[woodruffw]

I am someone who's extraordinarily sympathetic to journalists. But I don't think there's really any excuse for going 93 miles an hour on a country road marked for 55, as this author did.

Should he have been sent to jail for it? I don't think so. But it's remarkable how acceptable that behavior seems to be.

[warning26]

Eh, I don't think speed limits really should exist in any context. If you want people to go slow, design the roads for slower driving, don't just impose arbitrary limits.

[worik]

> Eh, I don't think speed limits really should exist in any context. If you want people to go slow, design the roads for slower driving, don't just impose arbitrary limits.

In the realm of ego orientated commenting, this one really stands out.

I do not want to put my life in your unregulated hands. I want you regulated to hell and back when you operate a tonne of steel at thirty metres per second heading in my general direction.

Actually: Can you, especially you warning26, catch a bus?

[1123581321]

Narrow roads to improve safety are a proposed (and increasingly adopted) regulation. They’re not privatized roads.

[neither_color]

Are you familiar with the autobahn?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn

Parts of highway with unrestricted speed are not only possible, they're not particularly dangerous either.

[kevin_thibedeau]

It's a limited access highway, not an ordinary road with at grade intersections and inadequate sight lines.

[et-al]

Except in Germany cars need to undergo an roadworthiness inspection every 24 months and the driving test is much more strict there. If you have a pulse, you can get a license in America.

[neither_color]

American cars get safety(and emissions) inspections too and the second part is just not true. I think there's more to it than just casually dismissing americans as too "unregulated" and dumb to handle high speed roads. In the case of Germany's autobahn, after the reunification, road accidents initially increased in former East Germany so it's not like Germans are inherently superior drivers.

[rndgermandude]

I am familiar, and have been on the Autobahn many times.

From the speeding journalist's article:

>These roads weren’t anywhere near schools or towns, and have lots of curves and very little traffic.

This is hardly like the Autobahn (except for the schools and towns bit). The parts of the Autobahn with speed restrictions are exactly the parts that are most dangerous, meaning parts with curves, or hilly parts (as you cannot see what's going on on the other site of a hill). The unrestricted parts are basically straight lines. And the Autobahn very much only goes in one direction only (with the other direction physically barricaded off), so oncoming traffic is practically not an issue - except for the rather rare cases of "ghost drivers". You have no pedestrians or cyclists and no wildlife crossings (thanks to barricades); only vehicles which can do at least 60 km/h (~37 mph) are allowed. Trucks and other large vehicles, as well as vehicles with trailers do have speed limits. The Autobahn has a lot fewer crashes and fatalities than rural motorways in Germany, because of that.

As the poster you're responding remarked: "I want you regulated to hell and back when you operate a tonne of steel at thirty metres per second heading in my general direction." That's just not a thing on Autobahn.

The person who was responded to initially also advocated to design "slow roads" instead of having regulations. That's basically the opposite of the Autobahn, which was designed for fast travel. My guess would be that if you designed roads to be slow, a lot of people just wouldn't go slow, but cause crashes. We see that already on roads which just happen to be relatively "slow" without being specifically designed to be that.

Aside from that, German drivers got to have a lot more certified training by law (compared to the US), pass a lot more strict and comprehensive theoretical and practical exam (compare to the US) before getting a license, and cars have to be inspected every two years for road-suitability (including working safety features).

I wouldn't want some reckless driver coming at me on a curvey, rural road at 93 miles per hour, some 35 mph over the limit. Because that's literally what is is: reckless and dangerous, with disregard for anybody else who might be on the road. Jail time, however, seems too harsh, as there was no victim (this time). If I did the same on a German road as the journalist did on that Virginia road, I'd have to pay 600 EUR, have my license suspended for 2 months, and get 2 points in the register. Which I find rather fair and justified.

[throwaway0a5e]

>In the realm of ego orientated commenting, this one really stands out.

>I do not want to put my life in your unregulated hands.

It takes an impressive amount of cognitive dissonance to insult him and then drivel about "putting your life in unregulated hands" when the regulation in question is speed limits, a type of regulation to which compliance is low to the point of it almost being comical. If the regulation were something like standards of cleanliness for canned food or something else that's pretty much always adhered to you might have a point but it's not and you don't.

It's not the regulation that's keeping your naive self safe. Your life is pretty much already in unregulated hands because pretty much nobody is minding the regulation. It's that most people are reasonable and drive reasonably that keeps you as safe as you are. People are driving the speeds they drive because those speeds are reasonable to them. They are not whizzing by you at triple digit speeds because those speeds to not feel reasonable to them. It has nearly nothing to do with the number on the sign.

[idiotsecant]

The whole subject of this thread is someone going 93 in a 55. I guarantee 93 is not some kind of everyman median speed on that road. This is actually a pretty good example where someone was doing something unsafe and big bad spooky regulation stopped them.

[hedora]

Context matters. A while back, a 4 lane (in one direction) piece of I-80 in Oakland had an inexplicable speed limit of 45. People routinely went 80-85mph in the left lane, and the cops didn't seem to care.

Edit: To be clear, the 45mph sign was not obvious at all. Most cars assumed it it was a 55 or 65 zone, and went at about 70. I drove the road two dozen times before noticing the speed limit dropped so far down. Going 45 on that stretch would have been dangerous.

