[logifail]

> Virginia as a whole has some pretty absurdly pro police laws, at least re: driving

(Full disclosure: have never driven in the USA), but without wishing to sound like a know-all, how about sticking to the speed limit?

I've been dinged exactly twice for speeding since getting my licence almost exactly 30 years ago this month. No points in either case. It's not hard, honest. My wife might disagree, but her licence, her problem :)

[alistairSH]

how about sticking to the speed limit?

Because the speed limit in much of the US is below the “natural” speed of that roadway. We have highways where 80+mph is the norm, but the posted limited can be anywhere from 55-70mph (I-95 along the east coast). Driving the speed limit actually becomes dangerous. At this point, speed enforcement becomes a hit-or-miss affair, where you’re at the mercy of the police officer. Better hope he’s having a good day and you don’t “look suspicious”, etc. Making it even worse, that same interstate (I-95) has the limit vary from 55-70 depending on state/town - the highway itself didn’t change, just the jurisdiction. And yes, the states with the lower limits are notorious for ticketing out-of-state drivers.

And that’s just the highway. Secondary roads through small towns are just a racket. https://www.newsweek.com/police-chief-quits-after-report-rev...

[cycomanic]

As someone who grew up and drove in Germany and being used to 160+km/h on highways moving to Australia made quite a positive change to my driving. In Germany outside of cities everyone drives at least 10%over the limit. You also constantly look where to overtake and be a little faster (and I was by no means a speeder or very fast driver) .

Australia on the other hand is very strikt about speed limits and even being 10% over can be a significant fine, so people gereally adhere much closer to the limits. Having to stick to the limit is actually liberating, I just stopped trying find some extra time by e. g. overtaking yet another car, and instead my driving experience is much more relaxed, I just put on cruise control and that's it. I seriously encourage you to think if you really need to be speeding, because the time you save is miniscule, while the driving is significantly more stressful.

[UncleMeat]

> Driving the speed limit actually becomes dangerous.

I've lived in VA for decades and have driven all over the state. There is no highway where driving the speed limit is actually dangerous and there certainly isn't a highway where the norm is 20 over.

[throwaway0a5e]

>here is no highway where driving the speed limit is actually dangerous

That's only true if you're oblivious to other traffic to the point of being dangerous to said traffic.

I used to zip down I95 in my personal car, get in a commercial vehicle and then proceed to get in a commercial vehicle and be a rolling obstruction at 55-60. The latter was way less safe than just being another ant in line like I was in my personal vehicle.

Sure, if someone clipped me while I was driving the truck it would have been their fault but I was though my actions still creating a bunch of unnecessary danger. There was a constant stream of people having to merge to go around me. It was all the problems you get at an on-ramp with merging traffic. I will cut some slack to heavily laden vehicles, big slow trucks and shitboxes that can't maintain traffic speed. But some self-righteous jerk in his Camry or whatever has no excuse.

>There is no highway where driving the speed limit is actually dangerous and there certainly isn't a highway where the norm is 20 over.

I95, literally every weekday morning and evening just before and just after rush hour clogs things up. Sign says 55. Most traffic goes 75+/-5 with the occasional fast and slow vehicles well above/below that speed.

[alistairSH]

I was referring to the interstates in general, and I-95 specifically. Not just within Virginia. Particularly stretches through South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

[UncleMeat]

But the context was VA's reckless driving laws. There is no stretch of 95 in VA (I've driven it across the entire state many times) where it is unsafe to drive the listed limit.

[sterlind]

in Atlanta there's a stretch of interstate at 50mph, and the traffic flows at 70+mph. driving the posted limit is dangerous, and possibly even illegal (delaying traffic.)

[callalex]

Are the loaded semi trucks also driving 70+?

[oneplane]

Since when is a speed limit not a rule/law but a 'feeling' for a 'natural' speed? That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. That essentially just escalates as everyones 'naturally' speeds up as a herd and then the whole point of having rules is moot.

[jjav]

> That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. That essentially just escalates as everyones 'naturally' speeds up as a herd and then the whole point of having rules is moot.

You'd be wrong. If you remove all speed limits and all enforcement, people won't be driving 180mph on small roads.

Turns out for the vast majority of the drivers, a combination of awareness and experience will lead them to correctly judge a highest actually safe speed and they'll just drive that and no more.

This is codified in the rules that state that speed limits are supposed to be set to 85th percentile of natural traffic flow, not lower. That way for nearly everyone on the road the speed limit will make sense and not be oppressively low (laws are supposed to make sense, not just be arbitrary enforcement).

That's the rule on paper. Of course, if the speed limit matches the natural speed, it means hardly anyone will ever be speeding, which cuts the revenue source of speeding tickets. So jurisdictions play all kinds of games to set the posted speed limit far below the 85th percentile, which increases ticket revenue.

[alistairSH]

Roads tend to have a speed where people feel comfortable. In theory, road engineers design roadways to match the desired speed. In practice, that doesn’t always happen. Even worse, cities/towns have been known to lower the speed limit to drive revenue.

