[worik]

Golly.I read that article.

What a hideous person.

Who drives so fast on country roads? Very selfish people who do not care about their own lives let alone the lives of others.

What a good punishment! Much better than a fine. We should use short prison sentences much more for the sorts of crimes rich privileged reprobates like this do.

Then the winging! It seems gaol is not pleasant. Does the writer want sympathy? None from me!

I so wish the officer had impounded the car and left these two people on the side of the road. The officer did not. But still the winging!

[tomc1985]

The 101 through Sonoma/Humboldt/Mendocino counties is, at some places, a 2-lane highway weaving its way through a twisty curvy Redwood forest at 55-65mph, and up to 75mph when it's a six-lane highway. And here in Southern California I regularly get away with 80-85mph in front of CA highway patrol. Most places I've been to in the US seem to consider 5-10 over the limit to be acceptable. I have even heard of freeways in Texas permitting 80 MPH! So these speeds are not unheard of (maybe on a country road but you'd expect the kind of treatment that guy got for 100MPH+)

Judging by your writing you sound British, IMO speed limits in a lot of Europe are ridiculously low; our highway speeds shown in MPH are often a larger number than your highway speeds shown in KPH.

[jameshart]

For someone so ready to leap to conclusions, you don’t sound particularly informed about British attitudes to road speed (notably, Britain still uses mph, not km/h). You might be surprised to discover that outside built up areas in the UK the national speed limit on an undivided road is 60mph. Not an undivided highway - an undivided road.

Here’s an example of a random British B road with a 60mph speed limit: https://goo.gl/maps/2jetrMeoWbuTvShN9

[tomc1985]

Most of my experience is on continental Europe, where it seemed like multilane highways topped out at 55-65 km/h. So you're probably right.

No need to go on the offensive though. "Gaol" is a pretty dead giveaway of Britishness.

[jameshart]

Sorry to burst your preconceptions, but... no, it isn't. 'Gaol' is barely used in British english outside of affecting an olde-worlde charm for tourists. British usage tends to words like 'prison', 'custody', 'cells', 'remand', 'detention'... barely even use the word 'jail', let alone an archaic spelling of it (and the pretrial/postconviction jail vs. prison distinction common the US system doesn't apply to the terms in the UK). HM Prison Reading might have a sign outside noting that it is the eponymous "Reading Gaol" that Oscar Wilde wrote about, but nobody's calling it that outside of a guidebook.

[BalinKing]

I think you’re conflating P(Is British|Uses “gaol”) with P(Uses “gaol”|Is British), the latter of which I would expect to be much higher than the former.

[jameshart]

(Oh, and to put you out of your misery, a more recent comment by OP contains the clue: "Where I live (Aotearoa)", which suggests they're a New Zealander. So, you missed your guess by around 11,000 miles, and apparently 80 years or so in terms of English language usage.)

[tomc1985]

Slow golf clap from me I guess. Pedantry is super impressive.

[multjoy]

And here's an unclassified road with a 60mph limit: https://goo.gl/maps/LNmtw44z8BQXatXu9

[devilbunny]

I don't know precisely what countries you're indicating, but I've driven in the UK, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Czechia, and Poland, all in the past five years. Some of the country roads had what seemed to be fairly low speed limits (e.g., 80 km/h), but freeways are much higher in general - usually 120-130 km/h.

[duncan-donuts]

There are a few stretches of highway near Austin that have 80 posted and people absolutely fly on that road. I was in a shitty rental trying to do 80 and people were passing me like I was driving slow. It was wild

[lolpython]

Nitpick: I think you meant to write “whinging” rather than “winging”