genman 3y ago
    Quite the opposite. Doctors can think what ever they want until some kind of social behavior in generally accepted by the society. Any amount of alcohol is bad and likewise any travel is dangerous. It's only about acceptable degree.
- LeoPanthera 3y ago
  20% means you drive at 80 in a 65. That is in no way acceptable.
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    Keep right except to pass and you won't have a problem.
    - amatecha 3y ago
      Seriously. Why can't people in NA follow this basic, simple protocol? It makes driving so much easier in every way. Need to slow down because your turn is coming? No problem, move over to the right. Want to actually get somewhere sometime today? Pass and then return to the lane you were in. It's so easy! Imagine actually having protocols around traffic flow, and following them! Just wait until you hear about roundabouts, which allow traffic to continue moving (rather than waiting at a red light for minutes on end when there's no one else there!)
      - orangepurple 3y ago
        > Why can't people in NA follow this basic, simple protocol? In Germany you get fined and ticketed for it. In NA you don't. It's that simple.
      - trelane 3y ago
        > Need to slow down because your turn is coming? No problem, move over to the right. That's the wrong approach for a left turn. > Imagine actually having protocols around traffic flow, and following them! Like limits on the magnitude of vehicular velocity?
        amatecha 3y ago
        I knew someone would respond to the "move over to the right". Yes, it doesn't apply to every single situation. In general, though, particularly for highway driving, it's a system that works well.
        trelane 3y ago
        > In general, though, particularly for highway driving, it's a system that works well. That depends on the highway. If it's a limited access motorway, like the interstates, Autobahn, or M-class then sure. Perhaps not coincidentally, that is where the right lane rule you propose is mandated. Otherwise, it fails often. Reality is messy. If you truly want to make the roads safer, follow the posted speed limits. (Energy follows the square of the speed.) Also, always ensure you leave enough room to stop (the "2 second rule").
        amatecha 3y ago
        I've driven many tens of thousands of kilometers throughout close to 20 countries in Europe, and multiple hundred thousand kilometers here in Canada, and have yet to find a multi-lane highway where "keep right except to pass" doesn't make total sense and work well. As traffic gets congested everyone naturally relaxes adherence to that policy since it's not realistic to uphold in all conditions. I mean, if you have citations that support the argument that it "fails often" I'm all ears, but my lived experience with this highway protocol has been universally positive. I observed that it especially works best in concert with a rule that people entering/merging from the right have the right-of-way, since this reduces uncertainty around "who will go?" that I often witness here in NA (where "keep right to except to pass" is merely a suggestion, or not enforced even if enshrined in law). Regarding speed limit, I'm not arguing against speed limits or adhering to them, and indeed the more consistent the speed of traffic, the safer it is. On that note, my observation is that simply adhering to the speed limit (and attempting to stay at that speed) means regularly passing vehicles -- that is, in most cases, people are indeed following speed limits and a "keep right except to pass" policy correlates well with maintaining consistent speed and flow of traffic. People who want to drive slower can stick to the right lane without any hassle or problem (it's accepted and normal for them to drive slow there), and those who are driving faster can safely pass and then return to that right lane. If there are deep flaws in this process, I'm absolutely not seeing them and have not observed them. (yes, of course, the "two-second" rule makes sense and is a minimum IMO - I imagine if more people followed this, crashes would be massively reduced)
  - repiret 3y ago
    There is a lightly trafficked, mostly straight, 2 lane highway between where I live and the closest city large enough to need 5 digits on its population signs. The speed limit is 65. I drive 75 on it. Most people drive 85. In fair weather, with the right vehicle, 95 would be safe for most of it. A few years ago, the limit was 55, and at that time, a sheriffs deputy told me they don’t bother anybody going under 70. I don’t know what you really mean by acceptable, but there are plenty of roads with a 65 mph speed limit where 80 miles an hour is perfectly safe, and there are of course plenty of roads with a 65 mph speed limit where 70 mph is and unsafely fast. And there are road conditions in all of those roads where 45 mph would be on unsafe. It is difficult to make blanket statements about what a safe speed is knowing nothing other than the posted speed limit. To put the same point in a different context, remember that it wasn’t really that long ago that there was a national 55 mph speed limit, and many of the same interstates that used to have a 55 mph speed limit now have an 80 mph speed limit.
    - oceanplexian 3y ago
      Depends on what state you’re in. In Montana, Texas, Florida, you can do 85 in a 65 and a cop won’t blink an eye. In some cases if you’re the one doing 65 you are a hazard and an unsafe driver. IMO roads with 80 MPH speed limits are much safer. Even the crazy folks don’t go much over, so you don’t get a huge delta in speed, which is a lot more dangerous than any absolute number.
  - lotsoweiners 3y ago
    Found the guy the rest of us are swerving around unsafely because he’s driving too slow.
    - LeoPanthera 3y ago
      Found the guy who's going to kill someone's kid and blame anyone but himself.
      - Cyphase 3y ago
        Found two people who could have made their reasonable points in more productive ways.
  - commandersaki 3y ago
    This is the standard in California.
  - whichfawkes 3y ago
