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About 6 or 7 years ago, I was in a 25mph zone, rolling @30 and a car full of kids flew by at nearly double my speed, and this in a residential area. It's one of the streets that frequently has speed enforcement excercises. I see in the police log in the paper that they nail quite a few, starting at 10 miles over, up into the 50+ range.
Hey, did any of you hear about the biker that was nailed for doing 205? Reported by a spotter plane, going twice as fast as plane, 140 over the limit of 65. He was racing another bike, slower biker wasn't stopped. Faster biker was, and...................guess what...no license. Wow!!! Imagine that.
1) Keep right except to pass
2) Do not drive distracted
3) Signal before turns/lane changes etc.
So, let's not worry about these either."
Interestingly, most of the people I see breaking those laws are those that drive the speed limit and no faster.
You managed to make a bad guy out of people obeying the law.
Four things from one guy, from yesterday's travels during the day non comute time, all "violations". A fellow in a 2 seat late model Mercedes sports car, in the passing lane at 65 mph, cell phone glued to his ear in rapped conversation. Not only was he "apparently" distracted, but CA has a law that says that if you are impeding 5 cars or more, by law you MUST move over, (in one lane each way traffic you must use a pull out or pull over). So not only is he 1. distracted 2. he is not passing in a passing lane 3. and violating CA state law. I guess he failed to notice the 7 cars behind him or probably felt more like his conversation in the fast lane was more important, and folks should give recognition to him driving a 2 seater late model Mercedes Benz?. While I didn't hang behind him long enough, if you were a betting person, do you think he would have eventually 4. used his turn signals to switch lanes?
I don't think I follow you here. You are saying that every single person (probably about 95% of drivers) are doing the wrong thing by merging early? My experience has shown that the earlier you merge, the more likely you are to find people who are willing to let you in. And the later you merge, the more likely you are to anger others.
At any rate, I think this whole merging discussion has hit a brick wall. We are at a chicken vs. egg dilemma here and I don't think any minds are going to be changed.
I didn't hear about that one, but once I was passed by two bikers. They passed me so fast and were out of sight so quickly that they had to be going about that fast. I was going 90 at the time and they were a maybe a 2 second blur before they were out of sight -- on flat ground.
Anybody else know an Honda Odyssey is limited to 118 mph? What a waste of a good Honda V6.
Yup. So really, it's impossible to drive legally. The example picture in the handbook I had showed a farm tractor on the road with five cars lined up behind it.
Yes. It screws up the efficient flow of traffic. And it is not the most fair system. When there is one and only one point of merging, say, where the ending lane ends, you will eventually percolate to this point and then be on your way. When there is random mering ocurring in front of you, in the worst case you will never move forward because there will be many points of merging.
"My experience has shown that the earlier you merge, the more likely you are to find people who are willing to let you in. And the later you merge, the more likely you are to anger others."
Perhaps. However, at the correct point of merging (where the lane ends), people will always let you in as long as you are adhering to the zipper effect (i.e., not sneaking in right behind the person in front of you, so they guy soon behind you will have let in two cars).
But remember: It is always better to nose in in front of an expensive car than a beater!
Well, I go up to the light at the end of the road, and make a right turn on green, onto a 2-lane road with paved shoulders, and a 30-35 mph speed limit. I'm at the limit, even a bit above. Next light catches me, so I stop. At this point I'm not holding up traffic.
Light turns green, and as soon as I'm up to about 35 mph, I catch a glimpse of something in my right-side mirror. For some reason, a teal S-10 was riding about 10 feet off my rear bumper, but over onto the shoulder a bit, so I couldn't see it in my driver's side mirror. It was close enough that sometimes I couldn't see it at all, but occasionally it would wander off onto the shoulder. I could see the blinker flashing, but since I could only see the one side, I couldn't tell if it was the blinker or hazard lights.
Now, what would possess someone to ride up that close to a fully-loaded truck!? And why would you try to drive in its blind spot? My first thought was that they might have had a crack in their windshield, and were trying to get close enough to me to try blaming me for something, by saying that something fell off my truck. Or maybe they were even hoping that something would, so they could try to sue!
I don't know what their angle was, but at one point, on a downhill grade, I had one foot on the gas pedal, but covered the brake with my other foot. That way I put on the brakelights without actually slowing down, in the hopes they'd back off. They did...for about 2 seconds! Then they were right up on me again.
