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this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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Fuck Cars
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Speaking as a person who does the limit (65 locally) in the right lane, sometimes the second to right lane in case there's a lot of entering/exiting traffic.... 120mph? What? The fuck?
Humans aren't designed to react to things at that speed. You need insane following distances to drive that speed safely. With all that extra following distance you don't get much more throughput (vehicles per unit time). But what you do get is a ton more fatalities, because at that speed, when you meet stationary objects, all you can do is hope you had your affairs in order. No amount of crash safety tests help there.
I gotta say, that if you're the person who's so frustrated about people driving the speed limit on a highway, you're the asshole. Like yeah, sure, they should be in the rightmost lane practicable. That's annoying, but it slows you down by a few mph for a minute or two and that's it.
If you want to move at 120+mph safely to your destination, take high speed rail. If you don't have that in your region, start complaining.
Germany has entered the chat
yeah, where inappropiate speeds on the autobahn, 200kph fits this, is the number one cause for accident and even if somebody doesn't wreck their shit is among the top causes for traffic backing up because traffic flows far worse if you have the 15% of people doing speeds nobody else does
On the bright side, high speed rail is generally not done by city transit agencies, it's done by larger regional groups who hopefully can manage the project better.
Honestly I was thinking more like 100mph. I can pretty easily do 90+ on the roads around me when the roads clear without issue. I don't get pissed at people for doing the speed limit. I get pissed at people that don't use lanes properly and tailgaters. If you aren't passing you should be in the farthest right lane possible until you need to pass. It's my belief that the people that jump on the highway and get 3 lanes over and just squat there not passing anyone that cause most traffic issues.
I remember doing that for my first (and only) time on the empty highways outside Salt Lake City in the early morning. It was exciting to try but fully concerning. I couldn't imagine doing that around other vehicles.
I mean, I think it's clear that those are the people who cause the most issues for people who want to break the speed limit. And I fundamentally don't believe you have the right to speed on a highway, and shouldn't complain about missing out on opportunities to speed.
Like, I'm not saying left lane squatters are driving correctly, they should be over in the rightmost lane. But also all the other drivers, including you, should be going the speed limit. Why does one arbitrary rule about lane positioning matter so much to people, while the arbitrary speed limit is fine to ignore? Real talk: they're both arbitrary rules. If you're breaking the speed limit: SHUT UP about the lane squatters.
It's not equal though. Speed limits at least on the highways around here are set way lower than what is actually safe so of course people will ignore them. As long as they're being safe (not tailgating, passing on the left, using turn signals, etc) they're not affecting anyone else. If you're squatting in a passing lane then you are actually impeding other traffic. If the speed limits were actually appropriate I would agree with you
"Impeding traffic" is quite the euphemism for "forcing people to slow down and drive the speed limit." Call it what it is, a mild inconvenience that you wouldn't even experience if you were following the rules that you're upset about people breaking!
And the people who are "speeding but still being safe" do impact others too. It makes it much more dangerous for drivers doing the limit to merge into the left lanes in case of stopped vehicles, slow trucks, and merging traffic.
Again, the speed limits usually aren't appropriate for the highways they're applied to so they don't make sense unlike rules regarding lane usage. If they did I wouldn't be complaining. It's also not anyone besides law enforcement's job to enforce them. By doing so you are creating an unsafe situation by packing all the traffic together.
If you need to merge into the left lane you simply wait for the faster traffic to go by. Are you suggesting that it's dangerous to cut people off? Because yea, it should be.
I think the core issue here is that you believe that it should be common and accepted for individuals to decide whether traffic rules "make sense" and ignore them based on their own individual assessment. I think that's absurd.
It's not my individual assessment. It's a well known fact that highways are engineered for higher speeds than the speed limits are set for.