What’s a little extra 5 or 10 mph on the clock?
I don’t think I’m autistic. But it tickles my brain that the speed limit is one USian law that is designed to NOT be followed literally.
If it were, it would be trivial to use automatic toll reader cameras to give everyone who speeds a ticket. They have a time stamp when you enter the toll road. They have a time stamp when you exit. They can calculate mathematically that if your average speed is higher than the limit, you broke the speed limit.
But they don’t do this, because society does NOT believe in following this specific law (speed limits)… because why exactly?
There is an unwritten rule in society that the speed limit law is not meant to be followed literally?
I hate it.
The other aspect is that we typically are against automated enforcement regardless of the law.
We typically want people to be in the loop. If there were more visible traffic cops, people tend to slow down to the limit.
Prima fascie.
No body is driving perfect, speedometers aren’t perfect, and such automatic devices aren’t perfect nor can they identify the driver yet. I believe they use these elsewhere like UK… But most likely have a bit of wiggle room
It may be necessary to speed up to avoid or pass something reasonably and ultimately the speed limit is so for most conditions. In a 70 it may be reasonable to do 80 on a clear, sunny day with minimal traffic. After all it’s still 70 at dark when your visibility is cut way back. Plus it can’t be a hard rule given weather conditions, traffic speed differentials, etc… 70 may be too fast or otherwise.
It’s not that big of a deal unless you’re the one driving too fast or slow relative the everyone else.
Depends on where. I’m going the speed limit through town or less where there are people. It saves lives.
But highways are built for fast driving and cars continue to get safer and more performant. Fuck the speed limit set for 1970’s death traps and hasn’t changed.
The real problem as always is local roads designed like highways. Stroads seem to be one of the underrated evils of modern society
The speed limit has raised since those death machines… Specifically because it was lowered due to that oil crisis.
Driving school and being pulled over has taught me that the silly numbers are not the maximum speed, theyre the minimum speed, and the actual maximum is 5-10 higher depending on what other people are doing. “Going with the speed of traffic and going fast enough to prevent lane changes” is the real answer.
Ive begun going the exact speed limit in the right lane and ive been pulled over 3 times now and experienced more roadrage than i thought possible. I never got pulled over going 90 in a 70, or 30 in a 25, or 45 in a 35.
People are in such a hurry to save 0-30 seconds on their 15 minute drive
Can you tell these stories? I didn’t think cops would pull you over for going the speed limit in the right lane.
I mean the police probably figured anyone actually going the speed limit has got to be up to something pretty bad if they’re going the speed limit.
The American mindset seems to be drive as fast as possible without being pulled over. Therefore the default speed tends to be driving 5mph over the speed limit. So, the government should just set the speed limit to 5mph under what they actually want and then it’ll be fine.
They basically do just that. If you ever see a pair of tubes across the roadway, they’re measuring speeds. They set the speed limit at a percentile. Plus or minus and politics dependent…
It quite literally is.
If you don’t keep up with traffic, people pass you, and that is much more dangerous than an extra 10mph
Then people should stop passing, and realise an ekstra 5 mph isn’t going to get you to your destination any faster?
Good luck telling that to your average moron on the road
We don’t live in fantasy land where common sense exists and we have to work around that
Sure, but just because they are morons, doesn’t mean I have to drive faster than what I deem is safe.
Yeah but if you’re the odd one out, you’re the problem.
If everyone is going too fast for you, you should use a slower road and not be a danger/impediment.
I think that’s a very backwards way of thinking about it. If you’re being safe, but a bunch of people are being unsafe, and bring your life in danger, that’s not you being a problem, that’s you being a victim.
If people start waving knives around at random, and telling you they’ll get closer to you, if you don’t also wave a knife around, then that’s a hostage situation, not people wanting you to be safe.
the real answer to question “why people speed” is someplace closer to “why was this neighbourhood road designed like a freeway”. Another is “why is it safe to have virtually no speed limits on Autobahns?”. I mean people act on environmental queues - from the size of lanes to what speed fellow motorists are observing. Just pinning it on individuals is incorrect. HOWEVER there are entitled arseholes out there who will totally ride jour read bumper at high speed because they need to pass you only to turn off at nearest exit.
from the size of lanes
In the US it indeed is ok to be speeding, because it’s a car focused state, and human lives have no value in that country. As long as you have money of course, so you can afford the tickets. So speeding is for the rich, and it’s ok. But if you’re poor, are speeding and caused an accident, that’s also fine. Just another slave in prison. You see? Dystopia full circle.
That’s because it is.
