5 ms·

So if every car is following the speed limit, that is going as fast as they are allowed, why would any one person be passing someone else?

mikestew 2y ago
Perhaps parent isn’t talking about that scenario. But surely you can imagine a different scenario where this applies, right? Maybe Grandma Jones doing 10 under the limit on a two-lane road?
- matsemann 2y ago
  They're either so slow that they're easy to overtake, or they're so fast that it doesn't matter to stay behind for a while. So just relax, the time lost is minuscule.
gambiting 2y ago
In most EU countries(and UK) you have different speed limits based on the class of the vehicle. So for example in the UK on a single lane road a regular car can go 60mph, a car towing a trailer can only go 50mph, but a heavy goods vehicle(over 7.5 tonnes) can only go 40mph. So on most roads that aren't dual carriageways you constantly encounter a situation where everyone is driving at their top legal speed limit but there is still a need to overtake vehicles.
- setr 2y ago
  Under that scenario, assuming 10-20mph differential is sufficient, overtaking by faster-class vehicles hasn’t been affected. Slower vehicles presumably shouldn’t be overtaking anyways, except when dealing with… even slower vehicles (but the joys of trucks overtaking each other by like 2mph difference and blocking the whole road for 10 minutes)
userulluipeste 2y ago
Well, you see, it's for the cases where not every car is going as fast as they are allowed.
- zehaeva 2y ago
  If they're going so much slower than the limit that it's unsafe, wouldn't it be easy to pass at the regulated limit? If they're going just a _little_ bit slower than the limit, why pass them? Are you telling me that 3kmph, or even 10kmph, slower than the limit is slow enough to make an appreciable difference to your everyday driving?
  - lolinder 2y ago
    > wouldn't it be easy to pass at the regulated limit? No. No, it's not, not on a single land road.
jbritton 2y ago
I’m in the US. If you’re on say hwy 395 heading to Mammoth Mountain, the highway is frequently one lane in each direction. If the max speed limit is 70mph, you may come up on a semi truck doing 60mph and you will want to pass using the lane with on coming traffic. This means you need to do 85mph to pass. For this reason our max speed limit laws are woefully inadequate at accounting for real life conditions.
- zehaeva 2y ago
  Why will you _want_ to pass? Is that 10mph going to get you there _that_ much faster? If you were to follow that truck for all 1300 miles of 395 you would get to your destination 3 hours later than if you were going 70mph the whole way. I would doubt that anyone would want to drive for nearly 19 hours straight, unless you're doing some sort of cannonball run like challenge. If your destination is a mere 120 miles away, and you followed him the whole way you'd get there only 18 minutes faster. Was it really that important to get there that much faster?
  - surgical_fire 2y ago
    > Was it really that important to get there that much faster? The answer may be contingent on how many tacos you ate before this hypothetical trip.
    - zehaeva 2y ago
      This is the only answer that I've seen that's reasonable so far!
  - biftek 2y ago
    It's not always about getting there "faster". I regularly encounter trucks with unsecured loads, drivers visibly weaving, and other dangerous situations. I'm certainly not going to die on some "well this is the speed limit" hill behind them. Driving isn't some binary situation, you have to constantly predict erratic behavior and react to your surroundings.
randerson 2y ago
I often find myself behind a truck that is kicking up stones or belching fumes or has a poorly secured load that looks like it could fly off. Doesn't matter if it is going the speed limit, I want to get past it.
- zehaeva 2y ago
  How close do you find yourself to the truck in front of you? Safe follow distances are, At 65MPH, I'm assuming you're in the US, is approximately 300 feet. I'd be kind of shocked that you're getting stones hitting you and detectable fumes 300 feet away.
  - randerson 2y ago
    My Adaptive Cruise Control has 4 distance settings and I use the 3rd, further than most people's following distance, and I've had stones kicked up by truck tires that hit my windscreen from that distance.
    - zehaeva 2y ago
      I do the same in my Subaru, even at the furthest, the safe distance is choose is no where near the 300feet(approximately 20 car lengths). It's closer to 8 car lengths.
      - randerson 2y ago
        Was curious so I just looked up my car's ACC numbers. Setting 3 is 1.8 seconds and setting 4 (the max) is 2.3 seconds, so about 220 feet at 65mph. As another poster said its pointless to be this far back because everyone else just overtakes you to fill the gap, so you're always braking and accelerating and averaging a smaller distance than in setting 3.
  - ricardobeat 2y ago
    Clearly you’ve never driven in the EU. The usual follow distance here is about three meters, the “safe” one is five, any farther and you’re going to get a stream of cars overtaking you just to fill that void :) Regarding stones and lose cargo, they would hit you even 300m away as they bounce and quickly lose speed while you’re still flying into at them at 130km/h.
michaelmrose 2y ago
Roads commonly carry traffic at a different speeds than listed speed based on actual conditions, perception of conditions, condition and nature of vehicles and because speeds are often set inefficienctly. Its not uncommon to see stretches with traffic constantly packed 4+ lanes going 75+ each way. Trying to put the same burden of vehicles through at 65 with 300 ft between would be a joke. A given lane would carry less than half actual traffic. Bad traffic would become a city wide disaster. Then consider that you can only impose this on a portion of drivers per year and drivers have to drive with those without governors indefinitely. You also discount issues with safety by following at an appropriate distance. Trying to fall back 300 ft can only be achieved by driving too slow leading to both passing and people taking this new huge space whist giving you the finger leaving you with even less space.
- zehaeva 2y ago
  If we're concerned with traffic throughput then shouldn't we just increase the allowed speed? Why even have a limit in the first place? I don't understand your point about having to slow down to follow at a safe distance. If I pull onto a highway and find myself _right_ behind someone I can decrease my speed by one or two mph to fall back to a safe following distance. How is that not safe? The car behind me, who should already be either already at a safe distance or adjusting their own distance should have no issues here. What I think you mean to say is that because you're assuming that everyone else on the road is behaving in an unsafe manner you believe that you, too, have to behave in an unsafe manner. This simply is not the case.
  - michaelmrose 2y ago
    I'm not sure where you are driving (or if you drive anywhere) but you can't actually drop speed substantially with cars right behind you and if you tried to open a space people would just move into that space. Then you don't have that space AND you have cars maneuvering around you. You will have drastically increased your chance of having an accident without acquiring a buffer. Areas that are already burdened as far as the amount of traffic they can bear, which is basically every major urban area in America, see traffic moving at a high rate of speed with 20-30 feet between cars. Picture a simple chute in which you are dumping jelly beans one at a time. Even at the same speed of descent you will be able to drop 1/3 of the beans if you wait 3 seconds between drops instead of 1. Everyone trying to keep 300 feet between to be "safe" would create an expanding parking lot behind that would crash the entire traffic systems ability to function at all. When everyone started arriving 3 hours late for work businesses would fine themselves dysfunctional including critical businesses. People would die because emergency vehicles couldn't move. The mayor would be on TV discussing what they would do about the collective insanity. Anyway this is an awfully long way to say people do need the ability to control the speed of their car in order for the current flawed highway system to function normally. People do actually have cause to pass. They sometimes do have a reason to drive slower than the limit. Others need to exceed it briefly or in an emergency.
illiac786 2y ago
if the car is going slower than the limit but you have a very limited window of time to pass it, the only way is to temporarily go above the speed limit.
- zehaeva 2y ago
  Slowing down isn't an option?
  - illiac786 2y ago
    It almost always is, it’s just not what the parent post was discussing, check it out.