    For sure it is. Have you never been outside your city? There's stretches of flat, straight-ish interstate in the US that continue for dozens of miles with near-perfect visibility. Sometimes, there's no traffic. Go 120 for all I care, just slow down when you're near something.
    - FireBeyond 3y ago
      Let's hope your car can handle that. Or the road is in good condition. Or that your tires are rated for that speed (T or higher).
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
abathur 3y ago
Anecdata, but I regularly see people exceed the speed limit by 30mph in Houston without much intervention by police. The city has (imo) a psychotic driving culture, but is still roughly middle-of-the-road in us news and world report's ranking of most dangerous US cities to drive in. Large speed deltas are (conjecture I haven't bothered to research) probably unsafe under any conditions. Exceeding safe speeds for the conditions is obviously dangerous, but the size and design of the road and it's lanes are some of those conditions. I don't particularly care which, but in order to minimize speed deltas I do think it should be incumbent on the state to either set low speed limits and fastidiously police them or else set speed limits that are close to the natural speeds a given road supports to cut down the gap between people who drive the road as it feels and those who drive the signage.
- Tempest1981 3y ago
  That's the reasoning behind setting limits at the 85th percentile speed: https://dot.ca.gov/programs/safety-programs/setting-speed-limits#:~:text=The%20most%20widely%20accepted%20method,of%20the%20traffic%20is%20moving https://dot.ca.gov/programs/safety-programs/setting-speed-li....
  - saagarjha 3y ago
    Is this actually used in practice? I feel like it’s common that “everyone speeds”.
- uoaei 3y ago
  Not Just Bikes has a great set of videos on Youtube about how road design and driver psychology help to tame speeds much more than simple road signs. By now the evidence is clear: people will drive at the speeds they feel comfortable at given their environment (sight lines, spaciousness, density, etc.). Just putting a sign on the side of a wide and spacious road is not going to do much to affect driving speeds. The most interesting one to me was how tree-lined streets encourage slower driving without any speed limit signs, because it feels more like a tunnel and less like an open road.
  - 3y ago
bee_rider 3y ago
Unexpectedly changing speeds seems riskier to me. I’d much rather be near somebody who was happily cruising along at 10-15 over, than somebody who just see a cop and might decide to switch lanes or slow down erratically in an attempt to hide.
- skrebbel 3y ago
  I’ll never understand how people can blame speed radars for this, and not the people doing the speeding. Don’t speed and you won’t need to unexpectedly change speed.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    The cop and the person reacting to the radar have collaborated to make a less predictable driving environment.
yayitswei 3y ago
I used to get tickets for speeding. These days I let Autopilot set the speed and just chill. I'm not as concerned with passing or being passed when I've delegated the accelerator, and the trip time difference is negligible.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Even cruise control can help reduce the need to check the speed so often but hills and changing traffic limits its use
  - jeffbee 3y ago
    Hills are the exact reason to use the speed control. It drives me crazy that drivers don’t know how and when to engage it, go 50 up hills and 85 down the other side.
    - lib-dev 3y ago
      50 up 85 down is the natural way to drive. It’s a waste of fuel to brake downhill (beyond reason).
      - jeffbee 3y ago
        Solid argument for outlawing fossil fuels.
        theturtle32 3y ago
        Lol. Yep, and not to mention regenerative braking on EVs actually recoups and stores the energy as it slows the vehicle's descent!
        quickthrower2 3y ago
        Which you otherwise lose to friction and air resistance
komali2 3y ago
Speeding isn't great but speed tickets and traps clearly are doing nothing to stop speeding. There's really only one solution that works to prevent speeding: road design. Make roads less straight, less big. Add more obstacles and flow interrupts. Private cars are obsolete anyway. Replace more lanes with bus lanes and be done with the problem altogether. It's frankly insane that we allow people to operate a private car with nothing more than a license they got at 16 years old and never tested again for for the 70+ years after they'll be driving.
- whelp_24 3y ago
  Private cars aren't obsolete (how could they be?), and banning them is a freedom of movement issue. Not everyone lives in New York City. Not to mention the joy of driving should be taken away
  - komali2 3y ago
    > how could they be? More space, time, and energy efficient transportation options have existed for nearly 200 years. These options move more people further more quickly and safely than private cars. Furthermore, these options are more environmentally friendly, and improving them as technology advances can be done through retrofitting. My friend does retrofitting of classic cars with electric drive, it's prohibitively expensive for mass adoption. These options being cable cars and trains. Modern electric busses are pretty good too. It seems quite obvious to me the private car is obsolete. What advantage is there considering that mass adoption of the private vehicle leads to more death, more environmental harm, and less people getting to less places, slower, and more pissed off because they had to stay focused the entire drive?
    - whelp_24 3y ago
      Not everyone hates driving, and public transportation only works better in high density areas. Retrofitting cars with electric motors isn't better for the environment, it's just destroying pieces of history. (If you're going to retrofit, use alternative combustible fuels). Obsolete doesn't mean, "I don't like it so it should be gone".
DesiLurker 3y ago
they dont want you to stop speeding, just enough to keep generating revenue.