Try driving through I-5 in Los Angeles following the speed limit. I dare you.
it’s more like, “if I don’t, the psycho behind me will gut me like a fish and then fashion my skin into an extremely ineffective shower curtain”
yeah i know that he shouldn’t do that because it’s illegal, but the world is full of highly principled corpses and there are people who are depending on me to be alive.
at least i get to cruise slow and steady when there happens to be no one else behind me… and what’s wild is, ever since i grew the fuck up and stopped being a speeder piece of shit, i hardly ever encounter traffic jams anymore, and i don’t seem to get where i’m going any later than i would have otherwise.
also changing lanes very quickly while driving at high speeds, without signalling, after pandemic, people got worst.
I used to pile on to comments like this, because it was such a significant change for the worse. But fwiw my subjective opinion is people are finally recovering from pandemic. All those bad driving habits people seemed to have picked up …. This summer I’m really not seeing them as much anymore!
People will always drive at the speed that feels safe, it’s not just Americans. Gradually here this is being recognized, and roads narrowed, speed bumps added, etc. in places where we need to go slowly. At my work complex the stated limit is 10 mph and even on my bike I am speeding, and cars are passing me, but it doesn’t feel unsafe at all.
Right, this is one of those things where I seemed to have a very different experience than many Americans …. But we have older roads that are narrow and winding. The towns were all built out before cars and never really got to the “stroad” stage of dystopia. All those “design elements” come for free
Behavioral engineering is way more effective than posted speed limits that often didn’t seem to correlate with reality.
If you give me a five lane stroad with wide lanes and lights only every 1/4-1/2 mile, I don’t care what the speed limit is, I’m doing 60+ because it feels right, and if someone does the speed limit in front of me I’ll probably be annoyed.
But if I was going down the same street, doing the same thing, with the same amount of time available, but the lanes were narrowed to add protected bike lanes, the center lane was replaced with a median with trees and occasional left turn/u-turn spots, and crosswalks were added between the lights, I’m going to do around 35 because that feels right, and I won’t even be mad about it. I’ll just cruise down the street chilling.
Give people a street where it seems like you should be going fast and people will go fast, and get aggressive/angry when they can’t. Give people a nice street to roll down and chill and that’s what they’ll do. It looks nicer and is more walkable/rideable too.
I mean, if you’re on a bike or power walking or something I’m certain nobody’s going to get too disagreeable about your speed.
Just to troll …… when I used to cycle regularly, they did care. All the cars were too damn slow and wouldn’t get out of the way. I hated some sections of towns where I had to slow down
My closest call was an elderly woman who misjudged my speed. She passed me but then immediately slowed for a turn without realizing I was there and couldn’t brake as sharply. Worked out though: I was able to brake enough to turn inside her and avoid the accident, and my brakes shrieked like a banshee so she knew what she did
Lol how wrong can you be, if you are fraction slower than the person behind you (type of vehicle doesn’t matter) you get cussed out in America. I literally was going 20 mph up a hill with an ebike and some gobsmacked asshole has the nerve to tell me to yield to cars behind me because according to him I don’t have a “real” ebike 😤🥱. This happens everywhere in my city, jokes on them I don’t need to go 60 mph to get to my job in less than 10 min, sounds like poor planning on drivers end to live so far away and have the audacity to tell locals not to use our roads.
Oof that’s rough. I do pull over to the side & let cars pass when I ride in the 35mph road on the way to work (there is a sidewalk I can use, it’s allowed but sometimes there are pedestrians using it or work trucks parked over the entire sidewalk -fuck those guys in particular, then I use the road) but once on a different 35 with no good sidewalk I had a Prius follow slowly and at a safe distance for so so far even though there was plenty of room to pass. Honestly I can get to 35 on the electric bike but don’t want the cops to know, and it wouldn’t help because as the whole point of this thread is - on the road to work it’s smooth and easy so people do 45.
Yeah, technically I have the same right to be in the car road, there is no bike lane or path, but it’s not something I’m willing to die for, I am slower traffic and keep right. There are lights so if I walk it across an intersection and wait I can get a very light traffic situation for a couple of blocks.
Wrote the city to complain about the road though, to ask them to convert it like they did some of the other similar sized ones, bike lanes, middle turn lane.
If someone’s willing to stay behind you that long, they’re not the car to worry about. They have patience and caution.
This might be me. We have a lot of narrow and winding roads where it’s really not safe for me to give the clearance you deserve. But waiting another 30 seconds really doesn’t impact me. Most drivers are more aggressive about passing cyclists
This. My city keeps putting in more and more traffic cameras, but it doesn’t slow cars down; it just generates revenue. If they actually wanted people to slow down, they’d reconsider having the main road look like a pin-straight four-lane highway.