Edit, some links: https://beyondtheautomobile.com/2021/02/08/what-is-design-sp...

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/8/6/the-key-to-slow...

Usually, when people talk about the topic, they’re trying to calm local traffic. But the concept applies to highways where speed limits can be pretty arbitrary. Plenty of interstate where 80+mph feels safe, but is posted at 55 or 65.

[Dylan16807]

Your common sense is wrong here. If you replace speed limits with "go a safe speed" then people don't go faster indefinitely, they'll find a speed that depends on road design. It doesn't escalate, and it's only notably faster than the speed limit when something has gone wrong with the road planning.

[jfk13]

You're ignoring the fact that many people's perception of what is "a safe speed" is not at all reliable. (Compare: what percentage of people would claim to be better-than-average drivers? https://www.smithlawco.com/blog/2017/december/do-most-driver...)

We have speed limits because trusting people to "go a safe speed" doesn't work, in general.

[Dylan16807]

Objectively, the group settles into a particular speed.

It's based on both safety and perceived safety, and it's not perfect, but it works out pretty well.

If the road is designed properly it's the top few percentile that you need to restrain, not the masses.

If you make a super wide straight shot of asphalt down a residential neighborhood, and people go too fast, that's the road designer's fault.

[jfk13]

> it's the top few percentile that you need to restrain, not the masses

And how do you propose to "restrain" them, if not by enforcing a speed limit?

[klyrs]

As we're sitting calmly, reasoning about safety, sure. But when the rubber meets the road, you get problems. People learning how to drive don't know the limits of their vehicles; hope you like dead teenagers. Then, you've got somebody in a hurry to get someplace, and their cost/benefit analysis says going an extra 30mph is totally worth the 2 minutes it will shave off their trip.

[cycomanic]

You obviously have not seen any of the many posted videos of some guys racing on public streets. Or are you saying the natural speed is a personal thing and everyone should be allowed to drive as fast as they personally feel comfortable with?

[alistairSH]

There are outliers in any group. Nobody is debating that. All we’re saying is roads tend to have a speed where the vast majority of drivers are comfortable and they’ll tend to go that fast.

Most times you’re on a road and traffic is flowing significantly faster than the posted limit, either the limit is wrong or the road is poorly designed and not fit for purpose. And that happens a lot in the US.

[jjav]

> You obviously have not seen any of the many posted videos of some guys racing on public streets.

Speed limits are supposed to be set to the 85th percentile of natural flow speed for the road.

The very few people racing on public streets are well above the 85th percentile, so that's a straw man argument.

[ghaff]

You could also ask when is walking across the street against a red light or outside of a crosswalk a "feeling" about whether it's a safe thing to do that doesn't impede traffic--even though it violates the law?

The fact is that there are plenty of laws we somewhat violate on a daily basis. This has its own set of problems but it's the way things are essentially everywhere.

[vkou]

The problem with this line of reasoning is that the 'natural' speed limit of a freeway is a death sentence in the event of a crash.

I have zero sympathy for this. If you're doing 20 mph over the limit, you shouldn't be driving, whether it comes from taking away you car, or from putting you in a cage for a few weeks.

[alistairSH]

In that case, the road isn’t fit for purpose.

[vkou]

It's not the road that isn't fit for purpose, it's the human body plus the modern automobile that's not fit for safely handling a crash at 80 mph.

Either build better humans, better automobiles, or slow down.

[criddell]

I think in most places, the speed limit is set to the 80th percentile speed. If there is a road where people routinely drive much faster on, you might want to ask for your county to do a speed study on that road.

In some places, you may be able to use the lack of an up-to-date speed study as a defense against a speeding charge.

[sharken]

A modern car with cruise control, either adaptive or not, will make the task of keeping to the speed limit a breeze.

The only improvement would be that the car always knew the speed limit for any stretch of road.

[Wistar]

Many modern cars have traffic sign recognition systems that extract the speed limit. The BMW system is fairly amazing to watch work as the speed limit display changes juuuust as you pass the sign and are surprisingly good at reading signs that are even partially obscured. Although I can't remember exactly which cars feed the detected speed limit into their adaptive cruise control systems, I think some of the Range Rover models do. Some even allow you to set a percentage or absolute speed value above or below the speed limit that you want the car to travel.

Others use a speed limit database and GPS/accelerometer system to establish the speed limit.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

When I was driving in the EU I had a car that used gps to pull the limit (but never actually enforced that you followed it). It was really cool to hop on the Autobahn and see a symbol for none pop up in the indicator. It looked like a nonsmoking sign without the cigarette in it.

[ghaff]

I haven't used (non-adaptive) cruise control in years. I find that a lot of the time in the Northeast US roads are busy enough that you have to be constantly dropping out of cruise control or end up driving in ways that are suboptimal other than for keeping the cruise control active. To be honest, I just stopped using it at some point and just don't think to use it even when it's a match for conditions.

When I get adaptive cruise control--presumably when I eventually get a new car--I may well change my tune.

[kwhitefoot]

Adaptive/traffic aware cruise control makes life so much easier, especially in heavy stop-go traffic. Tesla's Autosteer works really well.

