4 ms·

Well, there seems to be this myth that its OK to speed 5 miles above the posted speed limit, so the speed limit is still useful. It'll just be limiting the spee

by rtpg 12y ago

Well, there seems to be this myth that its OK to speed 5 miles above the posted speed limit, so the speed limit is still useful. It'll just be limiting the speed to 60 instead of 55. As to whether things are enforced that way, that's a different story.

Spooky23 12y ago
There's a lot of truth to that. Many places use 7-10 mph over as a threshold. Smaller tickets always get plead down, and cops get measured by collars or tickets. I don't think skirting the limits has much impact on behavior as the limits go up. In my personal observation, I've observed little if any difference between highway driving on the Deegan Expressway in NYC (50 mph), i95 in South Carolina (70/75) or the mass pike (65). Once you hit 70-80 mph, driving requires more attention. On the other side, you have absurd local limits as well. The standard for streets in most towns in New York was 35 twenty years ago. Now it's 30, with zones as low as 15 or 20 mph near schools. It's a scheme to get bigger tickets and more drug arrests in "school zones". I wish they'd just get to the point and put up a toll barricade.
- saalweachter 12y ago
  Is the statistic NYC posts a lie? For a few years they've had signs up claiming that 80% of pedestrians hit at 30 mph survive, while 75% of pedestrians hit at 40 mph were killed. That seemed like a pretty good reason to have lower speed limits in pedestrian areas to me.
  - logfromblammo 12y ago
    Seems like it would be a better reason to increase the physical separation between motorized and non-motorized traffic. I'd wager that more pedestrians would survive near 40 mph traffic if there were more energy-absorbing materials between them and the cars. The signs are probably just up to cut down on lawsuits directed toward the city. The goal of improving roads is to increase the throughput of traffic. If it seems as though a problem could be solved by slowing down traffic, that's like solving a problem with a circuit by throwing a resistor into it. It may solve the immediate problem, but it will also reduce the overall efficiency of the circuit by converting energy into heat rather than usable work. They could also put up signs that say 100% of the people who drive 40 mph reach their destinations 33% faster than those who drive 30 mph. It's just a distraction from the fact that solving the problem in a better way is more expensive than just blaming drivers and letting insurance handle the fallout.
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      You can quickly invent a distinction between a road and a street, where roads are indeed intended to maximize throughput but streets are intended to provide access. So maybe those signs are on streets where throughput is not the primary goal, and where substantial barriers would interfere with people moving from their parked cars to the sidewalk and the like.
      - logfromblammo 12y ago
        A line of parked cars between traffic and sidewalk is a substantial barrier on its own. If you look at a high-traffic street where parking is prohibited, the Magnificent Mile in Chicago, you'll notice that there are gigantic concrete planters between the cars and the regular pedestrian traffic. Retail stores protect their entrances with concrete bollards. Construction zones protect workers from traffic with segmented Jersey barriers and water-filled crash barrels. Those are actual solutions. But then you have suburban pearl-clutchers who lobby for a 15 mph speed limit and speed bumps in their cookie-cutter subdivisions, rather than actually making their streets safer for pedestrians. Or by replacing yield signs with stop signs. Those people don't realize that "change the law" is not always equivalent to "fix the problem".
    - tomkarlo 12y ago
      It's entirely impractical to expect NY to build collision barriers at every spot where pedestrians get near cars within the city. Unless you want to have raised / underground pedestrian crossings everywhere (which have generally not been found to work very well, and are ugly as hell too), the reality is you're going to have traffic and pedestrians intermixed within the city. "The goal of improving roads is to increase the throughput of traffic" - that is considered an outdated goal by most planners these days. For one thing, if you increase the capacity of roads, you simply encourage more driving, and things end up congested anyway. In many cases urban planners now actively seek to decrease the throughput of traffic on mixed-use streets in urban areas.
      - logfromblammo 12y ago
  - Spooky23 12y ago
    I'm sure that it is true based in physics, but is a statistic without meaningful context.
tomkarlo 12y ago
While it might be socially acceptable, we'd all also agree that going 5 over the posted speed limit is "breaking the law", which is exactly the problem - it's encouraging a societal norm of "kind of" following the law, which is extremely problematic (especially when you consider that enforcement is often not applied evenly.)