I'd argue speeding is even worse, but to each their own.

genman 3y ago

I would argue that general population disagrees with this. +/- 20% tolerance is completely acceptable.

Arrath 3y ago
Much like Doctors having a rather different definition of 'binge drinking' or 'heavy drinking' than most of the public, general (dis)agreement may not mean terribly much in the end.
- genman 3y ago
  Quite the opposite. Doctors can think what ever they want until some kind of social behavior in generally accepted by the society. Any amount of alcohol is bad and likewise any travel is dangerous. It's only about acceptable degree.
LeoPanthera 3y ago
20% means you drive at 80 in a 65. That is in no way acceptable.
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  Keep right except to pass and you won't have a problem.
  - amatecha 3y ago
    Seriously. Why can't people in NA follow this basic, simple protocol? It makes driving so much easier in every way. Need to slow down because your turn is coming? No problem, move over to the right. Want to actually get somewhere sometime today? Pass and then return to the lane you were in. It's so easy! Imagine actually having protocols around traffic flow, and following them! Just wait until you hear about roundabouts, which allow traffic to continue moving (rather than waiting at a red light for minutes on end when there's no one else there!)
    - orangepurple 3y ago
      > Why can't people in NA follow this basic, simple protocol? In Germany you get fined and ticketed for it. In NA you don't. It's that simple.
    - trelane 3y ago
      > Need to slow down because your turn is coming? No problem, move over to the right. That's the wrong approach for a left turn. > Imagine actually having protocols around traffic flow, and following them! Like limits on the magnitude of vehicular velocity?
      - amatecha 3y ago
        I knew someone would respond to the "move over to the right". Yes, it doesn't apply to every single situation. In general, though, particularly for highway driving, it's a system that works well.
        trelane 3y ago
        > In general, though, particularly for highway driving, it's a system that works well. That depends on the highway. If it's a limited access motorway, like the interstates, Autobahn, or M-class then sure. Perhaps not coincidentally, that is where the right lane rule you propose is mandated. Otherwise, it fails often. Reality is messy. If you truly want to make the roads safer, follow the posted speed limits. (Energy follows the square of the speed.) Also, always ensure you leave enough room to stop (the "2 second rule").
        amatecha 3y ago
        I've driven many tens of thousands of kilometers throughout close to 20 countries in Europe, and multiple hundred thousand kilometers here in Canada, and have yet to find a multi-lane highway where "keep right except to pass" doesn't make total sense and work well. As traffic gets congested everyone naturally relaxes adherence to that policy since it's not realistic to uphold in all conditions. I mean, if you have citations that support the argument that it "fails often" I'm all ears, but my lived experience with this highway protocol has been universally positive. I observed that it especially works best in concert with a rule that people entering/merging from the right have the right-of-way, since this reduces uncertainty around "who will go?" that I often witness here in NA (where "keep right to except to pass" is merely a suggestion, or not enforced even if enshrined in law). Regarding speed limit, I'm not arguing against speed limits or adhering to them, and indeed the more consistent the speed of traffic, the safer it is. On that note, my observation is that simply adhering to the speed limit (and attempting to stay at that speed) means regularly passing vehicles -- that is, in most cases, people are indeed following speed limits and a "keep right except to pass" policy correlates well with maintaining consistent speed and flow of traffic. People who want to drive slower can stick to the right lane without any hassle or problem (it's accepted and normal for them to drive slow there), and those who are driving faster can safely pass and then return to that right lane. If there are deep flaws in this process, I'm absolutely not seeing them and have not observed them. (yes, of course, the "two-second" rule makes sense and is a minimum IMO - I imagine if more people followed this, crashes would be massively reduced)
