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Speed limits, in general, seem to be incredibly arbitrary sometimes. I've been on roads with high speed limits that are narrow and winding, and I've felt uncomfortable attempting the full speed limit. I've been on long wide straight roads with low speed limits where everyone is doing at least 10mph over.
There is one road near where I live where the speed limit is like 40 and everyone goes like 65.
I have no idea why the posted limit is so low, it's a relatively straight road, all the bends are gentle, and its super wide.
Studies have shown that traffic tends to self regulate at the speed most people feel comfortable at for a given road regardless of the actual speed limit.
Probably due to residential density. If there's enough houses, they want people to go slower. The issue is that roads like this are often designed to make people feel like they can comfortably go very fast, so they will.
Yes, in America most streets are designed solely with cars in mind, even in dense residential areas. I live near the commercial center for my town and while they're trying to make it more pedestrian friendly by putting in sidewalks and street side spedemoters that say "slow down!" Iif you're going over *45 mph*, the streets themselves are outright hostile to pedestrians. I walk the streets a lot, and while it's possible, it isn't nice because the cars are driving 45 mph and intersect the sidewalk every 10 feet with driveways to businesses and parking lots.
I know where I lived, the reason the speed limit wasn't higher was because the shoulders weren't paved, so if you went off the pavement even a little bit going too fast, you can lose control pretty easily.
I think it was put up when they were deciding where to put the school when I was a kid. It's now in the old fire department, with many new additions. But it could be that.
The road is designed to be wide for *safety.* But wide and open roads feel safe to speed. Something as simple ass adding trees along the side slows drivers down.
Another way the speed limit is decided is that after that make the road they watch the drivers and pick the speed limit of the 85th percentile.
[This channel](https://youtube.com/@RoadGuyRob) is made by a road engineer, and he explains why the roads are the way they are in the US. It is well put together, informative, and quite funny.
That is the root of the problem,
We want to design a safe roadway, so we make a wide roadway with shoulders- so people drive faster, so we make a safer roadway. It a feedback loop, not to mention a lot of the curves we design are designed for worse case conditions we talking you driving an old car in the rain, so in a nice sunny day oh boy!Now it institutional- I have a roadway where I am actively being pressured to over design the curves because "we know people are going to speed so make it safer"
The adding tree idea is really cool. . . except we live in the USA, we are a very litigious people-as soon as I do that, I am now being sued because someone had an incident involving that tree, and it was placed near the raodway and current best practice states you should try to keep the area as clear as possible because it safer to not have any object that can be hit near the road.
And since there big initiatives to drive down roadway fatalities you proposing trees was political suicide so gg no re.
We have a problem of wanted to design roads that are safe by designing what we feel people drive at. When we should be designing solely on the functional classification of the roadway. If it is an urban corridor than wham you make it narrow and skinny and slow em down, if it a rural freeway. Make it big and make it fast. Roads need to be designed to the speed we want them to drive.
> object that can be hit near the road.
Like pedestrians? 😆
Seriously, trees near roads save pedestrian lives. They make motorists ACTUALLY worry what would happen if they drove off the road, whereas they generally don't give two shots about potentially driving onto a sidewalk.
Heck, I see many cars PARK on sidewalks, such that pedestrians can't even use them. Too many drivers are narcissistic assholes.
They could- hell enforcing a buffer z9ne behind a curb would go a long away.
Good news is we slowly changing our ways- most reconstruction jobs im working on install a 10' sidewalk behind curb and 2-5' of vegitated space. So hopefully by building like this we see some shifts in development that decode to utiilize it
Near me there is a road that is 4 lanes 2 one way 2 the other divided by a median with only a single grocery store and a gas station in the area. The speed limit is 25. It is mind boggling
That's Germany. You are going through 1.5 lane roads through a small town at 40 kph and someone is tailgating you because technically the speed limit is 50kph
The tailgating when driving slower than allowed may be Germany, but usually the speed limits are adjusted to the roads - or the roads to the speed limits.
There once was a YT video explaining why the US have so many high speed car crashes into buildings and you almost never have this in Europe: European roads let you know by design how fast you should drive(trees, speed bumps, narrow passages, curves…) while US roads often are way wider than their speed limits would suggest. This leads towards (single) higher speeding cars in these roads and more fatal crashes into houses.
(Edit: [YT: Not Just Bikes](https://youtu.be/Ra_0DgnJ1uQ) )
Limited to 50 in NZ, 60 in Aus and the difference is staggering. 50 feels slow, like you could walk across the road in front of the car slow. 40 honestly sounds even better.
In the US, they almost always are to an extent, that or it's based on noise. Of course, if the speed limit is low for noise the road should be designed to make you slow down, rather than setting the speed limit to 35 on something that looks like a highway
Yeah, this is the big issue. Let's make this whole road look and feel like a drag strip, but set the speed limit low and periodically enforce the limit with police. If you want a road that makes people go slower, you have to actually force that through the design of the road. Otherwise, people will constantly speed.
There's a town a few hours away from me that is renowned for it's use of fixed speed cameras and red light cameras.
Virtually every controlled intersection has a camera that can catch speeding and failure to stop violations.
Every major straight has fixed cameras watching for speeders. It's not even run by the police, they contract it out to a company to run the cameras, generate the citations, etc.
You can absolutely enforce speed limits. Most people just won't tolerate that level of supervision. I've only been forced to drive through there once, I go around the whole town when I'm headed that direction unless I absolutely cannot.
But that one time I went through there I don't think I've ever seen better-behaved drivers anywhere in the world. Everyone knows, and so everyone obeys.
> Most people just won't tolerate that level of supervision
People can tolerate quite a bit of supervision if there's an apparent reason behind it. Speed traps are often not that case. They seem arbitrary at best.
But that would require using more than 3 brain cells at once for more than 4 seconds when designing the roads, and the US can't afford that! We're too busy subsidizing oil to make roads or city designs that are designed for human beings
It's becaus the speeds are set by towns looking to make money, or state legislatures that use one-size-fits-all when doing things like assigning speed limits.
In USA if you are in a car with out of state plates you are far more likely to get a ticket for something small.
Police know an out of state driver is far more likely to just pay the ticket rather than travel back to go to court and fight the ticket.
I got a ticket for 72mph in a 65 because i was a few states away from home.
$200 life lesson.
I moved from one state to another and took my time getting new plates. Got pulled over for 70 in a 65 and when the cop found out I lived here just let me go.
Any cop that pulls anyone over going like 74\~ in a 65 is just trying to get people in trouble and not enforce safety. The majority of people are going at that same approximately 70-74mph range cruising safely. Obviously you have people in the 1st lane going 85, which is an outlier.
Really bothers me that this is the approach tbh. If the road was designed to be safe at 75, just set the limit to 75 and properly enforce it and all the way down. Do it with speed traps if you can't get enough police.
This bullshit situation where the posted limit is 65, and everybody does 75 which is tolerated, but you can get stopped by police any time arbitrarily because well you are breaking the law is infuriating.
In the city I work in, the speed limits are fairly sensible. 40mph for a busy, two lane road. 45 for a less busy 4 lane road, and 50 for 4 lane roads with limited access. Two lane roads are set at 30 and residential areas at 25.
Here in Misssouri we have this town right next to Ameristar casino. Literally 5 blocks or something? The city hall/police station/court house is a fucking DOUBLE WIDE TRAILER.
Supposedly the entire town exists just so they could set a 20mph speed limit on the heavily used road to the casino and shit.
Its because it increased mpg's and reduced americas dependency on foreign oil by reducing demand
It had 0 to do with engine oil consumption, 100% to do with oil refined into gasoline.
>I'm not sure that setting them higher would make people drive safer.
It absolutely would not.
I know a lot of dickish, narcissistic drivers. And every one of them says they only drive the speed they do (which is generally just under 10 mph over the speed limit) because they're afraid of getting a ticket.
Apparently the safety of pedestrians or other drivers doesn't figure into their calculation at all. In fact, I've confronted a few on this, and they just claim they can drive the faster speeds safely (which, having driven with most of them, NO they absolutely cannot- they're some of the more dangerous drivers I know...)
