how often do you try to beat people off the line?

I've met a few researchers from the IIHS. They all gave the impression of being smart and unbiased, but I guess you never know for sure. What is it you think that their salary dictates they not understand? I believe their purpose is ultimately to provide research and guidance to benefit their member auto insurers. Seems as if understanding everything related to traffic losses (property and people) is essential to this, no? For example, if they did have a bias, they would tend to promote higher or lower speed limits, if either one proved to result in fewer claims for injury or property damage.

 

Go for it.

 

Uhm ... with multiple lanes and very little traffic, how is one vehicle a Rolling Roadblock?

Even with just lane but with opportunities to pass -- I trust you are passing safely -- how is one vehicle a Rolling Roadblock?

 

I was mis-paraphrasing a rolling roadblocker and got a little lazy in my changes.

 

Much of my driving is on two lane roads not built that recently, and not built to such high speed standards. But many drivers acclimated to high speeds elsewhere are still want to go fast on these lesser roads too, regardless of lack of modern safety features.

I'd be more tolerant of this argument if typical drivers actually would slow down enough for less safe roads or conditions. But very often they don't. On two lane roads without center dividers, in the common head-on collisions, speed very definitely does kill. In the common failure to negotiate corners, speed into the rocks and trees also kills. Even on new 'safe' multilane roads, when fog or smoke or sudden icing conditions lead to 5 to 50 car pileups, speed still kills.

 

i can agree with this totally. not every road is the same.

Obviously people have to have knowledge of the road and the conditions. I don't think anyone is suggesting that reckless driving is ok.

 

They're not really, but if they're going 20mph below the flow of traffic, they're behaving unexpectedly and can contribute to the cause of an accident.

One vehicle can often become a rolling roadblock on a two lane road. Roads that curve and have elevation changes make passing impossible or dangerous. It is not uncommon around here to have a 6-8 car line behind someone doing, say, 48 in a 55, with no opportunity to pass for miles. The road from my place to Lafayette is much like that. it's 35 miles, 90% of which is not safe to pass. It's extremely frustrating at times.

 

Numerous folks have noted that when the national 55 speed limit was eliminated (in several steps over several years) and speed limits rose, fatalities did not go up.

What is usually missed is that traffic fatality rates (per 100M miles) have been falling roughly 30%/decade since WWII. But during the era of rising speed limits, that march to safety slowed significantly, to about 15%/decade. This slowdown happened even while airbags and ABS were being introduced and becoming nearly universal. But other changes were also happening, such as the wholesale shift from cars to SUVs, so it is difficult to identify and agree upon cause and effect.

Only very recently, i.e. since 2005, have traffic fatalities returned to their prior pattern of falling at 30%/decade. See my graph: Deaths per 100M Vehicle Miles. See also my previous posts:
GPS Study Shows Drivers Will Slow Down, At A Cost n1
GPS Study Shows Drivers Will Slow Down, At A Cost n2

 

Between driver impatience and highway hypnosis, I'm witnessing far more too-fast incidents than too-slow incidents.

A lot of unexpected things things happen on and along the road all the time, and drivers must be able to respond safely. Drivers who cannot safely approach a vehicle moving steadily in a single lane at 20 mph below average traffic flow are grossly unprepared for an enormous palette of other very common hazards: rocks, trees, dropped cargo and vehicle parts, mechanically disabled vehicles, animals, pedestrians, drunken and erratic drivers, phoners and texters, stop sign and red light runners, blind corners, snow, ice, rain, puddles, flowing water, farm machines or other heavy equipment, and gobs of other hazards. They need to Wake Up!

The poster in question was continuing to pass them. Are you saying he was doing so in impossible or dangerous passing situations?

I was talking about people doing the speed limit, not sub-limit when others want to go super-limit.

In the sub-limit case you mention, the laws here already require the slower vehicle to use turnouts whenever a few (3 or 5, depending on state) vehicles are being delayed and cannot safely pass. Does your state lack such a law?

 

I'm sure we have a law as such, but it's rare that I see that happen. Usually only a farm implement will pull over from time to time. Most people around here don't know you can turn left on red going from a one-way to another one-way, so I doubt if they know they should pull over if they're holding up traffic.

I was just commenting on your post; I'm not referring to any poster in this thread.

 

One reason that deaths are going down while speed limits are going up is that cars are getting A WHOLE LOT safer.
That means that the natural thing to look at--deaths at different times, at which there are different speed limits--may not work as well here as you would think.

What needs to be done is to look at whether accidents as speed X are as likely to kill as accidents at speed X+10 at any given time. (Ideally you would break this down by safety equipment on each car; and by whether the victim is a pedestrian or passenger.)
My GUESS is that, at pretty much every time, an accident at higher speed is more likely to kill people than an accident at lower speed.

Intuitively, I can only think of one reason that might not be true: people who drive slower drive longer, and thus drive more when tired. How to tease that out statistically might be hard . . .

 

I agree here. The widespread adoption of ABS and air bags should have produced a very large safety improvement. But the era of ABS / airbags / SUVs / higher speed limits saw a safety improvement of only 15%/decade, about half the historic average.

Now that those features have effectively reached market saturation, and speed limits have mostly stabilized, safety seems to have resumed its faster historic rate. Though there are enough confounding factors that it will take a lot more hindsight to figure out what really happened.

 

Put it on R for ROCKET LAUNCH !!!

 

It all depends on how distracted or asleep the other driver is.
Here in LA , I find that many folk tend to daze out at a stop light.
It takes 'em a sec or two to register two thoughts..., Hey,
#1 Duh, the light is green, and
#2 I just got smoked by a Red Prius!

 

Answer: Never ( in my Prius) I didn't get a Prius to beat people off the line. I got it for maximum gas milage .
I do play that game with my Ford Fusion, but never the Prius.

 

I noticed right away the need of other non-Prius drivers to tailgate - although Im already traveling at the speed limit or 5 over!

When that happens, I put on my windshield washers and soak em' real good Of course, its so gratifying to have them pull next to you at the red light (that they SPED to, geesh), then it turns green and the Prius totally owns them. had that experience today with a girl in a Ford Ranger. I love when the Prius takes off after the ICE kicks in...

 

Seems for the first hundred feet the Prius from a start is
quicker than most cars......

 

Yeah I heard somewhere that the 0-30mph is the quickest acceleration zone for the Prius.