Anyway, I can imagine a road that should be 75 in some other state being posted at 55, and also for going 15 mph over to be common in that state.

[woodruffw]

Speed limits are a blunt instrument, because "slow" isn't the real goal: the goal is to get people to drive safely, and one way they currently don't do that is by driving at reckless speeds (regardless of what the limit happens to be.)

[1123581321]

You don’t know which speeds are actually reckless. Using speed limits to inform your opinion is circular. It depends on the design and condition of the road, the quality and features of the car, and traffic, weather and environmental conditions.

[woodruffw]

I didn’t say that I did know. It’s a general point, one that I can make by pointing to any particular example of reckless driving (of which there are many, including ones I have been personally subjected to.)

[1123581321]

Yes, you did. You said you didn’t think there was any excuse for going 93 in a 55.

[woodruffw]

The context is important: the author describes their joyride through a collection of twisty backroads in Virginia. It’s not the speed itself that makes it inexcusable.

[stefan_]

Well we have the stats and at 30mph already a pedestrian has a low chance of survival. So there is a perfectly good case to be made that just exceeding 20mph is reckless. Maybe we just limit cars there, then at least we are not "circularly informed", whatever that means.

[1123581321]

It means to use posted speed limits to decide what is a safe speed, rather than to evaluate the actual risk or at least have some model for what makes a number unsafe other than what the sign says. Your method, picking a number based on pedestrian survival rate, wouldn’t be that.

[hedora]

Ah, but posted limits are a terrible signal of safety, at least in all the states I've lived in.

One state likes speed traps for out of towners, so the speed limit is 55mph (and not enforced) on 1.5 lane gravel country roads, but 35 for four lane divided roads just outside city limits.

The other state decided to upgrade the roads in affluent cities/towns so existing speed limits would be 10-20 mph too low, but then didn't raise speed limits afterwards. So you need to know what the road budget was a few decades ago in order to compute safe speed from the speed limit signs. (Or, just use common sense...)

[charcircuit]

Pedestrians don't walk on country roads.

[throwaway0a5e]

Some do. And those that do know what they signed up for and behave accordingly.

It's like walking along a rail line. When traffic does show up you stay well out of its way.

[nh2]

Pessimise roads because people cannot stick to basic rules? That's silly. Instead, take away their ability to drive if they can't do it responsibly.

If an ambulance has to go that way, you'd want that to be able to drive fast.

Also, people can drive poorly on any type of road.

[8note]

I'm fine with the ambulance driving safely, rather than causing more emergencies from driving too fast.

If you care about the time to get to an emergency room, get hospitals closer to people?

People can drive poorly on any road, but they'll do it more if the road guides them to misbehave.

[jonhohle]

At least in Arizona where the top end is 75MPH, speed limits on highways seem reasonable for the environment. There are plenty of opportunities to go careening off the side of a mountain or into oncoming traffic because a ¼ mile earlier nothing would suggest that the natural momentum from the grade of the mountain road was excessive for the upcoming switchback.

So they could set up some arbitrary obstacles to slow people down prior to the natural contour of the terrain, or, you know, throw up a sign which indicates a safe speed for the upcoming section of highway.

[shadowgovt]

You play pick your speed limit in the wrong place in Chesterfield county, you'll discover that those speed limits are where they are because the roads haven't been updated since they originally had asphalt laid down.

It was a very specific road near where I grew up. Nice and flat. Looked like you could do any speed you wanted. People routinely did 55. Posted was 30.

Near one end of the road was a tree slowly pushing a tree root underneath the road. This followed into a sharp curve bordered by a second, ancient tree.

The neighborhood lost about one person every 6 months who got complacent driving that road faster than speed limit and then got decapitated when they hit that tree root, their car went airborne, rotated 90°, and the top half of the passenger space intersected the ancient tree down the road.

DOTs get no budget to reshape a bad road and do the best they can to try and keep us from killing ourselves out there.

[salawat]

If DOT has no budget, that sure sounds like those people are good decapitating somebody every 6 months.

Funny thing about governments by, for, and of the people.

[shadowgovt]

Honestly... Yes. That's how it appeared to work.

The group that petitioned most consistently not to reshape the road were the people who lived in that neighborhood. They didn't want their main thoroughfare shut down and they didn't want people driving that road faster.

Eventually, two volunteer firefighters died when a fire truck flipped doing lights-and-sirens down that road. Then the county stepped in, declared eminent domain on the tree, and cut it down to remove the root and reshape the road.

Democracies don't always vote in everyone's best interest. Or plenty of Americans are comfortable with one vehicular death every six months. Many possible explanations.

[devoutsalsa]

Speed limits exist because stupid people exist. When I was young, I was stupid. I thought it’d be cool to count how many streets I’d on which I’d driven at least 100kph. Soon after that I got into an accident because I was going too fast and couldn’t slow down in time.

[salawat]

Speed limits exist entirely because of World War era gas and rubber rationing, and were never repealsed due to their LE revenue producing nature.

[root_axis]

Virginia has a lot of deer, especially on interstate roads flanked by forest - 90mph is a death wish when one of these deer pop into your path.

[chrismcb]

So we should make roads more dangerous instead of using speed limits? That seems backwards.