It's interesting to see how many people in this group and others support the 55 MPH speed limit.
The question is, where the hell are you on the highway?!?!?! If 55 MPH is supposed to save fuel, and the speed limit is currently 65 MPH in most places, then why, when I'm doing my usual 68-70 MPH, am I getting my damn doors blown off?!?!?!
I guess complaining and crying is good, until it effects you...
(Of all the cars I was sharing the highway with, I passed 3 of them. Everyone else was passing me...over 70-75 MPH)
So long as the cops don't bother those driving at your chosen speed. How absurd a standard.
That may be true generally but in this case you're driving in the wrong lane. Keep right except to pass. If you can't deal with the merge impaired go fast enough so you aren't being passed on the right.
I've always supported 55, as long as you can go 60 and be left alone. I do 58-60 in the center lane on my commute (lots of off-ramps in the right lane) and idiots keep passing me on *both* sides. Americans are stupid.
| >> I do 58-60 in the center lane on my commute (lots of off-ramps in | >> the right lane) and idiots keep passing me on *both* sides. Americans | >> are stupid.
| This is how we got into the current situation: being told to crowd | into the right-hand lane to make more room for speeders. On a 3 lane | highway with off-ramps on the right, the right lane should be for those | going below the limit, including those exiting or entering from ramps. | The center lane should be for cruising at the limit or so, and the left | lane for passing and emergency vehicles. This allows for the optimum | flow of traffic and for maximum safety. But that's just too sensible for | this dumbass country...
Uhm.. 58-60 where the limit is 65? YOU are the dumbass. If you don't want to do the speed limit, get to the right. VERY simple.
Now if you're talking about a limit of 55, then you STILL are a dumbass thinking that it's perfectly OK to speed.
If 65 is the limit, folks should just not EVER go over 65. What good is a limit when it doesn't actually mean anything? What would you do if you bought $20 worth of gas and was charged $25 for it?
The standard is perfectly reasonable, and long-standing. It's to account for both speedometer error and people momentarily drifting above the limit. I use cruise control and know my speedometer error, so I can set it for 60 and know I'll be going 58. You're the one being absurd.
This is how we got into the current situation: being told to crowd into the right-hand lane to make more room for speeders. On a 3 lane highway with off-ramps on the right, the right lane should be for those going below the limit, including those exiting or entering from ramps. The center lane should be for cruising at the limit or so, and the left lane for passing and emergency vehicles. This allows for the optimum flow of traffic and for maximum safety. But that's just too sensible for this dumbass country...
Upper bound speed limits are not to be set because of what somebody feels is 'right'. Neither should having a armed government employee stop you on the side of road under the threat of violence be determined by his personal speed tolerances.
Google 85th percentile method to see how speed limits should be set.
*sigh* A sign with an absurdly low number on it is not a license to drive poorly.
WRONG. It's supposed to be the normal cruising lane. It was before the NMSL idiotcy of 55mph and still is.
WRONG. It's for passing people in the right lane.
Somewhat WRONG. It's for passing people in the middle lane.
No it does not. Optimum flow and maximum safety is achieved by a strict keep right except to pass discipline. This is why the autobahn is safer than the US interstate and much better to drive.
Actually most of those dumbasses are driving just like you, except they have a different idea of where the speed cut offs for each lane are. That's why your idea is pure bunk.
Keep right except to pass is pure simplicity. It works like fluid flow in a pipe. It makes for an engineered system. Your idea is a complex social interaction that cannot scale. That's why it breaks down so quickly with increased traffic volumes. Too many people with different social ideas of what speed each lane should be.
It doesn't mean anything but as a revenue gathering mechanism for government. It's usally a number pulled out of the ass of someone in political office and in the case of interstates has nothing to do with the actual upper bound limit of the road.
Interesting how different countries have different rules about this. In the UK, the "keep left" and "no undertaking" rules on motorways are drummed into every new driver and the police will stop people (if they have nothing more urgent to attend to) to enforce this.
You still get people crawling along at 50-60 in the Lane 2 on a deserted motorway late at night: it's very annoying to be driving quite correctly in Lane 1 and have to move over two lanes to pass the slow vehicle and then move back two lanes to where you were.
Mind you in the UK, it's fairly rare for Lane 1 to be for the exclusive use of traffic leaving the motorway at a junction - this is only done at a minority of very busy junctions and is very well signposted in advance so people going straight on can move over into Lane 2 and don't get shunted off at the junction.