This isn’t specific to America…
Here in Europe we occasionally get road construction sites on motorways where the speed limit is temporarily reduced to 80, 60 or even 40 because the lanes are narrower than usual and drivers need to navigate around the construction site. I’m never quite sure how fast to drive there: if I actually drive the posted limit, I’ll have 0 cars in front of me, but it looks (from my perspective) that I’m holding up 67 cars behind me who would want to drive faster. If I keep up with what the driver in front of me is doing, I’m technically violating the law…
Are there workers? If there are workers, slow the heck down, keep them safe. If there are workers, it shouldn’t even be a question
Of course the assumption was that it was clearly completely safe to drive significantly faster than the posted limit.
Just go the speed limit and keep in the travel lane, people can pass if they want to go faster than the speed limit.
In situations like that it is common that the road has been reduced to one lane.
Then yeah people gotta be patient, i dont run through the supermarket either even if im in a big hurry.
Not run, but I can walk pretty fast and hate to waste time at the grocery. Even the smallest full grocery has aisles 3 carts wide so there is no excuse for obstructing traffic and I hate everyone who does.
I mean yeah then maybe living in a society isn’t for you lmao
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In America, unfortunately, and depending on where you are, this could very well get you killed or pushed off the road.
People are rage crazy these days, everyone. Do not do this.
Hint: I too want to get to my destination relatively quickly. So this is just asshole behavior for the sake of it…
Always disheartening to see this rule of thumb downvoted. In here, of all places. People really telling on themselves. If someone is tailgating you they have less stopping distance if you have to brake suddenly. Slowing down increases time to react. It’s not bad behavior or road raging, it’s prudent sense. It can save your neck. I learned this in driver’s ed. I’d rather have a cager sniffing my asshole at 30 than at 45, and if they don’t have a lane to just go around, the speed limit is probably lower anyway.
I don’t recommend driving at 10 under though. As in like all the time. If you’re in a safe situation you should just drive near the limit, it’s usually what the road is designed for.
Lol wtf is all these car lovers doing in /c/FUCKCARS
First of all, you’d be surprised how many car enthusiasts support good urbanism. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
Second, the people in this thread aren’t demonstrating love for cars anyway; they’re largely merely acknowledging the factual reality that it really is dangerous to provoke a lot of extra lane changes and passing maneuvers by driving at a significantly different speed than the flow of traffic. Speaking of which, I’ve removed some of your other comments (specifically, the ones suggesting to do that and to pseudo-brake-check people who tailgate in response) in accordance with section 8.1 of the Lemmy.world TOS. Please don’t make similar dangerous suggestions here again.
Hey power tripping mod, don’t be an asshole.
It’s not a brake check to lightly tap the pedal to flash the light. That’s how you communicate to person behind you.
Why would you delete my comments in the name of danger but let everyone else who says you should drive above the speed limit stay?
In that case you’d be communicating that you’re brakechecking them lmao. Once in a while i do a “reverse pass”, i just go in the left lane take my foot off the gas and let them pass me on the right, then i get back over.
That also sounds dangerous to me, imo, if there are other cars around. I would just continue to drive a safe speed and let them pass on the left. Or, if appropriate, put my right blinker on and hug the right shoulder to make it easier for them to pass (e.g. on a two lane road with the passing middle lane marker.)
That also sounds dangerous to me, imo, if there are other cars around.
well yeah, i only do it if the left lane is completely empty to spitefully show them they could have easily passed the whole time lmao
Because one is done in an attempt to invite a collision and the one is done in an attempt to avoid a collision
They literally want to fuck cars.
I haven’t commented yet, but consider my situation as an example.
Middle aged, lifelong resident of midwest suburbia, USA. Car-centric infrastructure created long before I was born. Mass transit is a novelty that’s only available when visiting the city. All of this to say: Owning a car and driving to every destination is a basic necessity.
I enjoy the sensory experience of driving and I have a small fun car.
But I also try to pay attention to the world around me and care about other people and other life on this planet. So even though I’m a bit of a “car guy” I can definitely say yeah, fuck cars.
And I use the term “cars” lightly. Where I live, if you drive a “car” like a 4-door sedan that seats 5 and weighs under 3,500lbs (1588 kg), you are already in the smallest 10% of vehicles on the road.
Welcome to /c/all!
