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Speed limits are one of the many transportation issues that have been researched with findings that the US has ignored and the EU has implemented.
Drivers go at the speed they're comfortable with regardless of any posted speed limits. They dont work. What does work is road design to make it uncomfortable to go faster. Narrower lanes, less vision on intersections, raised crosswalks, among other things.
I don't think most of the EU really did anything about speed limits
I dont know about how widespread it is, but yeah EU has been doing what Im talking about https://www.pps.org/article/livememtraffic
Speed radars+ removing driver licences if too many infractions?
Not perfect, but a step in the right direction
WTF are you talking about, I e stopped at every stop sign for 30 years. This is all in your head. And complete fiction.
Exactly. Especially this complaint about stop signs. That's not something that a normal motorist would encounter during a normal day of driving. If you ever happen to encounter a stop sign, as rare as they are, and feel that you then can't spend a minute to make a proper stop there then the real problem certainly must be in your mind.
I think it depends largely on where you live. There's a reason it's called the "California Stop." And arpund Boston, the shoulder is a completely additional, auxiliary lane, which so. many. people. use.
There's a funny video where a group of people got on the Atlanta 285 loop, spread out across all lanes, and did the speed limit for a few miles. They had a camera set up on an overpass to watch the procession come around a curve. They say they did it to show how stupid the speed limit on the loop was, and I'm sure it was infuriating for the miles of cars backed up behind them, but... yeah. It showed few people there obeyed the speed limit. I don't know if this is the original; I don't remember it being edited by a spastic gerbil, but that's what I could find before I lost interest.
Getting a ticket for going 3 over is silly. That part does seem contrived, and if contested OP could easily get that thrown out. I suspect either OP was being a douche in some other way, and the cop put something down to harrass them, or they dropped a "0" in the retelling.
It is fairly easy to obey the road rules. The problem is that if over time the laws aren't enforced then it is easy over time for thos laws to erode, and then suddenly it feels weird to obey them.
One time when I lived in Utah, I literally got pulled over for driving the speed limit. Literally. The cop told me that I needed to go with the flow of traffic instead. He didn't give me a ticket, but it was still an annoying interruption to my day, and I assume it gave him a power boner of some sort.
But another time, living in the same area, I got pulled over by a different cop for going with the flow of traffic, because speeding isn't justified even when everyone else on the road is.
As another comment said, you're fucked if you do and fucked if you don't. Although, I do prefer the alternative of going with the flow of traffic to avoid road rage incidents as you've pointed out.
I think I would have demanded a ticket in your case. I would have really liked to see how that played out in court.
You'd probably be more likely to get a ticket for a broken tail light or going 51 in a 50 than any sort of court catharsis
So you don't need to obey the laws because others don't? You're being childish, it isn't that big of a deal.
I will say that ticket you got is bullshit though. That's just a dick cop.
I don't think "not wanting to be the target of others' road rage for actually following traffic laws" is childish, tbh
It is when you're constantly getting harassed on the road for just going even 5 above the speed limit.
In Germany, it's against the law to not do a full stop at traffic signs. You will fail your driving test doing this and you'll definitely get pulled over when you're seen doing it.
Op is full of shit. I've stopped at every stop sign the entire time I've been driving and there's never been any issue. This is a troll. Plain and simple.
American cops are a bit more lenient, but you will get penalized for it on the driving test.
You're not supposed to obey traffic laws. They're designed to fund local governments and give police arbitrary power.
Many laws are. But basic things like speed limit serve a very good purpose: reducing fatalities caused by cars. Speed limits are proven to do this.
You just had some bad luck. I have passed dozens of police while going 3-5 MPH over the limit and they never took a second look at me. Same thing riding with others. The main thing in driving is try to be a decent person and try not to stand out. If you encounter an unsafe asshole, stay away from them. If you are in the middle a line of cars going 10MPH over the limit, you are probably fine. If you at the front of a line of cars going 10MPH over the speed limit, you are more likely to get pulled over because you stand out as the first speeder.