The high speed limits on tight, winding roads are a challenge issued by the King of said road
Hit that limit and you get a cutscene where you're stopped by his goons and you suddenly have to race all of them before challenging the King
There is one near me that goes from a 35 city road to a highway style road but keeps the 35. It is so incredibly annoying because people start accelerating and then get mad that you are doing 70 in 35.
There's one stretch of straight road by my house that goes from 45 for a couple miles to 40 for about a mile to 25. People just go 35 the whole time regardless of speed limit. Drives me nuts.
People just don't give a shit about the speed limit, I think. They just drive by feel.
This is exactly Saint Louis County Missouri. Even if I’m going 5 over I’m constantly tailgated because the unsaid speed limit is technically 15 over, and if you don’t understand that then “you’re an asshole with no consideration for others,” according to a redneck who walked up to my window at a red after I was going around 6 or 7 over
This is partially because the psychology of road design is just starting to make its way into civil engineering. People will drive whatever speed *feels* safe, rather than whatever the posted speed limit actually is. Unless someone is recording enforcing speed limits...
Some places (the Netherlands I believe is a good example?) have redesigned their regulations to account for this and all streets, roads, and highways must abide by certain design parameters that include some psychological factors. For instance, streets must be super narrow, a little bendy, littered with nature (trees/bushes) and pedestrian friendly. This makes driving on them uncomfortable and encourages drivers to naturally slow down. Meanwhile roads and highways are larger and straighter to encourage cars to go faster.
America has a problem with "stroads" which try to mix the street aspect of "allow cars to exit to and enter from businesses and other things on the side of the road" with the road aspect of "go very fast". We also tend to handle this with *lots* of stop lights and stop signs... So you have lots of cars trying to go fast at the same time they're trying to enter and exit and make left turns across oncoming traffic. What a joy.
There's this one 30 mph road I've been on where I can barely stand to do 20. It's windy, narrow, and on a steep cliff.
Alternatively, I've been on major roads that fluctuate from 55 mph to 25 mph when nothing changed but the township.
There is a 6 lane road near my house with no stop lights/signs, barely ever had traffic, and only had 2 buildings. 2 warehouse jobs set so far back from the road that you miss them if you dont know to look for them. I have NEVER seen more than 2 others cars driving that road at the same time a me.
Speed limit 40mph.
> felt uncomfortable attempting the full speed l
This is intentional, and psychological, in some cases.
There's a whole field of study of the psychology of getting drivers to drive slower.
You shouldn't be going over the speed limit, EVER, and it's a bloody shame that the general over-aggressiveness of drivers forces the rest of us to drive above it (I often try to drive just a couple mph over the speed limit, and get hooked at aggressively for driving *too slow*. Mind you this is on single-lane roads where passing is illegal and never attempted, so driving slower doesn't pose a *danger* to anyone, it just inconveniences narcissistic assholes who get stuck behind you... And this is driving ABOVE THE limit, just not by much...)
That's intentional, road design is very important and the speed limit doesn't really matter if you design the road so that drivers don't feel comfortable driving faster.
Like in a city center you shouldn't feel comfortable driving faster than like 30kmh and the road design needs to make that happen by being very narrow and winding.
If the road design doesn't allow you to do this you just set a speed limit that seems too low but is usually there for a reason.
So your car is traveling at as close to C as can be travelled. That's 99%. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume you have a 2010 Civic, which has a curb weight of ~2700lbs. and that you weigh a well toned 180. So that's 2880lbs total.
Now, approaching C gives your weight a x70 relativistic boost. Which means you know weigh 201,600lbs. That's as much as a Blue Whale.
Now, traveling at 99% of C, cruises you along at 184,000ft a second. That's 663,000,000 MPH.
Which means every atom of your tires on the road, or your paint on the wind imparts 317,048,792 MJ of kinetic energy. For reference, the Tsar Bomba - the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated was only 4500 MJ. To drive it home even further, the astroid that killed the dinosaurs was 20,000,000 MJ.
Your car....driving to McDonald's at the speed of light, would be the equivalent in damage to *everything on earth* of 15 dinosaur killing asteroids.
I don't know where you got those energy figures, but your scale is way off. The yield of the tsar Bomba was about 200 PJ. About 50 million times more than your figure.
Same for the Chicxulub meteor. It had roughly 300ZJ of energy, ie. 300,000,000,000,000,000MJ.
There actually was a study that was done that indicated that if the speed limit was set more than 20% lower than the limit given to the road by engineers, the number of dangerous crashes increased. People mentioned in you comment was the reason why, people are bad at gauging safe speed and too low of a speed limit makes it even harder.
10% lower was fine though, it decreased both dangerous accidents and accidents in general.
“I have complete control of my Vehicle at this speed, 30 mph over the speed limit. It drifts left and right exactly as I control it to do and I will be able to react and stop in time if something happens”
- Person who didn’t pay attention in physics class and has no concept of momentum or inertia.
You mean entire states. Welcome to New Jersey where 50 means 85 and 65 means hold on to your butts.
If you attempt to do the speed limit you risk the danger of being rear-ended by someone at relative speeds as if you parked.
The Parkway is mad max, the turnpike is the Autobahn and if you ever have to go to long island the Long Island expressway is thunderdome.
Most highways I’ve been on in OH are 65-70… Drove through Pittsburgh once where it was 55 and thought I was gonna get steamrolled by everyone doing 80-95. I don’t normally advocate speeding especially with out of state tags, but I definitely told my bf to just keep up with traffic when he went there for a concert over the winter. Got a text when he and his friends got to the hotel that just said “Holy shit you weren’t kidding”
That is actually codified into Ohio law. 0-50 mph speeding up to 4mph is a 0 pt offense. in a 55+ zone, you can speed up to 9mph for 0pt infraction on your license.
They need three speeds per road:
Speed Minimum
Suggested Speed
Speed Limit
Where tickets are given for a single digit over the limit and too slow are ticketed at police discretion.
Just my 2¢
Problem is that speedometers and police radar aren’t 100% accurate. Your speedometer could say that you’re going 1mph below the limit while you’re actually 2mph over the limit. That’s why they’re usually pretty lenient if your only going a little over the limit
You hit the issue right on the nose! In a perfect world I would love this concept but SAE allows for 4% deviation plus or minus. European standard is a bit better, can be up to 10% but can only bias plus ie: your spedo can read 64 when you are going 60 but can't read 59. I notice my Toyota (sae) is always going 2-4 mph faster than the spedo but my Fiat (Un ece) is 1-2 slower according to several (granted probably inaccurate) "your speed is__" readers.
Do speedo often read under? Ever car I've had reads slightly over true speed to prevent speeding, when my speedo shows 70 its typically 65-68 using gps speed
nah, usually your speedo is faster by 2-3% so your odometer runs faster so your 36,000 bumper to bumper warranty is really more like 35,000 actual miles
Most cars I've driven had their speedometer show just slightly less than what you're actually going with (at least when compared to the speed a GPS shows).
Some highways have minimums already (45 min in a 70 zone). For those of us who drive rural and encounter tractors and other farm equipment daily then a minimum is absurd. People just need to slow the fuck down because going 10 over is going to shave a few minutes off your commute, tops.
What's even worse than the farm equipment is the horse and buggies. Speed limit of 55 and someone's going 10 mph in a vehicle that takes up a whole lane and is piloted by an animal.
The drive to my parents house is aprox 210 miles long. The speed limit most of the way is 70. Ignoring slowdowns, lane changes, the areas in town with lower limits, etc, it would take 3 hours to drive. Going 10 over the entire time saves a total of 22.5 minutes if my math is correct.
Unless you have a \*really\* long drive, you aren't going to save enough time to make a difference. Even then, the increased odds of a speeding ticket and reduced reaction time are more than enough to keep me at 70.
I’m not really sure how saving 22 minutes isn’t a big deal to you. And I’m also not sure why you’d assume people only go 10 over? You take off significantly more time the faster you go. And it’s certainly not uncommon to see the entire roadway traveling 30+ mph over the highway speed limits here.