- repiret 3y ago
  There is a lightly trafficked, mostly straight, 2 lane highway between where I live and the closest city large enough to need 5 digits on its population signs. The speed limit is 65. I drive 75 on it. Most people drive 85. In fair weather, with the right vehicle, 95 would be safe for most of it. A few years ago, the limit was 55, and at that time, a sheriffs deputy told me they don’t bother anybody going under 70. I don’t know what you really mean by acceptable, but there are plenty of roads with a 65 mph speed limit where 80 miles an hour is perfectly safe, and there are of course plenty of roads with a 65 mph speed limit where 70 mph is and unsafely fast. And there are road conditions in all of those roads where 45 mph would be on unsafe. It is difficult to make blanket statements about what a safe speed is knowing nothing other than the posted speed limit. To put the same point in a different context, remember that it wasn’t really that long ago that there was a national 55 mph speed limit, and many of the same interstates that used to have a 55 mph speed limit now have an 80 mph speed limit.
  - oceanplexian 3y ago
    Depends on what state you’re in. In Montana, Texas, Florida, you can do 85 in a 65 and a cop won’t blink an eye. In some cases if you’re the one doing 65 you are a hazard and an unsafe driver. IMO roads with 80 MPH speed limits are much safer. Even the crazy folks don’t go much over, so you don’t get a huge delta in speed, which is a lot more dangerous than any absolute number.
- lotsoweiners 3y ago
  Found the guy the rest of us are swerving around unsafely because he’s driving too slow.
  - LeoPanthera 3y ago
    Found the guy who's going to kill someone's kid and blame anyone but himself.
    - Cyphase 3y ago
      Found two people who could have made their reasonable points in more productive ways.
- commandersaki 3y ago
  This is the standard in California.
- whichfawkes 3y ago
  For sure it is. Have you never been outside your city? There's stretches of flat, straight-ish interstate in the US that continue for dozens of miles with near-perfect visibility. Sometimes, there's no traffic. Go 120 for all I care, just slow down when you're near something.
  - FireBeyond 3y ago
    Let's hope your car can handle that. Or the road is in good condition. Or that your tires are rated for that speed (T or higher).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

abathur 3y ago

Anecdata, but I regularly see people exceed the speed limit by 30mph in Houston without much intervention by police. The city has (imo) a psychotic driving culture, but is still roughly middle-of-the-road in us news and world report's ranking of most dangerous US cities to drive in. Large speed deltas are (conjecture I haven't bothered to research) probably unsafe under any conditions. Exceeding safe speeds for the conditions is obviously dangerous, but the size and design of the road and it's lanes are some of those conditions. I don't particularly care which, but in order to minimize speed deltas I do think it should be incumbent on the state to either set low speed limits and fastidiously police them or else set speed limits that are close to the natural speeds a given road supports to cut down the gap between people who drive the road as it feels and those who drive the signage.