[kwhitefoot]

Teslas recognize speed limit signs. Driving on Autosteer my Model S respects speed limits unless it recognizes that it is on a dual carriageway (divided highway for US readers) in which case it allows you to speed if you want to but warns you that you are over the limit.

Mercedes have had this feature as an option for many years.

[cryptonector]

American highways for decades now have been designed for very high speeds, often 100mph or more, but the speed limits are set much much lower than that.

Perhaps you are in Europe, where speed limits are generally just the natural speed for the roads they're posted on, and the roads are designed for natural speeds that are appropriate for their uses. Lucky you, if so. Here in the U.S., speed limits are set to give police probable cause to stop anyone, any time.

[cycomanic]

> Perhaps you are in Europe, where speed limits are generally just the natural speed for the roads they're posted on, and the roads are designed for natural speeds that are appropriate for their uses. Lucky you, if so.

What are you talking about? With the exception of Germany all countries in Europe have maximum speed limits and I have no idea what you mean by natural speeds. Sweden which has highways that are in better condition than pretty much all US roads I've driven on has a maximum speed of 110 km/h (as has Australia btw) , Spain has 120 km/h, France 130 km/h. All lower than the US 85 miles/h.

[devilbunny]

85 mph is on one road skirting Austin, Texas. It's 146 km long. That's it.

Everything else is 80 (~130 km/h, actually a little slower) or less, and even 80 only applies to western roads with pretty much nothing around. But if you drive in the parts of the US where most people live, you're looking at 70 (a bit over 110), or 65 (~105) in rural areas. But those 105-112 km/h limit roads are in most states, even when the European example would suggest that 75 (which is almost exactly 120 km/h) would be far more appropriate.

[cryptonector]

You're talking about posted speeds. There are long stretches of other highways in the Austin area where, if traffic conditions allow, you can safely drive much faster than the posted speed limits. This is and has been true over much of the U.S. for decades.

One time I was driving on the NJ turnpike, passing a car at about 100mph, and far behind me, on my rearview mirror, I saw cars gaining rapidly on me and flashing their highbeams almost desperately. I barely managed to get in the right lane ahead of the car I was passing, and those cars that had been far behind passed me at what must have been 150mph. They were all beemers and such. Now, I wouldn't do that, but apparently that was a common sight at the time -- young drivers driving rich New Yorkers cars between NY and FL when their owners were flying to FL to spend the winter or back to NY for the summer. I've driven on quite a few highways in the U.S. where 80mph wasn't breaking a sweat and where I believe 100mph would have been perfectly safe weather and traffic allowing. I'm quite certain that our highways are simply designed for much higher speeds than posted.

[cryptonector]

Your roads are often designed with natural speed control devices. Things like making them narrow, or lining them with trees, etc.

[cycomanic]

Highways certainly have not, and for other roads it highly depends, just like in the US. But the Bundestrassen in Germany (the next larger roads after highways) have a speed limit of 100km/h and are very straight and definitely not artificially narrowed.

I'm actually not aware of any roads without a specific lane separator (like highways) that have speed limits above 100km/h in Europe (I certainly could be wrong though).

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

Reading your comment makes me think you’ve never driven in Europe whatsoever. Driving on your typical E road (say E6 or E4 in Sweden) is no different in design than any US interstate. In fact, driving on regional highways is mostly roughly equivalent in design with USA state highways, except roundabouts are often in place of street lights.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

Some highways in Sweden go up to 130 kph. E4 in Halland is an example. Still not 85mph but close.

[cycomanic]

Really, TIL. I live in the Gothenburg area and in all my driving I only encountered 110 km/h so I assumed that was the maximum. Should have looked it up, thanks for correcting me.

[1MachineElf]

>how about sticking to the speed limit?

Remove speed limits on the highways and you have a deal sir.

[chrismcb]

Because im and places it is designed to catch you. But I got a ticket in Zurich for doing 16 kph in a 15 kph zone.

[mdoms]

> I've been dinged exactly twice for speeding

Not to be a know-all but why not stick to the speed limit?

[dictateawayyyee]

Because it is very dangerous to drive at the speed limit on a 55-65mph interstate.

You'll get 18-wheelers harassing you, even if you stick to the slow lane and don't mind paying extra attention to the on-ramps every mile. And those semi trucks almost never get pulled over; their job is hard enough.

[klyrs]

Funny, I've run that line in front of a judge, challenging a ticket for 45 in a 35 that feels like 50 should be safe. He said "That's the most lethal road in the city. Next time, turn up your radio and ignore the honking." I paid full price.

[Diesel555]

The person you replied to is being sarcastic. Their response to the quote is a also a near quote of the parent post.

[worik]

> You'll get 18-wheelers harassing you, even if you stick to the slow lane and don't mind paying extra attention to the on-ramps every mile. And those semi trucks almost never get pulled over; their job is hard enough.

Where I live (Aotearoa) trucks do not act like that. They are heavily policed and drive to the speed limit.

It is very common to see a truck stopped on the side of the road with a police officer checking it.

Good