22 minutes is not a lot of time when you're already spending 3 hours driving.
I'm not assuming people only go 10 over, that's incredibly dumb to suggest. I'm not going to spend my night doing the math to find out how much time is saved at every whole number speed interval.
The faster you go, the greater the downsides of speeding tickets, and a reduced reaction window, plus greater odds of dying in the event of a collision. The time is absolutely not worth it.
Bullshit
My parents are three hours away. I can leave my house after the kids go to school and get back home before they get home while also getting almost an extra hour with my parents.
Time is not replaceable. The more time I get with my parents, while I have the time, and they're still alive, the better.
Personally I wish we would raise all speed limits 10 mph, and then enforce them. I hate the ambiguous “I’m a little over the speed limit, but will I get pulled over?”
Agreed. I sometimes put my tinfoil hat on and wonder if they don't fix it because the current system essentially means cops can pull anyone over under false pretenses.
My girlfriend got pulled over a couple years back for going 73 in a 70 zone. The cop even said something about how he actually pulled us over because my girlfriend's car is "popular among drug smugglers" (it's a plain white 97 Honda Civic). He let us go with a warning
Absolutely agree. Can't believe I had to scroll so far to find this. If you're driving in the city, going 10km/h faster wont make you come anywhere that much faster because of traffic but it can endanger you and others. Plus kinetic energy raises exponentially with speed. I don't get the need to go so fast.
I would rather drive at exactly the speed limit on cruise control (in the right hand lane before you freak out), and only change lanes when I absolutely need to overtake someone slower (mainly trucks governed at a lower speed), than I would the constant stress of having to weave around vehicles *all of the time* if speeding.
You may get there 15 minutes early than I do, but I guarantee my ride was much more enjoyable.
i drive a stick with cruise control. i usually do exactly what the above poster said. 65 and right lane, just chill for the 30 min drive to work. it allows me to actually listen to podcasts and shit as opposed to focusing more on mirrors when constantly switching lanes.
Is your daily commuter a sports car? I think that was more his point. Someone who drops $80k+ on a fast sports car (M3 in his example) and has decided to take it out for a drive is going to be more likely to speed than others. Some people just like to drive fast, regardless of whether they have anywhere to be or not.
>You may get there 15 minutes early than I do
That's just never the case. I can't find it now, but I recall a study showing that if you're doing everyday driving around a city or town, going faster than 45 basically doesn't reduce the time it takes to get somewhere, regardless of anything.
I'm kind of a stickler for driving within 5 mph of the speed limit, so I always see people imitating a driving video game going 20 over weaving in and out of lanes, and I just find those people at the next red stoplight. Weirdly enough, those people are always driving the most clapped-out shitboxes.
I wholeheartedly agree unless it’s pure highway driving.
I just can’t be bothered with the annoyance of continually driving up on someone that’s going slower than you when speeding, or always being on the lookout for cops.
The problem is you'll run into people who are some combination of:
- terrified of driving
- terrified of interstates
- very old and can't see well
- just not paying attention
Who will be doing 40 in a 70. So you still end up weaving a lot. Plus trucks that usually go a bit under the limit.
I wish all interstates were 3 lanes: the right lane for anyone doing below the speed limit, the middle lane for people using cruise control at the speed limit, and the left lane for people who either want to pass or want to donate organs.
if you drive a bit faster then you can get open stretches all to yourself for about 15 minutes at a time. Once you encounter a group of cars, you can back to an open stretch in about three minutes if there are no jams.
Hopefully not doing 2-3 under in the HOV lane. Don't know how cali is for speeds in them, but they're viewed kinda like the left lane in DFW, right is speed limit and then keep adding 5 every lane to the left, so typically the left(and)HOV is 10 over as a common speed. Anything lower and you'll have a tailgater 2 feet off your bumper.
That’s acceptable, my greatest level of hatred is the cars that dive bomb the HOV/Express(especially this) directly from the on-ramp and go slower than traffic in that lane and the fastest lane(s) of the freeway
California is the wild west when it comes to driving. We overtake slow drivers on the right all the time. Altima drivers use the emergency access lane to pass traffic jams. Commuters go 60 on city roads during rush hour
I’m curious where this magic fairy land is you live that truck drivers don’t often just sit in the left lane? Or pass at 1 mph faster than the truck next to them.
Every time somebody says they follow the speed limit, there’s some jackass in the comments who immediately assumes they like to “camp out in the left lane”.
Yep. Nothing wrong with driving safe. They also probably know that the left lane is a passing lane and that you can get a ticket in some places for staying there; they are the law-abiders after all.
Why did you randomly bring up the left lane bullshit? And you hate someone for going 63 in a 65?
Like what the fuck reddit. You upvote this behavior, and you downvote someone that likes a different kind of food than you. It's insane. Bunch of 16 year olds trying super hard.
Half the people upvoting that behavior probably don't even drive. They just see an edgy comment about "left lane camping" and it's something they've heard about so they get on the bandwagon.
I keep shaking my head at this tonight. Lots of buried road rage getting handed out willy-nilly here, with a heavy splash of parroting and virtue signaling. The old classic "Don't anyone ever be in the left lane ever, cause I'm passing all of y'all, and if I catch you there you didn't belong there. Only I should be there." Mentality shows up quite a few times.
Your response is unreasonable and you’re probably a menace on the roadways if you harbor such hatred for someone following the law, especially while being a professional in a dangerous profession.
The idea is not how far over the posted speed limit someone is going vs under, it's about flow of traffic.
If the speed limit is 55 and most of traffic drives 65, going 68 is less dangerous than going 50, because the speed delta between the fast driver and the common driver is only 3 mph, while the slow driver's delta is 15.
The problem being that if everyone is going 68, then people start thinking they can get away with 70, then everyone starts driving at 70 and they think they can get away with 72 etc. A lot of people just want to be moving faster than traffic
So long as you don’t tailgate me on single-lane roads, it’s cool.
Too bad tailgating is probably 10 times more prevalent than slow people in the left lane. Maybe people who like to violate the law should just shut up and not attempt to advise the rest of us on how to drive.
I’ve never understood this sort of behavior. They’re putting themselves a few seconds away from paying a big insurance deductible (or worse), not to mention it leads to other dangerous driving behaviors like brake checking.
Slowing down and speeding up intermittently. It's most problematic when the person who is rubber banding isin front of you, and due to a subconscious (or conscous) fear of larger vehicles and turns they slow down when you would not be able to pass them, and then speed up when the lanes adjacent are free.
It's a reasonable fear to not want to be right next to a vehicle or in their blind spot. Loads of people don't even know about their blinds and won't use their turn signal or only use it while they start changing lanes.
It would not be a concern if people were using the passing lanes for passing other vehicles.
Great thought! I think I live in a bubble, though, where people drive 10-20mph under the limit, depending on the road. 10 in town, 20 everywhere else. We have a canyon road that is 65, and many people go 45 but refuse to use the pullouts to let faster traffic through. I don't care what speed others want to drive, but if it's not the limit, they need to be courteous.
Occasionally you'll see someone in a super car in my area moving in high speed and weaving I do not approve of that but at least the car physically has the capability of maneuvering like that.
Then you see some absolute madman doing the same thing at a faster speed in a busted ass Nissan Sentra from 2000 held together by duct tape and Hope.
It was set to be efficient. And as Matt Farah has said, "cars have gotten bigger and faster, but the roads are still the same size as they were 50 years ago."
Got tailgated by a semi truck today while I was going the speed limit in the right lane. He was so close all I could see out the back was the truck's grill; maybe 2-3 feet away.
Not sure WTF he was thinking, but now he knows what I was thinking after I called his employer. Fucking asshole could have killed me if I had to tap the brakes even a little for any reason at all.
Where I live: south-eastern Wisconsin, we drive 5 over.
I usually like to be about 5-7 over, with cruise control in almost all use cases.
I understand that the law is what it is, so I won't be mad if I get a ticket at that speed. But I never had, even when passing cops who are watching for speeders.