There are roads where speeding is so common you will in fact be dangerously tailgated if you drive the speed limit
i have gotten tailgated by a semi truck in a highway construction zone, one of the scariest things i have experienced while driving. i couldnt even see his lights in my back window he was so close
My entire commute
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When you do this, they become a reasonable person and stop doing what they’re doing
That’s how you get followed home by a road rager, possibly possessing a firearm.
The best method is to spray your windshield.
Some of it gets swept with the wind into their windshield, and they have to wipe/clean theirs.I don’t think that’s ever failed to get someone to back off.
Why would someone care about this? I’ve had this happen to me a handful of times, almost always a jeep because they have crazy over spray, I was never tail gating but I was totally unphased by it, its wiper fluid not acid
That’s why I fill my windshield wiper fluid reservoir with hexafluorosilicic acid.
I don’t think people care about it, but it seems to trigger some subconscious “I’m too close” and they drop back a bit.
I guess if someone is actually being an asshole aggressive tailgater then they won’t care
In my experience, American roads are built to support much higher speeds than the speed limit is set. Going 10-20mph over the limit doesn’t feel particularly unsafe on the wide, straight roads.
On the other side, it felt crazy to drive the speed limit on (for example) the narrow, windy roads in Ireland. The limit there felt like a literal maximum, whereas in the US it feels like the minimum.
You are right about American freeways. City roads tend to have a lower speed limit that is probably appropriate and it would be unsafe to go faster.
Rural America will have little roads with deer and intersections at blind curves and say 55 mph seems about right.
this is often not thought about when talking about this but even the spacing in the lines drawn on the road influences your perception of speed.
the solution isn’t trying to enforce lower limits, it’s having roads enforce them.
As noted car enthusiast NotJustBikes has said, driving is not a conscious activity. We drive to what feels right, to a degree. A road built to support 100kph will always have speeder problems until layers of traffic calming are put in place.
UK B road limits are in fact limits (as opposed to North American suggested minimums), often being little more than millennia old cart paths with asphalt applied
I think we just need to pull people over for speeding until they get it that speeding is not OK. Like the signs are right there, and driving SHOULD be a conscious activity. If people are not driving consciously they should lose their car and license.
Just pulling more people over for speeding is how you turn it into a revenue generating exercise. Law enforcement’s goal should be improving safety, not maximizing revenue.
Designing roads to encourage people to drive an appropriate speed is more effective, even when the road blocks aren’t staffed.
Note: but I’ll fight against destructive speed bumps, maybe all speed bumps. They’re usually just annoying and damaging without really helping. It should also not be a goal to damage my car if I drive at the speed the rest of the road is designed for. Heck, a speed bump warning may be more effective. Either way: fix the road the right way
and you’re here in the US? I ask because yeah i constantly see people taking turns way too fast and drifting into the next lane or even the shoulder, people disregarding cones, people going 20mph over land bridges for no reason than other than in the US we just assume you go 10mph faster over a land bridge just because. People speeding up in front of yellow lights and then just getting there late and running the red anyway. Like daily, like at each intersection this happens.
yes, i’m all in favor of best practices when it comes to designing roads, but people here drive like crazy assholes and they rather risk the occasional crash than drive sensibly for the road conditions like you say. Tons of people on their phones swerving in and out of traffic. Yes, let’s improve the infrastructure 100%, but there really is a problem here of people disregarding basic driving safety on top of that.
Driving consciously is bound to be less safe. Any activity you’ve done a thousand times, if you start overthinking what you’re doing, you make more mistakes.
Just design the roads for the speed you want people to go and 99.9% of drivers will slow down without giving it a second thought. You design a road for 130 km/h, people will go around 130 km/h not the 90 km/h limit you’ve posted. Etc.
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Driving consciously is bound to be less safe. Any activity you’ve done a thousand times, if you start overthinking what you’re doing, you make more mistakes.
That’s complete nonsense, i didn’t say overthinking but absolutely you should be paying attention. You’re actually arguing that not consciously doing things is safer? Pay attention, when you a speed limit sign, follow it. That’s all I’m asking for, that’s not overthinking. In fact speeding is overthinking, “sign says 40 but im good to go 45 or even 47”. THAT is overthinking.
If you look at the design documents for the roads in your area, usually available in plain old PDF files at your State DOT website… it usually states both the designed speed, and what the posted speed will be.
If it’s a modern road, it is almost certainly designed for 5-10mph over what the posted limit will be. Because they know most traffic will speed, and that is accounted for in the road design, regardless of the posted limit sign.
It’s wild to me that someone heard this logic and said “makes sense”.