Finally, the S-10 pulled off to the shoulder, just before my turn onto the main highway. Blinker still flashing. I don't know what the story was, but I just kept on driving. Once I got out on Route 3 though, up ahead on the median strip were 3 police cars, parked side-by-side. My first thought was "HOLY..." I know there's a law in MD that you have to have any load covered, but I don't know if it applies to all trucks, or just trucks where things could easily fly out. I drove past them, at the speed limit, with my fingers crossed. They ignored me.
Wish I knew what was up with that S-10 driver, though!
Hillarious! So you want others to follow a law so that you can break another? LOL
Does anyone know of a device to carry that blocks cellphone signals in your vicinity. It would be like the radar jammers that were sold to protect speeders from radar units.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
But the government is ran by people, most of them no less stupid than those they seek to control. Power isn't gained through competency.
When the government can show some credibility when it comes to this subject, then it can be carried on further. Right now, speed limits exist primarily for revenues, with safety being a legitimate concern in very few cases. Laws aren't good in and of themselves...and a nation founded in revolution partially against idiotic laws should realize this.
Hillarious! So you want others to follow a law so that you can break another? LOL "
The real point was: he didn't pull over, did he!!??
No, it's a valid observation, as ruking noted.
Looking behind the "spirit of the law," we can see that the real aim of most speed limits on interstate highways is to raise revenue.
Many governments have even dropped the pretense that speed limits are about safety. In Pennsylvania, we closed a budget deficit by adding surcharges to traffic tickets. The money didn't go to earmarked programs. It went into the general fund.
kdshapiro: "People driving at 20 mph over the limit are breaking the law.
Prohibition and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 were also "the law of the land" at one time, but people who could think for themselves questioned them.
If some people strictly adhere to speed limits on interstate highways, that basically proves that they can read two numbers on a sign, a skill most of us learned in about the first grade.
kdshapiro: They are the danger to traffic driving at the limit. Not the other way around."
Sorry, but that is not true. There is no proof that people driving faster than the speed limit are more dangerous than those who adhere to the speed limit. Quite the opposite, in fact.
The federal government studied this in the 1980s, and discovered that - surprise, surprise - the drivers causing the MOST accidents drove the SLOWEST!. The drivers with the BEST records drove 10-15 mph FASTER than the flow of traffic. Kind of blows the whole "faster drivers are more dangerous" idea right out of the water.
I also can't help but note that when the national 65 mph speed limit was abolished in December 1995, fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles driven dropped across the nation during the next year.
In 1995, the rate was 1.73 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles driven. By the end of 1996 the fatality rate had dropped to 1.69 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles driven.
kdshapiro: "You managed to make a bad guy out of people obeying the law."
No, I merely pointed out that many people who think they are driving "safely" by obeying the speed limit are, in fact, often engaging in behaviors that represent REAL dangers and disruptions to safe driving.
The misguided idea that every interstate highway speed limit represents an 11th commandment forces police to focus resources on apprehending the more sophisticated drivers instead of drivers who represent real hazards.
On a side note, I spent time in Germany this summer. They get along quite well without speed limits on many stretches of the Autobahn.
Of course, ignoramuses camping out in the left lane are unheard of, because they don't know when a Mercedes S-Class may overtake them at 120+ mph. And since there is no speed limit, potential left-lane campers can't whine that they are only obeying "the law" while holding up a train of vehicles in the passing lane.
When I ran into the first left-lane camper here in the U.S., I knew I was home.
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/nhtsa/announce/press/pressdisplay.cfm?ye- - ar=2004&filename=FFARSrls404.html
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/pdf/nrd-30/NCSA/PPT/2003EARelease.pd- f
I also think that the above NHTSA statistics clearly demonstrate that Amercian roads are not only the safest historically, but even edge out the Europeans; i.e., Germans.
There are many noteworthy items, but rather than repeat what it says, I have posted the links above.
This same fed agency (amoung others) predicted massive increases in car on car carnage if the national speed limit should be raised from 55 mph!!!!??? Needless to say they do not mention this too much?? Instead the statistics indicate that with the mileage up, trips up, car population up, and with speed limits at 65 mph and some rural areas at 70 mph and AZ with 75 mph interstate speed limits, our national highways are SAFER than they have historically been.
The change in deaths might have been related to air bags appearing in cars, changes in kinds of trips taken, changes in driving by people, etc. The change was not a controlled experiment and certainly .04 cannot be much beyond the statistical variation of the data.
2014 Malibu 2LT, 2015 Cruze 2LT,
Airbags first hit the market in a major way in mid-1988, when Chrysler started putting a driver's side airbag in all their cars, from the cheapest Horizon on up through the aging RWD M-bodies and the luxury K-car derivatives.