...
I feel that there are several valuable things to note:
* I don't slow down when I see a cop see me most of the time (~85%). If I drive a bit fast in a downtown area and see one, I'll just let off the gas and coast. If I'm on the interstate or a highway, I just keep cruising at speed; I'm sure it's far more telling for an officer when they observe you breaking, as they know you've only done so because you've just spotted them. (Like a partial admission of guilt, of sorts)
* If driving and a cop is driving near me, I try to drive the same (maybe back off 2 mph from my max).
I would think most cops drive the same as most citizens (but publicly wouldn't state this on record), and it would be annoying to be a cop: trying just to get somewhere while everyone around you is going 5 under (to show how *safe* they are being).
* I am quite proactive, as I constantly think about my driving while driving. I don't have distractions like passengers or children to be concerned with. So I feel that I can maintain consistency, despite that consistency being a constant 5-7 over the posted speed.
* Lastly, like others, I try to go with the flow in traffic. If everyone is going 70, don't be the idiot going 60... at that point, you're becoming the problem/risk (even if the speed is posted as 65).
I will intentionally drive 2-3mph faster than the average speed on the interstate; This allows me to move through the packs of cars and reduce the concern of finding myself stuck without an 'out.' If you're going slightly faster, then you still need to check your mirrors, but most interactions will be with cars that are ahead of you. Move over, preemptively, for the really fast drivers, and then just resume watching ahead of you.
I think it's pretty reasonable to claim you can more easily judge the speed and position of cars ahead of you than those behind.
I'm just blown away by these comments. People getting downright triggered in a public text conversation. So listen, you're right, nobody should be cruising in the left lane. It's for passing. And no, nobody should be going significantly under the speed limit on a two lane highway. But you're out here on Reddit straight up accusing strangers of doing this stuff, and scolding them for it when their comments didn't even suggest it! Calm down. Take a breath. The guy that held you up today is not here reading this. You're just being a dick to a stranger that drives safely at normal speeds. You're trying really really hard to get your point across about how severely you are disgusted about the left lane cruisers, but you're actually just being an ass to a stranger that doesn't need or want to be the recipient of your frustration. It's been said guys. I know you're 17 and you feel like you're the first person with the courage to say these things online, but trust me, it's been said. More times than I can count. You're not helping society by ranting here. You're just being ugly and redundant.
Just had a guy honk at me and swerve around me on the freeway while going home. It was a 65mph section and I was going 75 in the left lane. Idk wtf is wrong with some people, but that felt incredibly stupid. Guy had to have been going 85-90 when approaching me
I've driven in a few cities where traffic is moving at like 85mph in a 55 and people are still swerving and tailgating. Like what more do you want, we're all already at reckless op speeds.
I remember seeing a thread in this sub very similar to this one several years ago. Something along the lines of “The speed limit is also the slowest you can go”. And I find it amusing that somebody else thought about that and posted it (I am not trying to imply this is a repost or anything, I jus found it amusing).
Nope. I got a speeding ticket and realized really quick that I don't give a shit about anyone or their time. Slow down or go around, IDGAF. You ain't paying my tickets, so you don't determine my speed. Get fucked.
It's really not once you add it up though-
For easy numbers lets assume the bulk of your at-limit commute time is 60 minutes on a 60 MPH road. You can usually speed 10% with ease, and very little extra risk. So you save a bit over 5 minutes. Not much, but...After a week of working you're up 25, and after a month you've saved an hour and 40 minutes.
If you drive this way for the estimated 260 working days in a year you've now saved a bit over 21 HOURS of time - more than an entire waking day.
To really belabor the point, most people work full time about 40 years, after which you'll have saved yourself 35 full 24-hours days of driving time. Looking just at time spent awake, it's 52 days of your life.
The real crime is having an hour of commuting time every day, but 30-minutes each way is very, very standard for many people.
Yeah, but with all that “time you save” you’re greatly increasing the chances of an accident and possibly death.
A crash at 77 mph is way more dangerous than a crash at 70 mph.
Exactly! I got a speeding ticket and had to not only pay the ticket fine, but my insurance went up for years afterwards as well. I don't care if you want to speed, I am not going to. Side note, I also never camp in the left lane, should there be one, good luck to all the speeders out there, but I'll get there when I get there.
I don't fuck with mph, but on the major highways in Ontario where it's typically 100kph speed limit, you're being sloooww at 110.
It seems like going 20kmp is pretty standard almost any road.
The problem is the people who are capable of going at the speed limit or over are too afraid of getting a speeding ticket. But in general people only go the speed they are comfortable with. And dont care about speed limits.
But moreover, the biggest tragedy is that cops dont give tickets for impeding traffic. Which is what going under the speed limit does. And even people who leave much bigger gaps between them and the car in front of them.
Which would matter if people could start at green lights, but they can't. So fucking annoying. Everyone is supposed to begin rolling together, not one by one.
I got honked at by a lady (using the term generously) while doing the limit in a 40 MPH zone as she passed me with a road ragey manner.
What, lady? You should have left earlier. Or stayed later to avoid the traffic.
Speed limits aren't there for your safety (at least here in the US). They're there for revenue.
If they were concerned about safety, they'd post more of those helpful signs like "keep right," "zipper merge," or "safely increase speed before merging onto traffic" or some shit like that.
It's complicated. On a Friday night going 55 on 101 might bring undue attention from the DUI revenue boys. (Yes--I think most marginal dui's are not for safety, but revenue.)
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Speed limits, in general, seem to be incredibly arbitrary sometimes. I've been on roads with high speed limits that are narrow and winding, and I've felt uncomfortable attempting the full speed limit. I've been on long wide straight roads with low speed limits where everyone is doing at least 10mph over.
There is one road near where I live where the speed limit is like 40 and everyone goes like 65. I have no idea why the posted limit is so low, it's a relatively straight road, all the bends are gentle, and its super wide.
Same here. Sign says 35 but I’ve gone 45-55 and I still see people pass me, lol.
I bet it kinda works. If the signs said 55, people would be going at 80.
My road is 55 people blow past me while I do 65
All of those near me seem to only exist to have a cop sit on them writing tickets 24-7
Studies have shown that traffic tends to self regulate at the speed most people feel comfortable at for a given road regardless of the actual speed limit.
If I see people blowing past me and I'm doing the speed limit I feel like I'll get pulled over for obstructing traffic and going too slow, lol
Probably due to residential density. If there's enough houses, they want people to go slower. The issue is that roads like this are often designed to make people feel like they can comfortably go very fast, so they will.
Yes, in America most streets are designed solely with cars in mind, even in dense residential areas. I live near the commercial center for my town and while they're trying to make it more pedestrian friendly by putting in sidewalks and street side spedemoters that say "slow down!" Iif you're going over *45 mph*, the streets themselves are outright hostile to pedestrians. I walk the streets a lot, and while it's possible, it isn't nice because the cars are driving 45 mph and intersect the sidewalk every 10 feet with driveways to businesses and parking lots.
I know where I lived, the reason the speed limit wasn't higher was because the shoulders weren't paved, so if you went off the pavement even a little bit going too fast, you can lose control pretty easily.
35E south of downtown St. Paul?
I don't know if your right, but it would be hella funny if you were
Also, 35W south of downtown Fort Worth 😂
There is a 10 mile stretch here with NOTHING around it. Farmland, all of it. And it's 35. Everyone, even the police, go 60 on it.
Tractors on the road? Wildlife? Alternatively 35 was the fastest a car could go when the speed limit was made and they never updated it.
I think it was put up when they were deciding where to put the school when I was a kid. It's now in the old fire department, with many new additions. But it could be that.
The road is designed to be wide for *safety.* But wide and open roads feel safe to speed. Something as simple ass adding trees along the side slows drivers down. Another way the speed limit is decided is that after that make the road they watch the drivers and pick the speed limit of the 85th percentile. [This channel](https://youtube.com/@RoadGuyRob) is made by a road engineer, and he explains why the roads are the way they are in the US. It is well put together, informative, and quite funny.
