Highway Handbook: Why We Speed

http://deadcatbounce.com/features/featurescat/highway-handbook-why-we-speed

by dmuino • 16 years ago

41 18 16 years ago

teilo• 16 years ago

My wife's uncle taught a AAA defensive driving class for the elderly. The AAA approved course at that time (this was in the mid-90's) taught them that the safest speed is the average speed of traffic, regardless of the posted speed limit. If they could not drive comfortably at that speed, then they should stay in the right lane. If they were driving much slower than traffic and could not comfortably drive any faster, they should avoid the highways altogether.

thaumaturgy4• 16 years ago

Correct, and in California, this is codified as a traffic law.

Unfortunately, it is almost completely unenforced. Highway patrol and local agencies instead focus on speeders -- including those doing 5 over in highway "safe zones" -- because the fines for that are much higher, and it's less defensible in court.

dasil003• 16 years ago

This article plus a few choice statistics would make slow driving a lot less defensible in court. Plus cops could actually film the slow driver.

presidentender• 16 years ago

And the judges are complicit! This upsets me a great deal. I was in court once, waiting my turn to be reprimanded. This old woman is called for a speeding ticket and pleads her case: she was keeping up with traffic on Sunday morning in a part of town well-known to the judge. "Yeah, if you were keeping up with traffic on Broadway, you're going too fast."

No, judge, the speed limit is set unrealistically low.

hristov2• 16 years ago

It is not codified as traffic law. California traffic laws encourage you to follow the general speed of traffic, but only if that speed is legal vis-a-vis the speed limits. If you speed, saying everybody else was speeding is technically not an excuse.

villiros• 16 years ago

By the way, this article first appeared in a recent Something Awful thread. It is very long but has heaps of information for anyone interested in highway design.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=317...

jrockway• 16 years ago

Some good reading on HN today. Thanks for posting this.

boredguy8• 16 years ago

"Drivers traveling at the limit should get a string of green lights."

I wish more civil engineers followed that. Realistically, there are a lot of other concerns leading to traffic flow management. For instance, some cities work with CHP to disrupt traffic flows in order to better stagger traffic entering the freeway.

Determining the effectiveness of this strategy is left to the reader.

jimfl• 16 years ago

Also remember that lights timed for 35 are also timed for 70.

Highway Handbook: Why We Speed

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