mikestew 2y ago

Perhaps parent isn’t talking about that scenario. But surely you can imagine a different scenario where this applies, right? Maybe Grandma Jones doing 10 under the limit on a two-lane road?

matsemann 2y ago
They're either so slow that they're easy to overtake, or they're so fast that it doesn't matter to stay behind for a while. So just relax, the time lost is minuscule.

gambiting 2y ago

In most EU countries(and UK) you have different speed limits based on the class of the vehicle. So for example in the UK on a single lane road a regular car can go 60mph, a car towing a trailer can only go 50mph, but a heavy goods vehicle(over 7.5 tonnes) can only go 40mph. So on most roads that aren't dual carriageways you constantly encounter a situation where everyone is driving at their top legal speed limit but there is still a need to overtake vehicles.

setr 2y ago
Under that scenario, assuming 10-20mph differential is sufficient, overtaking by faster-class vehicles hasn’t been affected. Slower vehicles presumably shouldn’t be overtaking anyways, except when dealing with… even slower vehicles (but the joys of trucks overtaking each other by like 2mph difference and blocking the whole road for 10 minutes)

userulluipeste 2y ago

Well, you see, it's for the cases where not every car is going as fast as they are allowed.

zehaeva 2y ago
If they're going so much slower than the limit that it's unsafe, wouldn't it be easy to pass at the regulated limit? If they're going just a _little_ bit slower than the limit, why pass them? Are you telling me that 3kmph, or even 10kmph, slower than the limit is slow enough to make an appreciable difference to your everyday driving?
- lolinder 2y ago
  > wouldn't it be easy to pass at the regulated limit? No. No, it's not, not on a single land road.

jbritton 2y ago

I’m in the US. If you’re on say hwy 395 heading to Mammoth Mountain, the highway is frequently one lane in each direction. If the max speed limit is 70mph, you may come up on a semi truck doing 60mph and you will want to pass using the lane with on coming traffic. This means you need to do 85mph to pass. For this reason our max speed limit laws are woefully inadequate at accounting for real life conditions.