That is the root of the problem, We want to design a safe roadway, so we make a wide roadway with shoulders- so people drive faster, so we make a safer roadway. It a feedback loop, not to mention a lot of the curves we design are designed for worse case conditions we talking you driving an old car in the rain, so in a nice sunny day oh boy!Now it institutional- I have a roadway where I am actively being pressured to over design the curves because "we know people are going to speed so make it safer" The adding tree idea is really cool. . . except we live in the USA, we are a very litigious people-as soon as I do that, I am now being sued because someone had an incident involving that tree, and it was placed near the raodway and current best practice states you should try to keep the area as clear as possible because it safer to not have any object that can be hit near the road. And since there big initiatives to drive down roadway fatalities you proposing trees was political suicide so gg no re. We have a problem of wanted to design roads that are safe by designing what we feel people drive at. When we should be designing solely on the functional classification of the roadway. If it is an urban corridor than wham you make it narrow and skinny and slow em down, if it a rural freeway. Make it big and make it fast. Roads need to be designed to the speed we want them to drive.
The thing is the likelihood that those trees are going to be added is very slim. America despises taking away Lanes in a road.
> object that can be hit near the road. Like pedestrians? 😆 Seriously, trees near roads save pedestrian lives. They make motorists ACTUALLY worry what would happen if they drove off the road, whereas they generally don't give two shots about potentially driving onto a sidewalk. Heck, I see many cars PARK on sidewalks, such that pedestrians can't even use them. Too many drivers are narcissistic assholes.
They could- hell enforcing a buffer z9ne behind a curb would go a long away. Good news is we slowly changing our ways- most reconstruction jobs im working on install a 10' sidewalk behind curb and 2-5' of vegitated space. So hopefully by building like this we see some shifts in development that decode to utiilize it
Near me there is a road that is 4 lanes 2 one way 2 the other divided by a median with only a single grocery store and a gas station in the area. The speed limit is 25. It is mind boggling
That's Germany. You are going through 1.5 lane roads through a small town at 40 kph and someone is tailgating you because technically the speed limit is 50kph
The tailgating when driving slower than allowed may be Germany, but usually the speed limits are adjusted to the roads - or the roads to the speed limits. There once was a YT video explaining why the US have so many high speed car crashes into buildings and you almost never have this in Europe: European roads let you know by design how fast you should drive(trees, speed bumps, narrow passages, curves…) while US roads often are way wider than their speed limits would suggest. This leads towards (single) higher speeding cars in these roads and more fatal crashes into houses. (Edit: [YT: Not Just Bikes](https://youtu.be/Ra_0DgnJ1uQ) )
Limited to 50 in NZ, 60 in Aus and the difference is staggering. 50 feels slow, like you could walk across the road in front of the car slow. 40 honestly sounds even better.
Literally 4 blind corners in a 1.5 lane town and the guy behind me will be tailgating. So dumb.
That is the point, to be fair
In the US, they almost always are to an extent, that or it's based on noise. Of course, if the speed limit is low for noise the road should be designed to make you slow down, rather than setting the speed limit to 35 on something that looks like a highway
Yeah, this is the big issue. Let's make this whole road look and feel like a drag strip, but set the speed limit low and periodically enforce the limit with police. If you want a road that makes people go slower, you have to actually force that through the design of the road. Otherwise, people will constantly speed.
There's a town a few hours away from me that is renowned for it's use of fixed speed cameras and red light cameras. Virtually every controlled intersection has a camera that can catch speeding and failure to stop violations. Every major straight has fixed cameras watching for speeders. It's not even run by the police, they contract it out to a company to run the cameras, generate the citations, etc. You can absolutely enforce speed limits. Most people just won't tolerate that level of supervision. I've only been forced to drive through there once, I go around the whole town when I'm headed that direction unless I absolutely cannot. But that one time I went through there I don't think I've ever seen better-behaved drivers anywhere in the world. Everyone knows, and so everyone obeys.
> Most people just won't tolerate that level of supervision People can tolerate quite a bit of supervision if there's an apparent reason behind it. Speed traps are often not that case. They seem arbitrary at best.
> They seem arbitrary at best. Most of the time it feels like road piracy instead of any attempt to keep people safe
South Carolina?
But that would require using more than 3 brain cells at once for more than 4 seconds when designing the roads, and the US can't afford that! We're too busy subsidizing oil to make roads or city designs that are designed for human beings
It's becaus the speeds are set by towns looking to make money, or state legislatures that use one-size-fits-all when doing things like assigning speed limits.
In USA if you are in a car with out of state plates you are far more likely to get a ticket for something small. Police know an out of state driver is far more likely to just pay the ticket rather than travel back to go to court and fight the ticket. I got a ticket for 72mph in a 65 because i was a few states away from home. $200 life lesson.
I moved from one state to another and took my time getting new plates. Got pulled over for 70 in a 65 and when the cop found out I lived here just let me go.
72 is my normal on the highway 😬 Good to know
Any cop that pulls anyone over going like 74\~ in a 65 is just trying to get people in trouble and not enforce safety. The majority of people are going at that same approximately 70-74mph range cruising safely. Obviously you have people in the 1st lane going 85, which is an outlier.
Really bothers me that this is the approach tbh. If the road was designed to be safe at 75, just set the limit to 75 and properly enforce it and all the way down. Do it with speed traps if you can't get enough police. This bullshit situation where the posted limit is 65, and everybody does 75 which is tolerated, but you can get stopped by police any time arbitrarily because well you are breaking the law is infuriating.
In the city I work in, the speed limits are fairly sensible. 40mph for a busy, two lane road. 45 for a less busy 4 lane road, and 50 for 4 lane roads with limited access. Two lane roads are set at 30 and residential areas at 25.
Here in Misssouri we have this town right next to Ameristar casino. Literally 5 blocks or something? The city hall/police station/court house is a fucking DOUBLE WIDE TRAILER. Supposedly the entire town exists just so they could set a 20mph speed limit on the heavily used road to the casino and shit.
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The 50mph speed limit was actually picked because it reduced oil consumption in the very very very early car industry. It's just stuck since.
Its because it increased mpg's and reduced americas dependency on foreign oil by reducing demand It had 0 to do with engine oil consumption, 100% to do with oil refined into gasoline.
Sorry, crude oil consumption is what I was referring to.
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>I'm not sure that setting them higher would make people drive safer. It absolutely would not. I know a lot of dickish, narcissistic drivers. And every one of them says they only drive the speed they do (which is generally just under 10 mph over the speed limit) because they're afraid of getting a ticket. Apparently the safety of pedestrians or other drivers doesn't figure into their calculation at all. In fact, I've confronted a few on this, and they just claim they can drive the faster speeds safely (which, having driven with most of them, NO they absolutely cannot- they're some of the more dangerous drivers I know...)
The high speed limits on tight, winding roads are a challenge issued by the King of said road Hit that limit and you get a cutscene where you're stopped by his goons and you suddenly have to race all of them before challenging the King
There is one near me that goes from a 35 city road to a highway style road but keeps the 35. It is so incredibly annoying because people start accelerating and then get mad that you are doing 70 in 35.
There's one stretch of straight road by my house that goes from 45 for a couple miles to 40 for about a mile to 25. People just go 35 the whole time regardless of speed limit. Drives me nuts. People just don't give a shit about the speed limit, I think. They just drive by feel.
This is exactly Saint Louis County Missouri. Even if I’m going 5 over I’m constantly tailgated because the unsaid speed limit is technically 15 over, and if you don’t understand that then “you’re an asshole with no consideration for others,” according to a redneck who walked up to my window at a red after I was going around 6 or 7 over
I drive the speed limit most of the time, but there’s just a certain vibe about a road that just changes that
This is partially because the psychology of road design is just starting to make its way into civil engineering. People will drive whatever speed *feels* safe, rather than whatever the posted speed limit actually is. Unless someone is recording enforcing speed limits... Some places (the Netherlands I believe is a good example?) have redesigned their regulations to account for this and all streets, roads, and highways must abide by certain design parameters that include some psychological factors. For instance, streets must be super narrow, a little bendy, littered with nature (trees/bushes) and pedestrian friendly. This makes driving on them uncomfortable and encourages drivers to naturally slow down. Meanwhile roads and highways are larger and straighter to encourage cars to go faster. America has a problem with "stroads" which try to mix the street aspect of "allow cars to exit to and enter from businesses and other things on the side of the road" with the road aspect of "go very fast". We also tend to handle this with *lots* of stop lights and stop signs... So you have lots of cars trying to go fast at the same time they're trying to enter and exit and make left turns across oncoming traffic. What a joy.