Still, as the years went by, a greater percentage of cars on the road had airbags, as more new cars entered the national fleet and older cars were retired. I don't think airbags had anything to do with the drop in fatalities between 1995 and 1996. I don't think anything did, truthfully. A drop from 1.73 deaths per 100 million miles to 1.69 deaths per 100 million miles is statistically insignificant.
What it does prove, however, is that repealing the national speed limit did NOT make the death rate skyrocket, as many doomsday prophets had predicted.
"Since the 1999 model year, the federal government has required automakers to install driver and passenger airbags for frontal impact protection in all cars, light trucks, and vans. Side airbags are not required by the government or regulated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. They are, however, offered as either a standard or optional feature by many vehicle manufacturers."
I'm pretty sure that just about everybody had driver and passenger-side airbags a few years before that, though.
On the contrary, what might be happening is you are substituting the fact that it is statistically significant for the objective fact!!! Sort of like looking thru the wrong end of the binoculars!!?? For example, fully 59% of the 43,000 yearly fatalities is caused by DUI related AND lack of a higher % of seat belt use!?? In addition, there are categories of folks who die while using seat belts and having air bags deploy. So it is sort of like concluding perhaps these folks would have been "MO DEADER" if not for air bags and the fact that these were not controlled experiments!!??
Of course would you also agree that while scientific validation has its role to play, one would want to do everything or have all the factors you can going your way (logically and illogically) when it comes to over all highway safety, scientifically validated or not!!??
Only if you believe you know better than the traffic engineers and the government that provided the funding. You begin to see it's a circular argument.
"Many governments have even dropped the pretense that speed limits are about safety. In Pennsylvania, we closed a budget deficit by adding surcharges to traffic tickets. The money didn't go to earmarked programs. It went into the general fund."
So do we in NJ because speeders are an easy pick. Much easier for example than jaywalkers.
"kdshapiro: "People driving at 20 mph over the limit are breaking the law.
Prohibition and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 were also "the law of the land" at one time, but people who could think for themselves questioned them."
You're still breaking the law.
"If some people strictly adhere to speed limits on interstate highways, that basically proves that they can read two numbers on a sign, a skill most of us learned in about the first grade."
Still breaking the law.
"kdshapiro: They are the danger to traffic driving at the limit. Not the other way around."
Sorry, but that is not true. There is no proof that people driving faster than the speed limit are more dangerous than those who adhere to the speed limit. Quite the opposite, in fact. The federal government studied this in the 1980s, and discovered that - surprise, surprise - the drivers causing the MOST accidents drove the SLOWEST!. The drivers with the BEST records drove 10-15 mph FASTER than the flow of traffic. Kind of blows the whole "faster drivers are more dangerous" idea right out of the water."
Actually NJ studied this and found that fatalities did not decrease with increased speed. Sort of goes contrary to a now 15+ year old study that probably now holds no water.
"I also can't help but note that when the national 65 mph speed limit was abolished in December 1995, fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles driven dropped across the nation during the next year."
That is due to the fact the people who obeyed the law still obeyed the law, but the rest of the people didn't speed up. In other words, those who were doing 65 before did 70 after. Those who did 55 before now did 65. Unfortunately fatalities started creeping up again as speeds and reckless drivers now went even faster.
"kdshapiro: "You managed to make a bad guy out of people obeying the law. No, I merely pointed out that many people who think they are driving "safely" by obeying the speed limit are, in fact, often engaging in behaviors that represent REAL dangers and disruptions to safe driving."
In fact, it's the speeders that cause the issues, not the people going at the speed limit, driving properly.
"On a side note, I spent time in Germany this summer. They get along quite well without speed limits on many stretches of the Autobahn."
Sure, the Autobahn is exactly like the GSP by Union tolls during rush hour. In Montana where there is no speed limits the cops will nail you, if you go above 75. That's slower than most people in NJ drive on the turnpike. Does that make NJ or Montana a safer place to drive?
If they wanted to enhance traffic safety there would be realistic speed limits that vary by lane, and closing/passing speeds, and speed for conditions would be monitored more than absolute vehicle speeds.
We have a habit in this country of making lots of laws and enforcing the most convenient ones. That results in many rules that are intended to be broken, which dilutes the credibility of all rules. There are so many bizzare and contradictory laws in this country that we all essentially select those we intend to obey and ignore the rest. That's the way it works here not, which is what sticks pins in the Obey-the-Speed-Limit crowd, or the Speed-Laws-Trump-Left-Lane-Laws bunch.
My general rule of rules is "Make reasonable rules, and enforce them." I would have no problem with strict enforcement of speed limits if they were set at reasonable levels and their settings tied scientifically to safety.
