[lukas099]

I've heard that. In driving safety class they taught us that the speed limit is safer. I tried to look up a credible source either way and came up blank. Do you have one?

I go by feel. If it feels much safer to speed, I do. Otherwise I'm in the right hand lane, usually a safe stopping distance behind a big rig for aero gains.

[hellotomyrars]

I think the speed isn’t where the focus matters. Obviously speed is a factor in severity and a driver who is bombing down the highway is probably more dangerous than your average bear, but safe follow distance is the thing people just overwhelmingly do not practice or care about. If you’re able to react in time if something happens in front of you, that’s what is going to keep you out of (preventable) trouble more than if you’re sticking to 60 instead of 70 on the highway.

The unfortunate thing is people take your propensity to maintain a safe follow distance as an invitation to cut aggressively in front of you, potentially across multiple lanes.

It sucks all around, but I don’t think AVs are the solution and I definitely don’t trust any company producing AVs is delivering a product that does what it claims. Waymo doesn’t acknowledge in this about the part where their vehicles have human operators take control when the car doesn’t know what to do. I assume they’re not including that data. That’s going to skew the result. Even if the car is super safe in most driving conditions, ignoring what is arguably the least safe conditions the car can be in in your data analysis is fucked and intentionally dishonest.

[dcow]

I don’t think you get the aero gains at safe stopping distances, though.

[lukas099]

Maybe not but I like to tell myself that I do :)