How do you Feel About Speed Limits?

[The Lurker (imported)]

i rarely go over the speed limit. Living in LA, there are so many reckless drivers that the freeways are very dagerous, even worse when it rains, as half the people do not adjust their speed at all and the other half slow down to a crawl. Horrible combination...

[chilliwilli (imported)]

i rarely go over the speed limit. Living in LA, there are so many reckless drivers that the freeways are very dagerous, even worse when it rains, as half the people do not adjust their speed at all and the other half slow down to a crawl. Horrible combination...

Fasten your seatbelts...it's gonna be a bumpy ride.

chilli.

[calmeilles (imported)]

R

I have never had an accident and have about 30 tickets in 20+ years of driving.

You make me feel very timid with just one speeding offence in 25 years driving - and at that I was probably not actually behind the wheel at the time.

I do dislike speed cameras because you can be cruising along at the limit when some idiot doing the same just ahead sees the camera markings and stamps on his brakes just in case!

There's a widely held belief that cameras are used to raise revenue and can actually increase accident rates. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... dents.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... wn-up.html

Generally many roads seem to be speed rated lower than their design and traffic should allow. The most irritating are the arterial feeds coming into London. There are sections, some quite long, that I know were design rated 80 mph but have for a long time been restricted to 50, 40 or even 30 mph for long stretches.

Conversely there are roads that seem to be rated too high. One part I travel has (unenforceable) "advisory" speeds posted which out to be legal limits in my view. But the quasi-legislative process of establishing those limits is expensive so no one's actually interested in initiating the process.

[Losethem (imported)]

I'm usually not the fastest car on the highway near my house but I'm seldom the slowest. I try to position myself with lots of room at the prevailing speed. Police in Pennsylvania go after the very fast and the very slow -- the obvious offenders. They seldom haul a half dozen to dozen cars off the road. Traffic usually flows at 60 to 65 mph. (120 to 130 kph).

When gas was cheap and I had to drive 70 miles of highway to Morgantown WV, 90mph was my top speed. That's 150kph for all you metric people.

Dave, your calculations are off. 120 Kph is approximately 75 MPH and 100 Kph is just over 60 MPh (62 actually).

Still, point taken. There is one particularly confusing situation for me on Interstate 77 in South Carolina just after you cross into the state from North Carolina... there is an 8-lane interstate set at 60 MPH, then when the number of lanes is cut in half, they raise the limit to 70 MPH. The road that is better built to handle higher speeds and passively encourages higher speeds due to human nature, is set at a limit that seems artificially low.

I also noticed in many places around the country that during construction to improve a substandard road the limit is set at say 45 MPH, and once the road is finished that the limit is dropped to 35 MPH. To which I say, if it was a safety issue, why was it posted at 45 during construction and once they have this lovely, smooth, wider road that it is a safety issue and they need to drop the limit?

And just ask any person living in Atlanta why seemingly the entire Perimeter freeway (I-285) is posted at 55 MPH. Makes no sense, nobody drives that speed anyhow. It's posted such so that when they pull you over they can write you up for something significantly faster than the speed limit, instead of faster than the prevailing speed. More MPH over the limit = higher fines.

I wonder where our friends the bemoan taxes are on this issue? This is a defacto tax for being unlucky enough to get "caught" using common sense. I've noticed lately that in the US if you *follow* the traffic laws you're probably going to die.

And don't get me started on red light cameras... All those have done is move accidents out of the intersection and changed them to rear-enders behind the stop line. Before I moved, the county I lived in had a judge that told the county and cities in it, "If these are not for revenue, then you won't mind any money generated by these cameras to be given to the school system..." and then he order all the money sent there. Interestingly, the cameras suddenly disappeared. Hmm....

[chilliwilli (imported)]

Calmellies-

Wow 1 citation in twentyfive years. That must be tuff...how do you do it?

A company put up cameras in my town, then the judge would not let them be turned on, so they were taken down. Now some of them are back up. I don't run red lights and drive the speed in town.

chilli-

[calmeilles (imported)]

Calmellies- Wow 1 citation in twentyfive years. That must be tuff...how do you do it?