zehaeva 2y ago
Why will you _want_ to pass? Is that 10mph going to get you there _that_ much faster? If you were to follow that truck for all 1300 miles of 395 you would get to your destination 3 hours later than if you were going 70mph the whole way. I would doubt that anyone would want to drive for nearly 19 hours straight, unless you're doing some sort of cannonball run like challenge. If your destination is a mere 120 miles away, and you followed him the whole way you'd get there only 18 minutes faster. Was it really that important to get there that much faster?
- surgical_fire 2y ago
  > Was it really that important to get there that much faster? The answer may be contingent on how many tacos you ate before this hypothetical trip.
  - zehaeva 2y ago
    This is the only answer that I've seen that's reasonable so far!
- biftek 2y ago
  It's not always about getting there "faster". I regularly encounter trucks with unsecured loads, drivers visibly weaving, and other dangerous situations. I'm certainly not going to die on some "well this is the speed limit" hill behind them. Driving isn't some binary situation, you have to constantly predict erratic behavior and react to your surroundings.

randerson 2y ago

I often find myself behind a truck that is kicking up stones or belching fumes or has a poorly secured load that looks like it could fly off. Doesn't matter if it is going the speed limit, I want to get past it.

zehaeva 2y ago
How close do you find yourself to the truck in front of you? Safe follow distances are, At 65MPH, I'm assuming you're in the US, is approximately 300 feet. I'd be kind of shocked that you're getting stones hitting you and detectable fumes 300 feet away.
- randerson 2y ago
  My Adaptive Cruise Control has 4 distance settings and I use the 3rd, further than most people's following distance, and I've had stones kicked up by truck tires that hit my windscreen from that distance.
  - zehaeva 2y ago
    I do the same in my Subaru, even at the furthest, the safe distance is choose is no where near the 300feet(approximately 20 car lengths). It's closer to 8 car lengths.
    - randerson 2y ago
      Was curious so I just looked up my car's ACC numbers. Setting 3 is 1.8 seconds and setting 4 (the max) is 2.3 seconds, so about 220 feet at 65mph. As another poster said its pointless to be this far back because everyone else just overtakes you to fill the gap, so you're always braking and accelerating and averaging a smaller distance than in setting 3.
- ricardobeat 2y ago
  Clearly you’ve never driven in the EU. The usual follow distance here is about three meters, the “safe” one is five, any farther and you’re going to get a stream of cars overtaking you just to fill that void :) Regarding stones and lose cargo, they would hit you even 300m away as they bounce and quickly lose speed while you’re still flying into at them at 130km/h.

michaelmrose 2y ago

Roads commonly carry traffic at a different speeds than listed speed based on actual conditions, perception of conditions, condition and nature of vehicles and because speeds are often set inefficienctly. Its not uncommon to see stretches with traffic constantly packed 4+ lanes going 75+ each way. Trying to put the same burden of vehicles through at 65 with 300 ft between would be a joke. A given lane would carry less than half actual traffic. Bad traffic would become a city wide disaster. Then consider that you can only impose this on a portion of drivers per year and drivers have to drive with those without governors indefinitely. You also discount issues with safety by following at an appropriate distance. Trying to fall back 300 ft can only be achieved by driving too slow leading to both passing and people taking this new huge space whist giving you the finger leaving you with even less space.

zehaeva 2y ago
If we're concerned with traffic throughput then shouldn't we just increase the allowed speed? Why even have a limit in the first place? I don't understand your point about having to slow down to follow at a safe distance. If I pull onto a highway and find myself _right_ behind someone I can decrease my speed by one or two mph to fall back to a safe following distance. How is that not safe? The car behind me, who should already be either already at a safe distance or adjusting their own distance should have no issues here. What I think you mean to say is that because you're assuming that everyone else on the road is behaving in an unsafe manner you believe that you, too, have to behave in an unsafe manner. This simply is not the case.
- michaelmrose 2y ago
  I'm not sure where you are driving (or if you drive anywhere) but you can't actually drop speed substantially with cars right behind you and if you tried to open a space people would just move into that space. Then you don't have that space AND you have cars maneuvering around you. You will have drastically increased your chance of having an accident without acquiring a buffer. Areas that are already burdened as far as the amount of traffic they can bear, which is basically every major urban area in America, see traffic moving at a high rate of speed with 20-30 feet between cars. Picture a simple chute in which you are dumping jelly beans one at a time. Even at the same speed of descent you will be able to drop 1/3 of the beans if you wait 3 seconds between drops instead of 1. Everyone trying to keep 300 feet between to be "safe" would create an expanding parking lot behind that would crash the entire traffic systems ability to function at all. When everyone started arriving 3 hours late for work businesses would fine themselves dysfunctional including critical businesses. People would die because emergency vehicles couldn't move. The mayor would be on TV discussing what they would do about the collective insanity. Anyway this is an awfully long way to say people do need the ability to control the speed of their car in order for the current flawed highway system to function normally. People do actually have cause to pass. They sometimes do have a reason to drive slower than the limit. Others need to exceed it briefly or in an emergency.

illiac786 2y ago

if the car is going slower than the limit but you have a very limited window of time to pass it, the only way is to temporarily go above the speed limit.

zehaeva 2y ago
Slowing down isn't an option?
- illiac786 2y ago
  It almost always is, it’s just not what the parent post was discussing, check it out.