Speed Limits

France on the other hand has huge tolls on its motorways and consequently you get billiard table smooth surfaces, wide hard shoulders and very little traffic in a lot of places, so why not go fast if the curves allow.

In Britain the speed limit on motorways is 70mph, but this is almost universally ignored. When the traffic is light enough for people to drive as fast as they want virtually everyone (apart from lorries and coaches and caravans) breaks the limit, ranging from about 75 in the inside lane to about 85-90 in the outside lane (with the occasional nutter screaming past at 110). Most of the time this seems safe enough, and occasionally a politician suggest raising the limit to something more realistic, like 80, but they are always shouted down because there is an assumption that people will always break the limit (so they would now drive at 95, instead of 85).

In urban areas it’s completely different. Nowadays there seem to be speed cameras all along every main road, and most residential streets seem to have speed bumps and pinch points, etc. Most of the time I don’t mind this (it makes sense to drive more slowly when there’s a lot of people around, and lots of junctions, and cyclists), but at times it can be annoying (eg the speed cameras have the same speed limit at whatever time of day, so while 30mph might make sense at 5pm, it’s a bit draconian at 2am when you’re the only car on the road).

Otherwise, I'm all for the no limits idea on freeways. Didn't Montana have something like that ("reasonable speed" during daylight hours) recently?

And "left lane for passing only" would be a good idea to go with it. If you're not passing someone, get to the right.

I wish America was like the Autobahn and you could flash your lights to get people useless slow turds in the left hand lane to pull right.

I really don't buy the argument that drivers will always try to drive 5-10 mph over whatever the speed limit is. My comfort level on the interstate outside of town is around 73 mph. I'm tempted to drive this speed on the rural highways even though it's 55, on the interstate where it's 70, and even on turnpikes where it's 75.

In 1996, I couldn't wait to get to Arizona where they had the new 75 mph speed limits. Once I got there, though, I realized that 70 - 73 was pretty much good enough for me.

It's certainly more dangerous for anyone to drive at 45 mph (the minimum interstate speed limit here in Arkansas) than it is for someone to drive 85.

I'm still not clear why the UK still deals with miles when everything else is supposedly metric.

I'll admit though to being bad at getting back over to the right, esp. if I'm within 5 - 10 min. of passing the next guy. But I'm also traveling at or above the max.

This is the most annoying thing that people do, and dangerous and arrogant to boot. The actual rule of the road all over europe is keep left or right (depending to the side of the road you drive) unless overtaking. Plenty of people ignore this, either by sitting in the wrong lane with empty lanes to the side of them or by driving up behind an overtaking vehicle and tailgating a flashing, which is dangerous and cuntish.

Those drivers who sit in the middle lane for no reason, going slower than most cars in the slow lane, I've been known to overtake them on the inside. I've never really been sure if this is illegal.

dan those record covers are pushing buttons in me i didn't know existed

I think it's a "do not" rule rather than a "must not" rule in the Highway Code - in other words, it's not intrinsically illegal, but you still shouldn't do it. I can't be arsed to find my Highway Code to check.

I'm still not clear why the UK still deals with miles when everything else is supposedly metric.

Because we never completed metrification!

There were plans to metricate the road system. Motorways and dual carriageways all have distance posts every 100 metres. Motorway signs that say "in 1/3m" or "in 2/3m" are actually 500m and 1km warning signs - and in the late 1970s some motorways were installed with these signs as standard, in the expectation that the signage was going to be metricated shortly.

Mix Race - "Too Bad For Ya" on volume 1 clocks in at 180 BPM, is that good enough?

How much slower? I mean, think of all the lives that could be saved if the speed limit was dropped from 55 to 35.

Most accidents occur because of drug-induced impairment, carelessness, and/or lack-of-experience. I think highlighting speed as a fatal factor is highly overrated.

There's undoubtedly a direct correlation between speed and fatality (vs. injury), but I agree that there's no real speed : accident correlation.

Happy 85 Day, Texas!

http://wonkette.com/452437/illuminati-plan-to-kill-off-texans-approved-by-texas-lawmakers

http://jalopnik.com/5836021/tomorrow-is-85-mph-day-in-texas

speed limits are probably too high as they are now in most of the country tbh

it should be illegal to go past 25 mph anywhere w/ pedestrians, I don't really care if texans want to go 200 mph on their crazy freeways tho

Here, in Belgium, if you enter a city/town the limit is 30 km/hour. I think that's only fair. Outside it goes from 50 to 120 km/hr. I do like the german law: you can speed as much as you like on the high way. That said, I try to limit myself to 120 km/hr cause going higher doesn't really mean much difference anyway.

that is an entirely reasonable system.

in NYC the in-city limit is technically 30 mph but nobody cares. you'll see people going 60 on narrow pedestrian-filled streets w/ cops in plain sight.

On a bus in London the other day some guy in front of me was complaining that the driver wasn't ever pushing the bus up to 30mph ("we'd get there a lot faster if this guy would go the limit") -- apparently not realising that there are cyclists all over and it's completely pointless to go 30 anyway when all it does is get you to the next red light quicker.

It is strange to me that 30mph would be the speed limit anyway. It's not often that anyone can ever reach that speed for more than a couple of seconds and when they do it feels insanely fast for most London streets.

Melbourne to Sydney is now a dual-lane road in both directions which bypasses all the towns. The speed limit is 110 the whole way, meaning the trip takes about ten hours. This is ridiculous, and leads to problems of driver fatigue. No rail link either - a 10 hour drive or 1.5 hour flight.

xpost that is so ridiculous. i have done the 140 km/hr and it didn't really matter all that much. so i decided to stick with 120 km/hr max

so if you're going 25mph, you'll go 10 miles in 24 mins; if you're going 30mph, you'll go 10 miles in 20 mins...OMG that guy could've saved 4 mins of his life if not for that bus driver!!!! 4 mins a day! 17 hrs per year!!

http://cache.jalopnik.com/assets/images/12/2011/08/texas_speed.jpg

I take it they're going to remove the 70 mph sign. Otherwise, that's one hell of a cherry picker for the Texas Highway Patrol.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14761713

I had been pondering posting a thread "Where did you get a speeding ticket? What was the speed limit? And how fast you were going?" after regularly driving along the heavily speed camera'd stretch of the M42 between the M6 and the M40 dead on 70mph and wondering at what point would those over-taking me get "caught" (or do they know something I don't).