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Im a driver and my family depends on my job. those cops dont care giving out tickets especially now every ticket comes with points and it dosnt take much to lose the license.
cop had a nerve to tell me that if he did the same thing he would get a ticket too. what a joke. i see cops driving without the seatbelt while on the phone and running red lights for no reason. even off duty cops driving their private vehicle get away with everything. when i say everything i mean EVERYTHING. even DUI.
Doesn't matter what anyone else does. If your family depends on your job and you're a driver, and you break the traffic laws, then the responsibility for any consequences of that (whether it's a ticket and points on your license or a wreck that kills you or someone else) is squarely on you. Not on the cop, not on the people who pass the traffic laws - you, alone.
Scary that there are people out on the roads that don't get that and think anything they do wrong and the consequences of that are all someone else's fault.
We have far to many rules in the USA, I prefer no speed limit. Montana had the right idea, reasonable and prudent. If there's ice on the road, it's prudent to go slow and if it's clear and little traffic, open it up. I hate our legalistic Gestapo way of enforcing speed limits and other traffic violations...too much infringement on liberty.
True that. To answer the original post, yes, many of the speed limits are set entirely too low, and that, not some supposed "bad attitude," is why they're broken by so many people.
What they ought to be enforcing--people who drive significantly BELOW the speed limit to the point of holding others up, especially when they refuse to move the heck out of the way upon realizing they're doing this. I can't tell you how many times I wished I had sorcery powers or the like and could inflate their car's speed to 100 miles per hour and send it through the woods. It would totally serve them right.
Interesting that you want to liberty to drive as fast as you want while denying others the liberty of driving as slow as they wish.
Speed limits are targets that people should try to hit. Traffic flows best if everyone stays near the speed limit. When people drive too fast or too slow, the traffic equilibrium gets upset.
A driver that goes too fast in traffic is likely to tailgate, change lanes often, speed up and slow down abruptly, and engage in other bad driver behaviors. People see this and immediately move into defensive mode by slowing down to avoid a crash.
A driver that goes too slow, will tie up traffic behind him or her and this will lead to right lane passing, cars darting out into the next lane out of frustration, and more.
In any event. Driving fast saves very little time unless you are traveling long distances. The average car trip in the US is 9.4 miles. At 65 mph it takes 8 min., 40 sec. to travel 9.4 miles. At 80 mph a person saves only 1 min, 37 sec.
The speed limits on Interstates need to be eliminated altogether. The safest speed to drive is whatever the flow of traffic is moving at. It's the disruption of this flow of traffic that causes accidents. Aggressively ticket the slow pokes in the left lane, people passing on the left, tailgaters and aggressive drivers. You'll reduce accidents, increase the flow of traffic and make everyone a lot happier.
I was able to think about this some more tonight after driving back on a US highway. Would I love for them to increase the speed limits on the roads I have to drive, hell yes, per my previous post. I also realize that cities have built themselves up on US highways and because of this speed limits have to be lower. I wish you could get to every city via interstates, not possible, wishful thinking. I think I am just frustrated with my current commute, which is a temporary situation and exhausted from it all.
The speed limits are set artificially low, in order to give the police arbitrary power to effortlessly meet their ticket quota and harvest the revenue. Everybody knows that the general orderly safe flow of traffic is moving faster than the speed limit, and the police can randomly cull a driver out of the herd and lay a tax assessment on him for $500 or so. Not to mention the windfalll to the insurance companies who jack the rates accordingly, and the phony remedial "traffic school" scams that are in bed with the judges and insureres.
If that is what you mean by "too low", yes it's too low. But the police state and revenue hogs make the rules and define what is "correct", and for their purposes, the speed limits are set just right.
Under-posted speed limits probably cause more accidents than they prevent. Accidents are not caused by speed itself, but by speed variations within the traffic. Speed limit signs compel timid drivers to drive slower than the natural flow of traffic, forcing excessive passing and lane changes.