The point is even doing 1mph over the speed limit is breaking the law, and there's no excuse for it. If you were doing 51 in a 50 and all of the other traffic was doing 65 mph it makes absolutely no legal difference and there is no argument to what everyone else was doing, because the fact is that you are actually exceeding the speed limit in that scenario. Your driving is dangerous because you were driving too slow, but your ticket would be because you were driving too fast. Its the whole point of my original post, what are you supposed to do exactly?
All I'm getting from this is that, on the day you obeyed all traffic laws, you were the good driver and the others were bad. Things didn't run smoothly because the others didn't obey the traffic laws, not because you obeyed them.
If that many people are 'breaking the rules' then maybe we need to look at the rules rather than asking 95% of drivers to change their habits. I know in my state the speed limit is capped at 65MPH on the freeway, but the second you cross the border, the "maximum safe" speed on that same freeway somehow jumps 5-10MPH. How is that possible?
The reality is that it's a game like the other commentor pointed out. We're allowed to break the rules and drive 80MPH with the rest of traffic so long as the state can quickly and easily generate additional revenue off of it by catching a few stragglers each day and charging them hundreds of dollars in fines.
You should obey the basic rules such as speed limits, stopping for red light, etc. Driving faster is associated with higher rate of road fatalities.
The real solution is that our society must abolish the reliance on cars. We should opt for safer modes of transportation that do not make it necessary for us to trust every random person to have the patience and skill for operating a car that can kill people so easily.
The Fuck Cars community is so prevalent over here on Lemmy it's crazy. I wonder why that is.
Btw you guys do you, no hate or whatever I just see this sentiment everywhere on other people's posts.
You mean pulling over as in stopping at the side of the road to let people pass because you were abiding by the speed limit? That sounds so wild to me.
I absolutely love driving the speed limit exactly when someone behind me thinks I want a longer trunk, maybe a tiny bit slower if they're persistent.
They're usually able to keep a bigger distance all of a sudden.
That said, the speed is usually at most at 10kmh above the limit so I guess it's not too bad yet. Aside from the occasional idiot that thinks curves with little visibility are superior to straight sections where you can see the next 500 meters for taking people over.
I follow all traffic laws to a tee, just to be the change I want to see in the world. Pedestrian deaths (negligent manslaughter IMO) by cars are at an all time high in my country. As a bonus, I usually end up right next to the asshole speeding and weaving in and out of traffic at the red light
I do it when I have to drive. If people get angry that's their problem.
Standards of driving sound bad where you are
It's a game unfortunately.
Sometimes you get nailed for something fucking stupid like 53 in a 50. (Maybe that is worth contesting). Sometimes you deserve it (like me doing 40 in a 25 one time). But there's no justice. Loads of people get away with breaking loads of laws all the time before they finally get caught.
So it's a game for us. But actually it's a money maker for the government doing the enforcing.
One thing works well for me: using Google maps to navigate everywhere I go has the benefit of speed trap notifications.
If everyone followed the law, there would be no problem. The problem is that bad and unsafe driving is normalized in our society.
Write to your local member.
Care less about what others do.
Move to a first world nation or state. (Most of the US isn't).
Definitely get a dashcam.
Post dashcam footage on YouTube.
Send a bill to the city to the tyre.
Complain about people's dangerous road behaviour until the behaviour is enforced or speed changed.
You know after thinking about it, its only really been a huge problem on this one road where I live. The speed limit varies between 35,45,50 mph and theres one construction zone that is 25 mph. As a whole traffic goes about 60-70mph throughout. Its a windy valley road that is frequented by bicycles and hikers and people have absolutely been killed there in speed related accidents. I sent a message to the sheriffβs department voicing concerns but Iβve heard complaints from neighbors about it for years and its still a huge problem.
On other roads especially highways its mostly no problem to avoid speeding as long as you stay in the right lane, after all trucks avoid speeding most of the time for efficiency and safety reasons, unless you hit a 50-55mph zone like for construction. Those are nearly always ignored by other drivers. Slowing down to comply with the speed limit is likely to get you rear ended since so many are distracted. If youβre lucky enough not to be rear ended it usually results in getting flipped off, but sometimes road rage incidents can escalate.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6611240-three-felonies-a-day
It's a feature, not a bug.
Your not expected to obey all laws all the time, its a tool in the toolbox for selective enforcement punishment, taxation.