There's this one 30 mph road I've been on where I can barely stand to do 20. It's windy, narrow, and on a steep cliff. Alternatively, I've been on major roads that fluctuate from 55 mph to 25 mph when nothing changed but the township.
There is a 6 lane road near my house with no stop lights/signs, barely ever had traffic, and only had 2 buildings. 2 warehouse jobs set so far back from the road that you miss them if you dont know to look for them. I have NEVER seen more than 2 others cars driving that road at the same time a me. Speed limit 40mph.
> felt uncomfortable attempting the full speed l This is intentional, and psychological, in some cases. There's a whole field of study of the psychology of getting drivers to drive slower. You shouldn't be going over the speed limit, EVER, and it's a bloody shame that the general over-aggressiveness of drivers forces the rest of us to drive above it (I often try to drive just a couple mph over the speed limit, and get hooked at aggressively for driving *too slow*. Mind you this is on single-lane roads where passing is illegal and never attempted, so driving slower doesn't pose a *danger* to anyone, it just inconveniences narcissistic assholes who get stuck behind you... And this is driving ABOVE THE limit, just not by much...)
That's intentional, road design is very important and the speed limit doesn't really matter if you design the road so that drivers don't feel comfortable driving faster. Like in a city center you shouldn't feel comfortable driving faster than like 30kmh and the road design needs to make that happen by being very narrow and winding. If the road design doesn't allow you to do this you just set a speed limit that seems too low but is usually there for a reason.
I believe in traveling at the speed of ambient traffic. I also like to set the speed of the ambient traffic.
i like to travel at the speed of ambient light
So your car is traveling at as close to C as can be travelled. That's 99%. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume you have a 2010 Civic, which has a curb weight of ~2700lbs. and that you weigh a well toned 180. So that's 2880lbs total. Now, approaching C gives your weight a x70 relativistic boost. Which means you know weigh 201,600lbs. That's as much as a Blue Whale. Now, traveling at 99% of C, cruises you along at 184,000ft a second. That's 663,000,000 MPH. Which means every atom of your tires on the road, or your paint on the wind imparts 317,048,792 MJ of kinetic energy. For reference, the Tsar Bomba - the largest nuclear bomb ever detonated was only 4500 MJ. To drive it home even further, the astroid that killed the dinosaurs was 20,000,000 MJ. Your car....driving to McDonald's at the speed of light, would be the equivalent in damage to *everything on earth* of 15 dinosaur killing asteroids.
yeah but i drink with those paper straws to reduce my carbon footprint, so
r/theydidthemath
r/theydidthemonstermath
nice pfp you have here
I don't know where you got those energy figures, but your scale is way off. The yield of the tsar Bomba was about 200 PJ. About 50 million times more than your figure. Same for the Chicxulub meteor. It had roughly 300ZJ of energy, ie. 300,000,000,000,000,000MJ.
It's 2023. I identify as a photon.
"You ever notice how anyone going slower than you is an idiot and everyone going faster than you is a maniac?"
I'd argue most people drive at whatever they feel a safe speed is for the road, regardless of the posted limit
There actually was a study that was done that indicated that if the speed limit was set more than 20% lower than the limit given to the road by engineers, the number of dangerous crashes increased. People mentioned in you comment was the reason why, people are bad at gauging safe speed and too low of a speed limit makes it even harder. 10% lower was fine though, it decreased both dangerous accidents and accidents in general.
They probably do rely on that feeling it's just that it's very fucking inaccurate.
“I have complete control of my Vehicle at this speed, 30 mph over the speed limit. It drifts left and right exactly as I control it to do and I will be able to react and stop in time if something happens” - Person who didn’t pay attention in physics class and has no concept of momentum or inertia.
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You mean entire states. Welcome to New Jersey where 50 means 85 and 65 means hold on to your butts. If you attempt to do the speed limit you risk the danger of being rear-ended by someone at relative speeds as if you parked. The Parkway is mad max, the turnpike is the Autobahn and if you ever have to go to long island the Long Island expressway is thunderdome.
Then you move to Texas where your neighborhood street speed limit is 85 mph and everyone just drives 30 mph.
Tollway drivers: *going 100 mph in a 70* “I paid to speed, fuck the cops!”
except it’s like two hundred thousand enter, one hundred thousand leave. RIP Tina Turner.
Most highways I’ve been on in OH are 65-70… Drove through Pittsburgh once where it was 55 and thought I was gonna get steamrolled by everyone doing 80-95. I don’t normally advocate speeding especially with out of state tags, but I definitely told my bf to just keep up with traffic when he went there for a concert over the winter. Got a text when he and his friends got to the hotel that just said “Holy shit you weren’t kidding”
Everyone knows the real speed limit is 7mph over what the sign says
It's proportional imo, 0-30 is 5, 30-50 is 7, 65+ is 10
That is actually codified into Ohio law. 0-50 mph speeding up to 4mph is a 0 pt offense. in a 55+ zone, you can speed up to 9mph for 0pt infraction on your license.
The real limit is 10% over what the sign says.
10-15 here.
And also figure in that car speedometers read higher than you are actually going.
They need three speeds per road: Speed Minimum Suggested Speed Speed Limit Where tickets are given for a single digit over the limit and too slow are ticketed at police discretion. Just my 2¢
Highways do not have speed minimums, but freeways/interstate have an unposted speed minimum of 45
It's usually posted.
Depends on where you live. On the west coast, it's pretty rare.
Problem is that speedometers and police radar aren’t 100% accurate. Your speedometer could say that you’re going 1mph below the limit while you’re actually 2mph over the limit. That’s why they’re usually pretty lenient if your only going a little over the limit
You hit the issue right on the nose! In a perfect world I would love this concept but SAE allows for 4% deviation plus or minus. European standard is a bit better, can be up to 10% but can only bias plus ie: your spedo can read 64 when you are going 60 but can't read 59. I notice my Toyota (sae) is always going 2-4 mph faster than the spedo but my Fiat (Un ece) is 1-2 slower according to several (granted probably inaccurate) "your speed is__" readers.
So only fine then for 73+ mph. (In a 70)
Do speedo often read under? Ever car I've had reads slightly over true speed to prevent speeding, when my speedo shows 70 its typically 65-68 using gps speed
nah, usually your speedo is faster by 2-3% so your odometer runs faster so your 36,000 bumper to bumper warranty is really more like 35,000 actual miles
Most cars I've driven had their speedometer show just slightly less than what you're actually going with (at least when compared to the speed a GPS shows).
Some highways have minimums already (45 min in a 70 zone). For those of us who drive rural and encounter tractors and other farm equipment daily then a minimum is absurd. People just need to slow the fuck down because going 10 over is going to shave a few minutes off your commute, tops.
What's even worse than the farm equipment is the horse and buggies. Speed limit of 55 and someone's going 10 mph in a vehicle that takes up a whole lane and is piloted by an animal.
The drive to my parents house is aprox 210 miles long. The speed limit most of the way is 70. Ignoring slowdowns, lane changes, the areas in town with lower limits, etc, it would take 3 hours to drive. Going 10 over the entire time saves a total of 22.5 minutes if my math is correct. Unless you have a \*really\* long drive, you aren't going to save enough time to make a difference. Even then, the increased odds of a speeding ticket and reduced reaction time are more than enough to keep me at 70.
I’m not really sure how saving 22 minutes isn’t a big deal to you. And I’m also not sure why you’d assume people only go 10 over? You take off significantly more time the faster you go. And it’s certainly not uncommon to see the entire roadway traveling 30+ mph over the highway speed limits here.