Like, I get it from an engineering perspective. You find out the maximum capacity of a bridge, account for extremes like multiple heavy loads, find the point of failure, and then engineer in a safety factor. Making sure your bridge can handle your theoretical maximum several times over.
But, we aren’t dealing with people seeing a strong bridge and thinking “nice, I can carry more stuff in my car” and encourage a larger capacity. The capacity they carry is already limited by their vehicle. They aren’t even thinking about the bridges capacity.
With road design. The road controls the capacity (speed) directly to the user of the road. There is a physical speed that if their car reaches they will crash. They interact with it directly.
Designing a road that increases that speed at which a guaranteed crash will happen is primarily just increasing the lethality of said crash. That’s the primary part of “safety” that the design guideline is controlling.
It’s saying. “Hey, if you go too fast for the road conditions, don’t worry. We made sure that the road was designed so that when you reach that speed you’ll have less time to react and more chance of dying”.
Also, “everyone speeds” is bull shit. Every speeds down a zero intersection straight road with a posted speed limit 15 MPH under what the road was designed for. It’s a fucking self fulfilling prophecy.
It’s saying. “Hey, if you go too fast for the road conditions, don’t worry. We made sure that the road was designed so that when you reach that speed you’ll have less time to react and more chance of dying”.
That’s not at all what’s being said. Knowing the speed people will want to drive with a specific design, doesn’t make it inherently “too fast”, its the exact opposite. The road designers are literally designing what the road condition will feel like to drivers, then taking the human factor into account to set a sensible limit instead of an arbitrary one.
If they know the road design will make people drive 50mph, and that most people drive 5mph over the posted limit, they post a 45mph limit. Driving at 50mph down that road is not “too fast”, that’s literally what was designed to feel correct.
There have been several studies over the years about posted versus real world speeds. Including studies of the same road with the posted speed being changed and monitoring driver behavior. They found that regardless of what the posted sign says, people usually drove about the same speed on that road. The minimum and maximum speeds varied with different signs as some people used that number directly, but the average of all traffic stayed the same regardless of the signage because that’s the speed that felt correct for that roadway. In some cases that was under the posted limit, in others that average was up to 10 over the posted limit.
Every speeds down a zero intersection straight road with a posted speed limit 15 MPH under what the road was designed for. It’s a fucking self fulfilling prophecy.
Most roads do not have posted speed limits that vary dramatically from the speed that feels right on that road, because they’re designed for a specific speed and posted with that consideration. Artificially low speed limits are not common. They’re usually from a speed being changed years after the road was designed and built, so it wasn’t intended to have drivers at that speed and also wasn’t physically changed to help reinforce that speed subconsciously, or from a town trying to boost ticket revenue.
That’s not at all what’s being said. Knowing the speed people will want to drive with a specific design, doesn’t make it inherently “too fast”, its the exact opposite.
You quoted and replied to my hyperbolic conclusion instead of the substance of what I was saying. Which is why I don’t really disagree, on the face of it, with anything you said.
The problem is not in individual roads or individual road designs. Though we often have to use the thought of an individual road to describe the problem. Which is what I was doing through analogy. The problem is that there is nothing put into the design to account for the impact on the way people drive based on the design parameters themselves.
It is a feedback loop that is not being taken into consideration by the design guidelines of American road infrastructure. The very basic “post the height of the bridge as 1 ft lower than it actually is” is being applied to speed limits and road design. When this type of thinking is far too simplistic for a much more complex system of human interaction with the road and other humans themselves.
The truck driver that drives a 10ft tall truck that fits under a bridge with a posted 9 ft 11in tall sign doesn’t think “hmmm I bet I could fit my 10ft 1in truck under here as well”.
But drivers do have these more complex thoughts and interactions with the road that they drive down every day.
My post was more a criticism of the use of speed limits in general. Which is why I was being hyperbolic. But I should have been more clear.
I am in favor of the design choice that "the driver should not even need to know the limit. They should be incentivized by the design to drive at a speed that is both safe for themselves, other drivers, and above all, pedestrians.
When I was in Appalachia, on the mountain roads, many are very narrow, and winding. Speed limits often like 40, and you can’t go more than that without crashing unless you have a motorcycle or something. It’s not a suggestion, it’s the maximum you can do on the curves.
Furthermore, even though that’s the maximum, the safest speed on mountain roads is the one you feel comfortable with. Even though I’m experienced driving in the mountains and can comfortably go that limit I’m not gonna be too annoyed at the car from Florida in front of me going 15mph under. I will get extremely annoyed when they don’t use the pull out spots or if they accelerate up to the speed limit in the passing zones though.