Tempest1981 3y ago
That's the reasoning behind setting limits at the 85th percentile speed: https://dot.ca.gov/programs/safety-programs/setting-speed-limits#:~:text=The%20most%20widely%20accepted%20method,of%20the%20traffic%20is%20moving https://dot.ca.gov/programs/safety-programs/setting-speed-li....
- saagarjha 3y ago
  Is this actually used in practice? I feel like it’s common that “everyone speeds”.
uoaei 3y ago
Not Just Bikes has a great set of videos on Youtube about how road design and driver psychology help to tame speeds much more than simple road signs. By now the evidence is clear: people will drive at the speeds they feel comfortable at given their environment (sight lines, spaciousness, density, etc.). Just putting a sign on the side of a wide and spacious road is not going to do much to affect driving speeds. The most interesting one to me was how tree-lined streets encourage slower driving without any speed limit signs, because it feels more like a tunnel and less like an open road.
- 3y ago

bee_rider 3y ago

Unexpectedly changing speeds seems riskier to me. I’d much rather be near somebody who was happily cruising along at 10-15 over, than somebody who just see a cop and might decide to switch lanes or slow down erratically in an attempt to hide.

skrebbel 3y ago
I’ll never understand how people can blame speed radars for this, and not the people doing the speeding. Don’t speed and you won’t need to unexpectedly change speed.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  The cop and the person reacting to the radar have collaborated to make a less predictable driving environment.

yayitswei 3y ago

I used to get tickets for speeding. These days I let Autopilot set the speed and just chill. I'm not as concerned with passing or being passed when I've delegated the accelerator, and the trip time difference is negligible.

quickthrower2 3y ago
Even cruise control can help reduce the need to check the speed so often but hills and changing traffic limits its use
- jeffbee 3y ago
  Hills are the exact reason to use the speed control. It drives me crazy that drivers don’t know how and when to engage it, go 50 up hills and 85 down the other side.
  - lib-dev 3y ago
    50 up 85 down is the natural way to drive. It’s a waste of fuel to brake downhill (beyond reason).
    - jeffbee 3y ago
      Solid argument for outlawing fossil fuels.
      - theturtle32 3y ago
        Lol. Yep, and not to mention regenerative braking on EVs actually recoups and stores the energy as it slows the vehicle's descent!
        quickthrower2 3y ago
        Which you otherwise lose to friction and air resistance

komali2 3y ago

Speeding isn't great but speed tickets and traps clearly are doing nothing to stop speeding. There's really only one solution that works to prevent speeding: road design. Make roads less straight, less big. Add more obstacles and flow interrupts. Private cars are obsolete anyway. Replace more lanes with bus lanes and be done with the problem altogether. It's frankly insane that we allow people to operate a private car with nothing more than a license they got at 16 years old and never tested again for for the 70+ years after they'll be driving.

whelp_24 3y ago
Private cars aren't obsolete (how could they be?), and banning them is a freedom of movement issue. Not everyone lives in New York City. Not to mention the joy of driving should be taken away
- komali2 3y ago
  > how could they be? More space, time, and energy efficient transportation options have existed for nearly 200 years. These options move more people further more quickly and safely than private cars. Furthermore, these options are more environmentally friendly, and improving them as technology advances can be done through retrofitting. My friend does retrofitting of classic cars with electric drive, it's prohibitively expensive for mass adoption. These options being cable cars and trains. Modern electric busses are pretty good too. It seems quite obvious to me the private car is obsolete. What advantage is there considering that mass adoption of the private vehicle leads to more death, more environmental harm, and less people getting to less places, slower, and more pissed off because they had to stay focused the entire drive?
  - whelp_24 3y ago
    Not everyone hates driving, and public transportation only works better in high density areas. Retrofitting cars with electric motors isn't better for the environment, it's just destroying pieces of history. (If you're going to retrofit, use alternative combustible fuels). Obsolete doesn't mean, "I don't like it so it should be gone".

DesiLurker 3y ago

they dont want you to stop speeding, just enough to keep generating revenue.