In regards to traffic safety, I have a good one for you. Many cite the speed differential as a major problem. Well if that is so, why do we have rush hour car pool lanes: where structually we can have traffic move bumper to bumber 0-10 mph and in the commute lane traffic can move at 65 mph?????!!!! does a 55-65 mph speed differential NOT meet the definition of speed differentiation??? Again, this situation is true almost everywhere in America!!??
The upshot? Despite these glaring problems we are "rate wise" safer than we have been!!
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/nhtsa/announce/press/pressdisplay.cfm?ye- - ar=2004&filename=FFARSrls404.html
My memory was fuzzy at first, and I couldn't remember if my uncle's '94 GMC Sierra had airbags or not. I didn't think it did, and looking on Edmund's confirmed it. The pickups got a redesigned dash for '95, which included a driver's side airbag. For 1997, a passenger-side airbag was added for models with a GVWR of under 8600 lb.
The key would be light trucks in that statement. I think cars were either moto-mouse belts or Airbags since late 80's/early 90's and then went to airbags only later on. Light trucks were forced later on than cars were to have airbags.
(Oddly enough, when I was in the military, I had a 1996 Escort hatch that had both driver's and passenger's side airbags AND those damn motorized belts. Ugh!
Umm, didn't they start putting those side door guard beams in cars like back in 1969?!
Another interesting example, not to rehash old issues but to serve as a warning caution when we insist on new issues or are totally convinced of our policys and procedural infalibilities is the ABS units. Not too long ago (1994) when I got my first ABS vehicle, I had the feeling this would be another costly and probably never/rarely used feature. The government, insurance companies, police and safety pundits, etc almost were universal in saying this would significantly stem accidents. In fact, the government and insurance companies formed programs to incentivize the use of ABS systems. So not only was it well well hyped, but the insurance companies gave an ABS equipment discount. Low and behold not even 5 years later, they dropped the ABS discount citing (words to the effect) no valid statistical difference in accident rate due to ABS!!???
To this day, in over 5 vehicles with ABS, I have in real world conditions, NEVER functioned the ABS!!!! The only time I do function the ABS is when I take each vehicle out to purposely function the ABS so as to not lose the feeling of how it should function if and when it is needed under "REAL" conditions!!!!!??? Also, if you ask most "real" people, almost all of them miss the main point why it was included, and that is to be able to brake and steer around the obstacle confronted and to lessen the chance of wheel lock up and or skidding in the process. The problem is this really requires practice!! How many truly "practice"?!
Anyway, by today's standards, it's not even a very big or heavy truck. just a regular cab, 8-foot bed, 1/2 ton truck with a 305 V-8. No matter how much safety equipment a small car has in it, when you run a considerably heavier vehicle into it, that tends to negate the effectiveness of that safety equipment. Doesn't really matter if it has an airbag or not, when the steering column, dashboard, and firewall end up giving you a "kiss"!
As for ABS, I think one reason it doesn't really help all that much with safety is because people get used to it, think it's going to bail them out, and start to drive stupidly. I remember a few years back, when a friend of mine bought his used '95 Grand Marquis. During a bad snowstorm, he called me from a payphone at the gas station saying his car was making a funny noise. I drove out and had him drive me around, so I could listen for it. First of all, he was driving a lot faster in that snow than any sane person ought to be driving. And the noise he was hearing? His ABS, trying its damndest to keep him from losing control and crashing. Put this guy back behind the wheel of his old '82 Cutlass, and he would've been dead in a week!
Body on frame sure makes a nice ramming platform. Ideally one of those old Chryslers that are unibody AND still have a frame underneath. You could probably cut a small destroyer in half with one of those!
Yeah, when I'm driving in the carpool lane I'm scared of going fast. If traffic is almost stop-and-go I find myself torn between going slow just in case someone pulls out, or fast because the carpooler behind me might want me to. It's hard to balance safety and courtesy in that case.
And I was talking trucks, all trucks, not singling out SUV's. And consdering that the Ford F- and the Chevy C/K have been the #1 and #2 selling vehicles, by a wide margin, it's a safe bet that there are a lot more full-sized trucks out there than there are small cars.
A good for example, all things being equal, (as you know they hardly ever are) my "safer" cars i.e. Honda Civic and VW Jetta TDI cost more to insure than my SUV's Toyota Landcruisers. So we don't get into the endless discussions of other variables, I am specifically talking of Liability: BI, PD, MP, UIM.
Collision loss for the safer cars is even MORE than for Toyota Landcruiser's which you would probably agree would cost MORE to repair than the so called safer cars!!?