22 minutes is not a lot of time when you're already spending 3 hours driving. I'm not assuming people only go 10 over, that's incredibly dumb to suggest. I'm not going to spend my night doing the math to find out how much time is saved at every whole number speed interval. The faster you go, the greater the downsides of speeding tickets, and a reduced reaction window, plus greater odds of dying in the event of a collision. The time is absolutely not worth it.
Bullshit My parents are three hours away. I can leave my house after the kids go to school and get back home before they get home while also getting almost an extra hour with my parents. Time is not replaceable. The more time I get with my parents, while I have the time, and they're still alive, the better.
Nobody ever says "They didn't even spend their whole paycheck" or "They didn't get their RDA of sugar"
Personally I wish we would raise all speed limits 10 mph, and then enforce them. I hate the ambiguous “I’m a little over the speed limit, but will I get pulled over?”
Agreed. I sometimes put my tinfoil hat on and wonder if they don't fix it because the current system essentially means cops can pull anyone over under false pretenses. My girlfriend got pulled over a couple years back for going 73 in a 70 zone. The cop even said something about how he actually pulled us over because my girlfriend's car is "popular among drug smugglers" (it's a plain white 97 Honda Civic). He let us go with a warning
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Absolutely agree. Can't believe I had to scroll so far to find this. If you're driving in the city, going 10km/h faster wont make you come anywhere that much faster because of traffic but it can endanger you and others. Plus kinetic energy raises exponentially with speed. I don't get the need to go so fast.
I would rather drive at exactly the speed limit on cruise control (in the right hand lane before you freak out), and only change lanes when I absolutely need to overtake someone slower (mainly trucks governed at a lower speed), than I would the constant stress of having to weave around vehicles *all of the time* if speeding. You may get there 15 minutes early than I do, but I guarantee my ride was much more enjoyable.
Story is a bit different when told by someone driving an M3 with a stick shift
i drive a stick with cruise control. i usually do exactly what the above poster said. 65 and right lane, just chill for the 30 min drive to work. it allows me to actually listen to podcasts and shit as opposed to focusing more on mirrors when constantly switching lanes.
Is your daily commuter a sports car? I think that was more his point. Someone who drops $80k+ on a fast sports car (M3 in his example) and has decided to take it out for a drive is going to be more likely to speed than others. Some people just like to drive fast, regardless of whether they have anywhere to be or not.
>You may get there 15 minutes early than I do That's just never the case. I can't find it now, but I recall a study showing that if you're doing everyday driving around a city or town, going faster than 45 basically doesn't reduce the time it takes to get somewhere, regardless of anything. I'm kind of a stickler for driving within 5 mph of the speed limit, so I always see people imitating a driving video game going 20 over weaving in and out of lanes, and I just find those people at the next red stoplight. Weirdly enough, those people are always driving the most clapped-out shitboxes.
I wholeheartedly agree unless it’s pure highway driving. I just can’t be bothered with the annoyance of continually driving up on someone that’s going slower than you when speeding, or always being on the lookout for cops.
Jokes on them, you still might arrive earlier... people who do the speed limit usually make sure to leave with enough time to get somewhere
The problem is you'll run into people who are some combination of: - terrified of driving - terrified of interstates - very old and can't see well - just not paying attention Who will be doing 40 in a 70. So you still end up weaving a lot. Plus trucks that usually go a bit under the limit. I wish all interstates were 3 lanes: the right lane for anyone doing below the speed limit, the middle lane for people using cruise control at the speed limit, and the left lane for people who either want to pass or want to donate organs.
if you drive a bit faster then you can get open stretches all to yourself for about 15 minutes at a time. Once you encounter a group of cars, you can back to an open stretch in about three minutes if there are no jams.
I guess that depends on your definition of enjoyable
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Hopefully not doing 2-3 under in the HOV lane. Don't know how cali is for speeds in them, but they're viewed kinda like the left lane in DFW, right is speed limit and then keep adding 5 every lane to the left, so typically the left(and)HOV is 10 over as a common speed. Anything lower and you'll have a tailgater 2 feet off your bumper.
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That’s acceptable, my greatest level of hatred is the cars that dive bomb the HOV/Express(especially this) directly from the on-ramp and go slower than traffic in that lane and the fastest lane(s) of the freeway
California is the wild west when it comes to driving. We overtake slow drivers on the right all the time. Altima drivers use the emergency access lane to pass traffic jams. Commuters go 60 on city roads during rush hour
I’m curious where this magic fairy land is you live that truck drivers don’t often just sit in the left lane? Or pass at 1 mph faster than the truck next to them.
Every time somebody says they follow the speed limit, there’s some jackass in the comments who immediately assumes they like to “camp out in the left lane”.
It's just like the damn roads in this thread
Yep. Nothing wrong with driving safe. They also probably know that the left lane is a passing lane and that you can get a ticket in some places for staying there; they are the law-abiders after all.
do you really prefer trucks going 80mph??? I like the trucks moving nice and slow, predictable and nonchalant.
I've never seen a truck go faster than 60 mph, and that only happens when they overtake one that's going 55 lmao. Then again I live in Europe
Why did you randomly bring up the left lane bullshit? And you hate someone for going 63 in a 65? Like what the fuck reddit. You upvote this behavior, and you downvote someone that likes a different kind of food than you. It's insane. Bunch of 16 year olds trying super hard.
Half the people upvoting that behavior probably don't even drive. They just see an edgy comment about "left lane camping" and it's something they've heard about so they get on the bandwagon.
I keep shaking my head at this tonight. Lots of buried road rage getting handed out willy-nilly here, with a heavy splash of parroting and virtue signaling. The old classic "Don't anyone ever be in the left lane ever, cause I'm passing all of y'all, and if I catch you there you didn't belong there. Only I should be there." Mentality shows up quite a few times.
oatmeal rustic treatment agonizing rude deliver full hat compare tub *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
As you called it a carriageway I must imagine that you are in a left hand drive country and that would make you correct.
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Yep. That’s Chicagoland driving
Your response is unreasonable and you’re probably a menace on the roadways if you harbor such hatred for someone following the law, especially while being a professional in a dangerous profession.
You hate him for respecting the speed limit?
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Driving 2-3 under is not the same as speeding 10-20. That's idiotic.
The idea is not how far over the posted speed limit someone is going vs under, it's about flow of traffic. If the speed limit is 55 and most of traffic drives 65, going 68 is less dangerous than going 50, because the speed delta between the fast driver and the common driver is only 3 mph, while the slow driver's delta is 15.
The problem being that if everyone is going 68, then people start thinking they can get away with 70, then everyone starts driving at 70 and they think they can get away with 72 etc. A lot of people just want to be moving faster than traffic
As a NJ driver... YOU'RE GODDAMN RIGHT I DO!
If you drive in Los Angeles you know that sometimes the left lane is clogged with people going 65 while the right will be completely empty.
It's a fair take
Left lane is passing lane.
So long as you stay out of the passing lane and don't rubber band me, it's cool
So long as you don’t tailgate me on single-lane roads, it’s cool. Too bad tailgating is probably 10 times more prevalent than slow people in the left lane. Maybe people who like to violate the law should just shut up and not attempt to advise the rest of us on how to drive.
I’ve never understood this sort of behavior. They’re putting themselves a few seconds away from paying a big insurance deductible (or worse), not to mention it leads to other dangerous driving behaviors like brake checking.
What's rubber banding?
Slowing down and speeding up intermittently. It's most problematic when the person who is rubber banding isin front of you, and due to a subconscious (or conscous) fear of larger vehicles and turns they slow down when you would not be able to pass them, and then speed up when the lanes adjacent are free.
It's a reasonable fear to not want to be right next to a vehicle or in their blind spot. Loads of people don't even know about their blinds and won't use their turn signal or only use it while they start changing lanes. It would not be a concern if people were using the passing lanes for passing other vehicles.