I too live in NYC where we are currently undergoing this program called "Zero Vision" in order to enforce safe driving. Now while there are those who speed and drive like animals in this city (especially yellow cab drivers), what the city needs to do in addition to cracking down on speeding motorists is also enforce pedestrian laws. The majority of accidents involving motorists and pedestrians are due to the pedestrian either not paying attention while crossing the street and/or jaywalking. I see it everyday. Someone crossing the street with their head buried in their smartphone or with music blasting in their ears.
Despite that, I do agree with 25mph being too low of a speed limit here in the city. In and around school zones, yes! That I can understand. Not on main roads though.
Forget yellow cabs, have you seen the dollar van drivers on Flatbush? It's a miracle they don't kill more people than they already do.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by millerm277
The one thing the more rural Northeast often does okay at is 2-lane rural state route speeds. NYS and Vermont pretty much post everything at 55mph, which is usually reasonable.
Vermont's default for those roads is actually 50, not 55. The one thing Vermont should do is raise Route 7 between Bennington and Rutland to 60 or 65. It's a limited access road, but not divided. Colorado posts many such roads, which are usually two lane but have extra lanes for uphill stretches at 60 or 65. That is far more reasonable. Colorado's, unlike Vermont 7, are not limited access.
Quote:
Originally Posted by millerm277
There are roads where a low speed limit is reasonable and roads where it isn't. The NJ turnpike near NYC is 45mph (in theory, traffic goes 70), and that's absurd as it has good sight lines, no major curves, long ramps, etc. The Pulaski Skyway is also 45mph, and that's quite reasonable even if still disobeyed, given the short blind ramps, narrow lanes, and sharp shifts in the road.
In most rural areas out west, I do not see the purpose of a speed limit. For that matter, even if you did go off the road....there's nothing there to hit. And even some of the rural interstates in my home region of the Northeast, like I-88, and I-86/17 have long swaths where the speed limit could be vastly higher.
I basically agree with your analysis. I would add that having 45 for such dissimilar roads breeds contempt for the law rather than compliance.
That is why I advocate returning roads such as Westchester's I-287 (the Cross Westchester Expressway), I-95 (the New England Thruway) and the Westchester and Rockland parts of I-87 (the New York State Thruway) to pre-energy crisis levels of 60 mph, to distinguish them from roads that really do need a slower speed, such as 9-A (also 55 in many areas). Also thought should be given to raising the Hutchinson and Sprain Parkways to 60 and the divided and limited access parts of the Bronx River to 50 or 55 from the current unrealistic 40.
As for major 2-lane roads, such as King Street or Mamaroneck Road those should be at 40, not 35 or 30 respectively.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by thecoalman
Aggressively ticket the slow pokes in the left lane, people passing on the left, tailgaters and aggressive drivers. You'll reduce accidents, increase the flow of traffic and make everyone a lot happier.
Yes, in general the speed limits are too low for the design and engineering of most roads. Like an earlier poster said the majority of drivers congregate around a certain speed on a road. That speed will be driven reality of road conditions averaged over a large number of drivers. Drivers going that speed aren't the problem, it's the ones who are driving excessively above or below the safe natural speed for that road under those conditions.
Example, in our town there is a 5 lane main road through town. The speed limit on that road going north out of town is 45. On the south, 30. Yet there are far, far more businesses and streets opening onto it in the 45 section than the 30. I mean this is a stretch of road that is wide open, straight, flat, just inviting the driver to get up to highway speed. And they know it. Not uncommon to see one car working the radar with two or three others pulling drivers over heading south, out of town.
yes it is too low.
there are many roads now in NYC with even lower 20mph speed limit.
i was pulled over couple of weeks ago on Laurel hill blvd in queens theres cemeteries on both sides and BQE on top. there are no pedestrians whatsoever and only few cars driving on it. what im trying to say is that this vision zero is just BS. its not for safety its for adding more money to city budget. cops choose places and hide with radars where they know everyone is driving more than 25. driving 25mph on empty straight road is almost impossible. if its for safety i wouldnt complain but when i feel like im being robbed by hiding cops who choose spots where everyone "speeds" its just not right.
How fast were you driving through the cemetery?
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