by rtpg 12y ago

Spooky23 12y ago

There's a lot of truth to that. Many places use 7-10 mph over as a threshold. Smaller tickets always get plead down, and cops get measured by collars or tickets. I don't think skirting the limits has much impact on behavior as the limits go up. In my personal observation, I've observed little if any difference between highway driving on the Deegan Expressway in NYC (50 mph), i95 in South Carolina (70/75) or the mass pike (65). Once you hit 70-80 mph, driving requires more attention. On the other side, you have absurd local limits as well. The standard for streets in most towns in New York was 35 twenty years ago. Now it's 30, with zones as low as 15 or 20 mph near schools. It's a scheme to get bigger tickets and more drug arrests in "school zones". I wish they'd just get to the point and put up a toll barricade.

saalweachter 12y ago
Is the statistic NYC posts a lie? For a few years they've had signs up claiming that 80% of pedestrians hit at 30 mph survive, while 75% of pedestrians hit at 40 mph were killed. That seemed like a pretty good reason to have lower speed limits in pedestrian areas to me.
- logfromblammo 12y ago
  Seems like it would be a better reason to increase the physical separation between motorized and non-motorized traffic. I'd wager that more pedestrians would survive near 40 mph traffic if there were more energy-absorbing materials between them and the cars. The signs are probably just up to cut down on lawsuits directed toward the city. The goal of improving roads is to increase the throughput of traffic. If it seems as though a problem could be solved by slowing down traffic, that's like solving a problem with a circuit by throwing a resistor into it. It may solve the immediate problem, but it will also reduce the overall efficiency of the circuit by converting energy into heat rather than usable work. They could also put up signs that say 100% of the people who drive 40 mph reach their destinations 33% faster than those who drive 30 mph. It's just a distraction from the fact that solving the problem in a better way is more expensive than just blaming drivers and letting insurance handle the fallout.
  - maxerickson 12y ago
    You can quickly invent a distinction between a road and a street, where roads are indeed intended to maximize throughput but streets are intended to provide access. So maybe those signs are on streets where throughput is not the primary goal, and where substantial barriers would interfere with people moving from their parked cars to the sidewalk and the like.
    - logfromblammo 12y ago
      A line of parked cars between traffic and sidewalk is a substantial barrier on its own. If you look at a high-traffic street where parking is prohibited, the Magnificent Mile in Chicago, you'll notice that there are gigantic concrete planters between the cars and the regular pedestrian traffic. Retail stores protect their entrances with concrete bollards. Construction zones protect workers from traffic with segmented Jersey barriers and water-filled crash barrels. Those are actual solutions. But then you have suburban pearl-clutchers who lobby for a 15 mph speed limit and speed bumps in their cookie-cutter subdivisions, rather than actually making their streets safer for pedestrians. Or by replacing yield signs with stop signs. Those people don't realize that "change the law" is not always equivalent to "fix the problem".
  - tomkarlo 12y ago
    It's entirely impractical to expect NY to build collision barriers at every spot where pedestrians get near cars within the city. Unless you want to have raised / underground pedestrian crossings everywhere (which have generally not been found to work very well, and are ugly as hell too), the reality is you're going to have traffic and pedestrians intermixed within the city. "The goal of improving roads is to increase the throughput of traffic" - that is considered an outdated goal by most planners these days. For one thing, if you increase the capacity of roads, you simply encourage more driving, and things end up congested anyway. In many cases urban planners now actively seek to decrease the throughput of traffic on mixed-use streets in urban areas.
    - logfromblammo 12y ago
- Spooky23 12y ago
  I'm sure that it is true based in physics, but is a statistic without meaningful context.

tomkarlo 12y ago

While it might be socially acceptable, we'd all also agree that going 5 over the posted speed limit is "breaking the law", which is exactly the problem - it's encouraging a societal norm of "kind of" following the law, which is extremely problematic (especially when you consider that enforcement is often not applied evenly.)