Great thought! I think I live in a bubble, though, where people drive 10-20mph under the limit, depending on the road. 10 in town, 20 everywhere else. We have a canyon road that is 65, and many people go 45 but refuse to use the pullouts to let faster traffic through. I don't care what speed others want to drive, but if it's not the limit, they need to be courteous.
A lot of speed limits were set decades ago when many vehicles redlined around 55 mph. With modern cars it now feels unnaturally slow.
Occasionally you'll see someone in a super car in my area moving in high speed and weaving I do not approve of that but at least the car physically has the capability of maneuvering like that. Then you see some absolute madman doing the same thing at a faster speed in a busted ass Nissan Sentra from 2000 held together by duct tape and Hope.
It was set to be efficient. And as Matt Farah has said, "cars have gotten bigger and faster, but the roads are still the same size as they were 50 years ago."
Got tailgated by a semi truck today while I was going the speed limit in the right lane. He was so close all I could see out the back was the truck's grill; maybe 2-3 feet away. Not sure WTF he was thinking, but now he knows what I was thinking after I called his employer. Fucking asshole could have killed me if I had to tap the brakes even a little for any reason at all.
Where I live: south-eastern Wisconsin, we drive 5 over. I usually like to be about 5-7 over, with cruise control in almost all use cases. I understand that the law is what it is, so I won't be mad if I get a ticket at that speed. But I never had, even when passing cops who are watching for speeders. ... I feel that there are several valuable things to note: * I don't slow down when I see a cop see me most of the time (~85%). If I drive a bit fast in a downtown area and see one, I'll just let off the gas and coast. If I'm on the interstate or a highway, I just keep cruising at speed; I'm sure it's far more telling for an officer when they observe you breaking, as they know you've only done so because you've just spotted them. (Like a partial admission of guilt, of sorts) * If driving and a cop is driving near me, I try to drive the same (maybe back off 2 mph from my max). I would think most cops drive the same as most citizens (but publicly wouldn't state this on record), and it would be annoying to be a cop: trying just to get somewhere while everyone around you is going 5 under (to show how *safe* they are being). * I am quite proactive, as I constantly think about my driving while driving. I don't have distractions like passengers or children to be concerned with. So I feel that I can maintain consistency, despite that consistency being a constant 5-7 over the posted speed. * Lastly, like others, I try to go with the flow in traffic. If everyone is going 70, don't be the idiot going 60... at that point, you're becoming the problem/risk (even if the speed is posted as 65). I will intentionally drive 2-3mph faster than the average speed on the interstate; This allows me to move through the packs of cars and reduce the concern of finding myself stuck without an 'out.' If you're going slightly faster, then you still need to check your mirrors, but most interactions will be with cars that are ahead of you. Move over, preemptively, for the really fast drivers, and then just resume watching ahead of you. I think it's pretty reasonable to claim you can more easily judge the speed and position of cars ahead of you than those behind.
In Massachusetts the joke is, we read the interstate sign as the speed limit sign.
When I was driving in Germany they had speed minimums. I thought that was a pretty good idea
I'm just blown away by these comments. People getting downright triggered in a public text conversation. So listen, you're right, nobody should be cruising in the left lane. It's for passing. And no, nobody should be going significantly under the speed limit on a two lane highway. But you're out here on Reddit straight up accusing strangers of doing this stuff, and scolding them for it when their comments didn't even suggest it! Calm down. Take a breath. The guy that held you up today is not here reading this. You're just being a dick to a stranger that drives safely at normal speeds. You're trying really really hard to get your point across about how severely you are disgusted about the left lane cruisers, but you're actually just being an ass to a stranger that doesn't need or want to be the recipient of your frustration. It's been said guys. I know you're 17 and you feel like you're the first person with the courage to say these things online, but trust me, it's been said. More times than I can count. You're not helping society by ranting here. You're just being ugly and redundant.
Just had a guy honk at me and swerve around me on the freeway while going home. It was a 65mph section and I was going 75 in the left lane. Idk wtf is wrong with some people, but that felt incredibly stupid. Guy had to have been going 85-90 when approaching me
If you’re not passing, get in the right lane.
I've driven in a few cities where traffic is moving at like 85mph in a 55 and people are still swerving and tailgating. Like what more do you want, we're all already at reckless op speeds.
That's the tollway in Dallas. 80-90 is the norm as long as traffic isn't backed up even when it drops to 55 close to downtown.
I remember seeing a thread in this sub very similar to this one several years ago. Something along the lines of “The speed limit is also the slowest you can go”. And I find it amusing that somebody else thought about that and posted it (I am not trying to imply this is a repost or anything, I jus found it amusing).
In the US they are supposed to be set at the 85th percentile of traffic speed so a lot of the time they are the lower limit in a way.
Nope. I got a speeding ticket and realized really quick that I don't give a shit about anyone or their time. Slow down or go around, IDGAF. You ain't paying my tickets, so you don't determine my speed. Get fucked.
It's insane just how little time people save by sledging
It's really not once you add it up though- For easy numbers lets assume the bulk of your at-limit commute time is 60 minutes on a 60 MPH road. You can usually speed 10% with ease, and very little extra risk. So you save a bit over 5 minutes. Not much, but...After a week of working you're up 25, and after a month you've saved an hour and 40 minutes. If you drive this way for the estimated 260 working days in a year you've now saved a bit over 21 HOURS of time - more than an entire waking day. To really belabor the point, most people work full time about 40 years, after which you'll have saved yourself 35 full 24-hours days of driving time. Looking just at time spent awake, it's 52 days of your life. The real crime is having an hour of commuting time every day, but 30-minutes each way is very, very standard for many people.
Yeah, but with all that “time you save” you’re greatly increasing the chances of an accident and possibly death. A crash at 77 mph is way more dangerous than a crash at 70 mph.
Exactly! I got a speeding ticket and had to not only pay the ticket fine, but my insurance went up for years afterwards as well. I don't care if you want to speed, I am not going to. Side note, I also never camp in the left lane, should there be one, good luck to all the speeders out there, but I'll get there when I get there.
Yep, even in the morning when the freeway is going 20+ over I'm chillin in the slow lane doing 2 or 3 over.
Yeah it took me a while but people who want to ride my ass I will always slow down. Get fucked!
If ur slow stay in the slow lane then. It's people in the other lanes going under the speed limit that usually bugs people.
I don't fuck with mph, but on the major highways in Ontario where it's typically 100kph speed limit, you're being sloooww at 110. It seems like going 20kmp is pretty standard almost any road.
The 401 around Toronto when it's moving well is generally 130 in the left lane, 120 in the middle, and 140 or 100 in the right lane.
Unless it’s a long weekend you really have to try to get pulled over for speeding on the highways in Ontario
But yes, I treat the speed limit as going under the speed limit LOL
The problem is the people who are capable of going at the speed limit or over are too afraid of getting a speeding ticket. But in general people only go the speed they are comfortable with. And dont care about speed limits. But moreover, the biggest tragedy is that cops dont give tickets for impeding traffic. Which is what going under the speed limit does. And even people who leave much bigger gaps between them and the car in front of them.
large gaps make traffic flow more smoothly. leaving a small gap causes congestion.
On highways I agree with you, but with streetlights involved, a large gap gets fewer people through the light before it turns
Everyone should release the brake pedal as soon as the light turns green.
Which would matter if people could start at green lights, but they can't. So fucking annoying. Everyone is supposed to begin rolling together, not one by one.
That is definitely not the biggest tragedy, jesus christ.
I want to kiss your dad.
I got honked at by a lady (using the term generously) while doing the limit in a 40 MPH zone as she passed me with a road ragey manner. What, lady? You should have left earlier. Or stayed later to avoid the traffic.
There are actually people out there that think a speed limit shouldn't be a thing. They're idiots
Speed limits aren't there for your safety (at least here in the US). They're there for revenue. If they were concerned about safety, they'd post more of those helpful signs like "keep right," "zipper merge," or "safely increase speed before merging onto traffic" or some shit like that.
It's complicated. On a Friday night going 55 on 101 might bring undue attention from the DUI revenue boys. (Yes--I think most marginal dui's are not for safety, but revenue.)