I'm not sure what other countries' laws are about undertaking (ie overtaking on the opposite side to the driver's side).
As a matter of interest, in the USA are large articulated trucks (heavy goods vehicles - HGVs - in UK parlance) legally restricted to a lower limit than other vehicles? In the UK they are mechanically restricted to 56 mph (ie 80 km/hr) which can lead to the dreaded "lorry leapfrog" as truck 1 doing 56 comes up behind truck 2 doing 55 (due to tolerances in the settings of the speed limiters) and decides to overtake it at a differential speed of
1 mph. Consequently all the traffic behind it in Lane 2 is suddenly reduced to 56 for the several miles that it takes for truck 1 to complete its manoevre. Lo and behold, a few miles further on they'll come to a hill and truck 2 (which happens to have a more powerful engine and therefore isn't slowed as much by the gradient) will overtake truck 1, taking forever and a day - and so it goes on. In a car, you might temporarily exceed the speed limit to make sure you got past quickly, but HGVs don't have that option.
On a road with at least 3 lanes, there is at least an extra lane for cars to get past, but on two-lane roads you are stuck :-(
There's an infamous 2-lane road (the A34) that carries all the HGVs that have come from mainland Europe north from Southampton Docks to the Midlands (eg Birmingham) and there are sections which have gentle hills [*] as they go over a ridge. When I used to come that way to work, it was rare to get above 55 for the 20 miles that I drive on it, because every time I overtook a lorry, another sodding one would pull out in front of me. The road really does need to be upgraded to 3 lanes - or else the law needs to be changed to ban HGVs from overtaking unless they can complete the manouevre within a few seconds.
[*] Well, they are gentle to a car which can maintain 70-80 up them but they force underpowered HGVs down to around 40.
"Mortimer" kirjoitti viestissä: snipped-for-privacy@posted.plusnet... ...
Trucks have speed limiters also in Finland (probably in whole EU) -- though the limiters here are set AFAIK to 88 km/h.
I've been always wondering why truck drivers all the time MUST get to drive as fast as the limiter allows. Would it really destroy their schedules if they would decide to just happily stay behind if the vehicle in front doesn't drive over 5 km/h slower than would be that truck's maximum?
...Hmm. Or are they actually doing so, and it just looks to an average driver that a truck overtakes another one so slowly that the difference must be minimal?
This and your other post make it pretty clear that you are the highway equivalent of a Gun Nut. You don't care that the 55 limit saves both fuel and lives, and you think that the roads exist to allow people to drive fast, with those following rational speed limits expected to just get out of your way.
Pretty much the same here on keeping to the right. If your speed is excessive you may get pinched for passing on the right, but I do it often at the speed limit or a little above to pass a slowpoke driving left of me on a 2-lane. Keeping right becomes more of an issue on a 3-lane with cars entering and exiting the right lane. In some urban areas exits/entrances are an 1/8 of a mile apart and in constant speed flux. As you may have seen in this thread, there are many "cowboys" here. For instance those that insist that you move right from the middle lane into a gap in the entry/exit lane where traffic might be averaging 50, perhaps downhill, between a heavily loaded semi-truck slowing for exit while a lightly loaded one is barreling down the entrance ramp behind him, while you are doing 65 and the limit is 55. Why do they insist you enter this dangerous vise? Because they want to do 70 in your lane, and you are in the way. The driving situation doesn't matter to them. You should move right between the trucks because their little pea-brain says so. These are often the same sort of people who tail-gate and engage in other unsafe activities. But they fancy themselves race car drivers.
I sometimes do that only because of my own safety, as you are more likely to be seen overtaking from the driver's side mirror.
Same here.
Not quite sure it's enforced here - never seen it happen - but it is at least a general rule.
Some states have lower limits for trucks, but they are generally ignored by the truckers. Some areas have an extra lane on an upgrade for trucks to pull into. There are some special lanes and run-offs for trucks on steep downgrades, in case of failing brakes. But one truck slowly overtaking a second on a 2-lane and backing up traffic is fairly common.
You must be the Cornjulio that clogs up the middle lane on the I-290. And you'll note I honk dididahdit dididah as I pass you on the RIGHT. (And don't even THINK about stealing my toilet paper!)
The left lane is Rock and Roll. The Easy Listening lane is over on the shoulder. Especially in Chicago.
As I've often said, there are two kinds of drivers on Chicago expressways: The Quick and The Dead. You ain't quick. You're actually a traffic obstacle. Especially on some of the tollways, where the average speed is 75 at times.
