[threeseed]

> It's absurd that 24 mph in a 35 zone is considered "too slow"

It's absolutely too slow.

Majority of people drive at or slightly below the speed limit. Driving that far under causes people to start behaving irrationally resulting in lots of lane changes/tailgaiting etc. This can be dangerous when lots of cars are doing it.

[tetrep]

> Majority of people drive at or slightly below the speed limit.

For my entire driving experience, from the North East of the US to Northern California, to specificially the portion of the road this car was driving on, this is false. People drive, very reliably, ~5mph over the speed limit. When you get to 35/40+ mph speed limits, ~10 over isn't uncommon, ~15 for people going uncommonly fast. I can't recall the last time I drove under a speed limit (minus exceptional road/traffic/weather conditions) and I'm slower than most drivers I encounter.

[jacobolus]

If whoever wrote the California traffic laws didn’t want neighborhood electric vehicles to drive on 35 mph streets, they shouldn’t have written the law that way. Such vehicles are legally restricted to a top speed of 25 mph, and by law they are allowed on roads with posted speed limits of up to 35 mph, unless restricted by local ordinance. cf. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/?1dmy&urile=wcm:path:/dmv_...

More generally, urban streets, even arterial streets like El Camino, would really benefit from more strictly enforced speed limits, and lower limits wherever possible. A pedestrian or cyclist hit by a car going 20–25 mph is likely to sustain only minor injuries. A pedestrian or cyclist hit by a car going 35+ mph will probably die. Drivers also have dramatically less reaction time and much worse road awareness at 35mph compared to 20–25 mph (and realistically the speed of traffic is probably 40–45 mph on a road with 35 as the posted limit).

Cars are scary killing machines, one of the leading causes of death, and drivers are often poorly trained, distracted, or just idiots. The slower and more carefully they drive in urban environments, the better.

I’d love it if armies of 25 mph self-driving cars were constantly cruising around town, restricting other drivers to a safer speed. If they could supplant the taxi/uber/lyft industry whose drivers speed along my residential street at 55+ mph every night from 12–6 AM, that would also be dandy.

[kybernetikos]

> Driving that far under causes people to start behaving irrationally resulting in lots of lane changes/tailgaiting etc. This can be dangerous when lots of cars are doing it.

This is one of those examples of an explanation rather than a justification.

If someone else is going slow, that's no excuse to start acting like an idiot, and if you do and you get in an accident, that's on you, not the slow driver.

[coderdude]

I get this a lot. Sometimes there's a car in the far left lane (the legally unofficial "fast lane") driving much slower than the social norm expects. It causes issues. People need to move when someone is in their way. It's instinct. It screws up the flow.

[thrownaway2424]

Having a speed gradient across the lanes is for limited-access divided highways only. Left lane / right lane == fast lane / slow lane is not applicable to ordinary streets.

[coldpie]

Under free-flowing traffic conditions, there is no such thing as the "fast lane." What you're thinking of is called the "passing lane." If you are not actively passing someone in the cruising lane, then you need to get out of the passing lane, right now. If someone in the cruising lane is next to you and going the same speed as you, then you need to slow down or speed up, move over, and resume your cruising speed. There is no excuse for cruising in the passing lane.

[aianus]

Why would you think that?

"(b) If a vehicle is being driven at a speed less than the normal speed of traffic moving in the same direction at such time, and is not being driven in the right-hand lane for traffic or as close as practicable to the right-hand edge or curb, it shall constitute prima facie evidence that the driver is operating the vehicle in violation of subdivision (a) of this section."

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=veh&gr...

Says nothing about limited-access divided highways.

[thrownaway2424]

That section has numerous exceptions, as does the referenced "subdivision (a)." The point is there are many valid reasons why someone would come to a dead stop in the left lane of a multilane 2-way road.

On a limited-access divided highway there are far fewer reasons, limited only to emergencies, and the left lane can be legitimately considered to be the fast lane.