> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On
> Behalf Of John D. Giorgis
[snip]
> Actually, people drive at a speed that they consider:
>
> a) safe for the current circumstances
> b) carries a reasonable set of consequences if caught
>
> If raising the speed limit has had no noticeable effect on speeders, then
> the speed limit simply has not been raised sufficiently close to the true
> safe speed for the road.
I doubt if either of us is basing these thoughts on actual data, but... it
seems to me that there are a lot of people on the road whose desired speed
is "faster." In other words, they feel like they're not going fast enough
if they're not passing other cars. In the extreme, they are the ones who
can't stand to be passed. The ones who pull onto an empty freeway and cross
four lanes to get in the fast lane.
Here's what drives (pun intended) me nuts: I'm on a long trip, using cruise
control -- so I know my speed isn't changing -- in the right lane. I slowly
come up behind a car, pull over to pass it, but it sits right next to me.
Eventually, knowing what is going to happen, I give the car a little gas,
pull ahead and move back into the right lane. Not much later, the car I
just passed goes zooming by me, gets back in the right lane -- and slows
down. I slowly come up behind it, pull over to pass, etc. Coming back from
Santa Barbara after Christmas, the same car did this five or six times.
In short, I'm fairly sure that competitiveness has a lot to do with the
speeds people drive, which won't change with higher limits. Get a few
competitive people on the same freeway at the same time and the traffic
speed rises, inevitably.
When I'm rational, I try to drive at the speed of the 80th percentile of the
cars around me, figuring that gives me a comfortable margin against speeding
tickets. Tickets go to the fastest cars on the road -- thus never be the
fastest car. On I-5, the 80th percentile can be 90 mph sometimes, I
suspect.
Nick