I thought 55 was a stupid idea. Even when I was driving my 1501 (One of those $3748 1979 Toyota Corolla specials, no carpet, no 5th gear, a little
1.2 engine.) I still was going faster than that, although getting her over
65 was tough.
You're not absurd, you're one of those traffic turds that end up causing others to get into accidents.
Hmm, it's obvious you are a Leftie. Probably an Obama-supporter too. Making up your own special rules just for you and let the great unwashed be damned. Did you notice the signs all over the expressways? Hmmmm? In Illinois it says: "Slower traffic keep right." (In some states, it's "Keep right except to pass")
Oh, that's right. You're a Leftie, you're special and the rules don't apply to you.
Speed limits aren't usually set up for safety, they're set up for revenue anymore. Any decent car built in the last 25 years can do 65 and not even break a sweat. Even my old white KE30 could do it.
Since we drive on the other side of the road in the US, we keep right, and no passing on the right, but on expressways this is SELDOM enforced.
In the US it's also rare, but the idiots don't know how to get off and/or merge nice. I have to get over one lane usually around a junction to miss the sudden parcel of vehicles going 10-20 below the limit getting off and getting on. Some of the older on ramps are poorly engineered and not long enough for a decent car to get up to traffic speed, even if you GUN it.
The restrictons on truck tractors pulling semi trailers (articulated lorries) vary from state to state, which is why no one has a 'governor' holding them down.
Illinois limits all trucks over 8,000 lbs, all vehicles towing trailers, and all recreational vehicles to 55 miles per hour. (That's an improvement. Until 1973, they used to be restricted to 50 / 60 / 65 in that order.)
Over in Kentucky the single speed limit on most open Interstate roads is 70 mph. In Indiana it's 65. In Wisconsin it's 65.
We've had to improve the power on some of our larger straight trucks and truck-tractors. There's so much traffic in places out west, that if they had to work down to 15 mph to crest a hill, there would be a huge line of cars behind waiting to pass. And yes there are hills that bad over here. Go drive the I-75 east of Chattenooga some time, but mind the brakes, they'll get hot going east. And watch your temp gauge going west, it's a long uphill grade, even some cars have issues with it.
The right lane has become the new left lane. Everyone drives in the left lane these days so I just stay in the right lane, even when creeping along at traffic jams and always move ahead of anyone in the center/left lanes.
In my mind what you describe is due to the self-centeredness pervasive in society today. People don't care about anyone else and just want to set the cruise control to travel. They know they should move over when someone is behind them or there is an opening on the right but that means they'll have to set the cruise again! Or they are acting as police because they think it's not fair that someone can go faster than them and not get caught.
Sharing the road means more than one getting their way, it means allowing others to pass you if they want to go faster also.
Heaven forbid I would like to see people drive properly.
It does neither. In 1974 when the NMSL was put in, the method of counting fatalities changed. All but the usual year over year drop was due to the change in method. When it was removed in 1995 states that raised their speed limits saw a larger drop than those that did not.
No, you're an ignorant control freak who thinks that everyone else should be forced to drive his speed by the threat of violence from the government. (everything the government does is ultimately backed by violent acts, such as imprisonment)
Another closed minded fool causing congestion. Good riddence.
I've experienced I294 where 90mph would make one of the 'slow'. Autobahn speeds with the chaos and rudeness of american drivers. The speed isn't the problem of course, 90mph is perfectly safe if it wasn't for the LLBs etc.
55mph was really never obeyed in any meaningful way. Part of the reason the NMSL was eventually repealed is it got more and more difficult for the states to cook the books. The feds kept allowing greater and greater mathmatical gymnastics but the states still couldn't show the public was obeying it.
I love how you control freaks justify your actions... you're just a little over the number on the sign so you're okay.... This is just the kind of thinking that the NMSL brought about. Carlin had piece about this mentality. If the speed limits were set properly to the 85th percentile this way of thinking would die out.
*LOL* same old mental gymnastics of the 'speed kills' control freak. No, it means what it says, SLOWER, slower than other vehicles, mr. law is law except when it's me going faster by a 'reasonable' amount. LOL.
Newer? My 1973 Ford was built when the speed limits were 70-75mph! You're idea of 'newer' must be anything built after WW2.
You follow all the other typical thought of a speed kills control freak it's no big leap that you follow the rest.
MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.