Ironically, self driving cars will do more to make traffic laws more sensible, since the cars will OBEY every law, no matter how silly... and that will back up traffic until the law is fixed.
I've always thought that if you want to fix bad laws, go to the capital city where the law makers are and obey the law very carefully, such that the cost of obedience is paid by the lawmakers.
That looks like a pretty interesting book, will definitely give it a read.
I personally feel that speed limits, etc are actually quite reasonable given the average human's response time, and the fact that impact force increases non-linearly with increased speed. I think the bulk of the problem is that so many drivers far over-estimate their driving abilities and are out of touch from the outside world being completely isolated in their cars. The fact stands that if you hit a pedestrian at 25 mph, they have a 75% chance of survival but at 35 mph it is 75% likely to be fatal. The 2-lane road in my original post has a lot of hikers, bicyclists, and even horseback riding not to mention the deer that regularly jump out in front of you. Efficiency of literally every car on the road goes up just by slowing down a bit, too. Don't people like spending less on gas?
Funny you mention the self-driving car thing, I'm a tesla FSD beta tester and thats how I made sure to obey every limit and road rule to the T. It was the only way I could get through it since obeying the laws gave me so much anxiety I wanted to speed up at every chance. Using the FSD in real life, though it has a setting to always go x% over the posted speed limit. As if the word "limit" has lost any and all meaning in our society.
I think you would really enjoy reading about the strategies used in traffic engineering. Where they not only take into account the physics of driving, but the human psychology of drivers.
The highway manual indicates for new roads a traffic survey should be done and the 80% speed should be the traffic limit for the road (this doesn't always happen). From a TE perspective you want the law to encourage everyone to work at the same flow.
For roads where drivers go to fast for the conditions, you can create visually hostile environments where drivers naturally slow down (not just speed limit signs, which most people ignore). I.E. add trees, break up sight lines, add curves and chicanes, making lanes more narrow, speed humps, REMOVE traffic markings (this forces people to pay more attention to figure out whats going on).
I've been driving for about a decade and a half now, including a few years here and there working jobs with a lot of wheel time. Either pizza delivery or cable technician or driving around a box truck.
I have never gotten as much as a speeding ticket. I typically don't speed more than 5~10 mph over the limit. If it's a 35 or 40 in a city area though I will typically stay the speed limit. Sometimes I go a little ham on country roads in the middle of nowhere. I drove through central Florida once at like 4am and I peaked at like 120mph because I hadn't seen another car for at least an hour.
I think it probably depends on your jurisdiction, but nobody really respects the laws. On the interstate near my house, the speed limit is 65 but it might as well be 80. Cops will pass you and people will pass the cops and nobody cares.
I think the speeding laws are just to give the cops a reason to pull you over if they want you - OR a way to get people that are really being crazy. For example if you're going 110 in a 65 you deserve to get pulled over and given a ticket or worse, depending on context.
What on earth are we expected to do?
Pay the fines. It's a money-making scheme, not a public-safety scheme.
I'm going to remember this question next time I see one of those "BuT cYcLIsTs!" idiots.
Car drivers are the only group of people who can disregard the laws that govern them, risk the lives of everyone around them, and then cry that 1% of the time they get penalized for it.
I'm not sure where you live, but in many places if the speed of traffic is faster than the speed limit, you're expected to follow that, if you can do so safely, because driving slowly causes the reckless behavior you mentioned and can actually be more dangerous
I was going ten to fifteen over in the right lane on a major street and I literally felt fear for my life the way people around me were driving. People were raging at me for not running red lights! It was insane.
Where do you live? I do the speed limit all the time. Only get a random pissy BMW once a month or so.
Just ignore them. If they want to be idiots, let them. Doesn't mean you have to as well.
When I was in drivers' ed they told us that even if the speed limit is, say, 35 mph, it's safer to go 45 mph if everybody around you is also going 45 mph. I think most cops are also aware of this, so I wonder if you were just picked on to fulfill a ticket quota or something. Also differences that small in mph are very questionable for a ticket because speedometers can vary wildly and most if not all speedometers have a very minor margin of error. For example you could have been radar tracked at 53 but your speedometer could have been closer to 51 or 50
Have you tried following traffic laws in GTA games? That is insane indeed.