Not driving too much over the limit. Not driving at all over the limit in camera areas - well trying not to.

Oh, and lots and lot of luck.

[coinflipper_21 (imported)]

I once asked a California Highway Patrol officer, that I met at a party, if he was given a ticket quota. He replied that there are no quotas, as such. However, their supervisors are aware of how many tickets are usually issued per month in any given area, and if the number of tickets any officer covering an area varied from the norm he will be in front of his supervisor's desk explaining why. A traffic officer is more likely to have to explain why the number of tickets is less than the norm, than he is if the number is greater. But, there definitely are no quotas.

[Buzz1221 (imported)]

I've been driving for 43 years now and only had one speeding ticket -- which I truly deserved: 7AM on a Sunday morning-- not a car in sight on the freeway -- sunny spring day, windows and sunroof open, Vivaldi blasting on the stereo and cruising along at 70 in a 55 zone. I rounded a curve and a Sheriff's car was sitting there with the radar on me. He had me. I paid and didn't protest.

I blame it on Nixon, however. There was a period when speed in all states was suddenly limited to 55mph (to save gas) and I mark that as the point at which the majority of US drivers decided that speed-limits were no longer relevant.

My theory is that: before then, there were speeders, but the majority of the driving public stayed pretty-much within the posted limits. During that period, however, 55mph on a toll-road or expressway designed for 75mph just drove most of us nutz and the majority of people began to ignore those limits (and, by extension, all speed-limits.) Most states have raised those limits today, but we've already created a generation of drivers for whom speed-limits have little meaning.

That's my theory and I'm sticking to it!

[radar (imported)]

Buzz: Actually, it was Nixon who lowered the speed limits to 55, not Reagan, but I agree that it created massive disrespect for vehicle laws in the U.S., simply because it was so ridiculous to have 55 touted as the only way to be safe on highways designed to be safe at 75. And as others have pointed out, many of the secondary roads are posted at ridiculously low speed limits relative to actual driving conditions.

I tend to be a very fast driver, but I try to be careful about where and when, and how. On the interstates, I wait for a trucker to pass me at 80 mph, then I draft him. The not only shields me from radar (he's got a CB radio), but saves gas, too. If not a truck, then I wait for a "rabbit", some guy who's traveling as fast or faster than I want to, and I follow him from about a quarter mile back. If there's a cop, he'll hit the trap enough ahead of me for me to see and slow down.

It's not foolproof, but in 43 years of driving I've had only three speeding tickets, and two of those were bogus. One was when I was 18 and went through a speed trap in New Jersey as the last in a line of 5 cars, and going the speed limit -- but I was the only car from out of state. I believe the ACLU busted that town for their bogus tickets a couple of years after that. The other was a Delaware cop who allegedly caught me on radar, in an absolute deluge of a thunderstorn, in heavy traffic, with him going the opposite direction and using moving radar. I could have beaten that one with a stick, but with a fine of only $32 and no reciprocal reporting, I just paid the damned thing and saved myself the three hour drive.

[dometoo (imported)]

For many years the daytime 'speed limit' on the country roads and freeways in Montana was 'reasonable and proper for road, weather and traffic conditions, including the condition of your vehicle...' (night was 75 freeway 65 2 lane)

It worked well and very few got ticketed unless they really deserved it.

You could get ticketed for doing 45 MPH in a blizzard but get away driving 110MPH in the daytime with light traffic and clear roads.

During the 55MPH max years, the fine for 'wasting natural resources' was $5 and did not go on your record. But you could still be cited for speeding which was considerably more and DID go on your record.

At the time, I was travelling 100,000 miles a year.

I had a stack of those $5 tickets at least a foot high.

The natives seldom abused the reasonable and proper rule; it was the tourists that ruined it (some east coast tourist asshole appealed the speed law as 'too vague' and eventually won.

Now we have posted maximum speeds.