Speed limits don't matter

Taken to an extreme, that would be the safest policy. But none of us would get anything done that way. So we've all developed some confidence in our senses and abilities, but there is danger in over-reliance. Most people don't realize how fallible any of these senses are until it is too late.

In addition to confidence in my own abilities, I draw considerable confidence from knowing that the roads and traffic laws in the USA were designed to work with each other, and that the work was often done by careful professionals drawing from years of experience. And that they weren't trying to drive their own cars while doing any of that.

I'm not perfect. I make mistakes in traffic. Sometimes I notice them so I can do better later. Roads and signage aren't perfect either, and the rules aren't perfect. Sometimes they are noticed and improved.

But the fused combination of them all works pretty well. The important bit in a public situation is to have every driver committed to the same rules and conditions. This reduces surprise incidents that turn into collisions and injuries and worse.

 

I was actually very impressed when I saw the planning process for rebuilding the county road that boarders us.
They made speed studies at different locations along the road.
They then made designs, using medians and boarders, that would slow traffic.
I’ve seen speed bumps used to slow traffic, but never heard that a median does a similar function.

 

It's pretty impressive what they can come up with when they make it a data-driven design process. Dump the opinions and drag out the spreadsheets, it works.

 

Remember when the police would, actually, pull people over and give them tickets for illegal behavior? (Speeding, reckless driving, distracted driving, failing to yield, etc.)
I've been behind people who are, obviously, texting and seen them drift so far left and right that they hit the curb or go a little off the pavement before they swerve back.
This is the reason I had to get rid of my motorcycle about 10-years ago...had WAY too many close calls with distracted drivers who almost hit me or pulled right out in front of me or changed lanes right into me. Sad...I've had motorcycles since I was 14-years old from dirt bikes to 750-cc even had a huge 500-cc scooter that was a blast to drive. (Great in cold weather because you were protected, mostly, from the wind.)

 

My morning chuckle, picturing tables set up on the median, folks in housecoats perusing platters.

 

I gave up riding about 20 years ago though I was never as heavily involved as you relate.

I decided that I just didn't live close enough to roads calm enough or empty enough to enjoy and survive the activity.

Less than two weeks ago a rider died two miles up my street, after hitting a deer. Road was closed 6 hours while they scooped up the bits. Everyone who lives on my street knows to go slower than the posted limit due to deer activity late in the summer into fall.

A pet peave, perhaps?

 

That might do even better to slow down traffic

 

it's great that you have the room and money for redesign. around here, it's cowpaths and broken asphalt

 

The law dictates the speed limit, not your knowledge. Anything under the limit, you can go slower by your understanding of the environment. But not unreasonably slow or you get a ticket for that too. You can’t go slow to tick people off and make up false

This is strange because it requires a drivers license to drive an automobile on the public roads. It is a privilege and not a right. A wagon, maybe. What is the context of the Supremes saying that, or was it Diana Ross and the Supremes? I guess you have the right to get a drivers license within the rules of them.

 

Actually?
I concur - and I probably DID misscite the SCOTUS, but they HAVE held on numerous occasions that interstate travel is a fundamental right, and I feel that in this case I'm only slightly left of bang.
Somebody somewhere is going to state that not allowing people to drive on roads as a basic human right will violate their 5A rights.
Think about it.
Out on the left coast of the US, and in 2018, the Ninth Circus Court of Appeals agreed that prosecuting people for sleeping or camping on public property when they have no home or shelter to go to violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, WHILE also depriving people of the use of said sidewalk.

As it is legally driver's licenses are 'shall issue' and enjoy 54-state reciprocity (52 states if you're not the current POTUS.)
Just like CCPs will very soon.

 

My understanding has been that the travel part is a right, the driving part is a privilege.

I.e. if you don't meet the requirements for driving, you can still travel freely by riding along with anyone else of your choice who is a licensed driver, of which there are plenty. Or travel freely by numerous other means -- walk, bicycle, horse, boat, air taxi, etc. -- with the possible exception of commercial airlines, which have a specific different safety issue.

 

The state DOT did a study of the traffic on the 55 MPH road outside our development that, at the entrance to our development, experiences a very serious (defined as car totaled, life-flighted, death, etc) accident every 6 months and a mere 911 call response every month for the last 10 years. They found the average speed was about 8 over with 70% of the vehicles exceeding the speed limit by over 5 MPH.

Amazingly, they retimed the traffic light (longer yellows) red longer before turn arrows, etc and placed warning lights that signal oncoming red lights about 100 yards up the road.

 

If you are a perfect driver who can treat safety rules and regulations as optional suggestions because you can run some stoplights and perform some dangerous maneuvers without damage, other non-perfect drivers will watch and emulate you. If you are entitled to do it, then they feel they are equally allowed to do so.

But not being perfect drivers, they end up causing more crashes and fatalities than if they had obeyed the rules and regulations that just so happen to be optional suggestions for only you.

There is no system to distinguish or separate perfect drivers like you from the majority non-perfect people out there.

We see this regularly in safety and quality control fields. When rules and protocols became optional suggestions for the few perfect people, they become equally optional for most other people too, including the many non-perfect. Then bad things start happening a lot more frequently. This isn't opinion, it is statistical reality. Commercial aviation didn't and couldn't achieve its modern safety record until after such attitudes were pushed out of that field and replaced with greater rigor in following protocols.

As for driving in the U.S., this has led to fatalities increasing by almost 1/3rd over the past decade, when improving vehicle designs should have been reducing fatalities.

Non sequitur.

Beyond that, U.S. cooking fire death rates are minuscule compared to motor vehicle death rates, even though cooking and eating are similarly common as driving.

 

If you're ever wondering what hubris feels like, remember that "what has that to do with me?" feeling.

 

I do remember.
Actually? After watching the morning news, it's sort of refreshing......

 

I guess I will sum it up with this, in my 16 years of driving, I've never been in an at fault accident. I attest that to following the law for the most part, but as I become even better at driving with age and wisdom, for me, I realized that the law is simply supplemental to good driving.

 

Please don't take this the wrong way but how many did you CAUSE?
I know more than one person who has been driving horribly for years and years.
Sometimes, they don't drive very often or very much.
Other times they're surrounded by quite good drivers.....or by NO drivers at all.

When my maternal grandmother was about 93-94, 'The Sisters' decided it was time to intervene.
Over her nearly 80 year career behind the wheel she's never been in any kind of accident at ALL, and yet her daughters were concerned enough to try and intervene because NOBODY would or could argue that Grandma was a good driver.
They decided not to take her to get her license renewed, which in my beloved home state of Indiana is required every other year for people 85 and older, and WILL include a driving test if they think you're not up to the task.
After they expressed their concerns Grandma came home the next day with a newly minted driver's license after which I advised the sisters to just double down on her insurance minimums and pray a lot more.

It always piques my interest when somebody says that they have never been in an "at-fault" accident.
The military famously uses convoys to move units equipped with rolling stock,
Before every such convoy there is a mandatory convoy brief - usually about a half-hour's worth of 'Death by PowerPoint.'

The first part of EVERY convoy is the Safety Brief.
The first sentence in EVERY convoy safety brief is the same.....
Good drivers do NOT have accidents.

Statistically?
Everyone is just about average.
That's kind of the whole point of using statistics.

AND YET, EVERYBODY thinks that they're a little bit smarter, and a little bit better driver than they perhaps really are.....

It's like Vegas.
Everybody that goes there all seem to have two things in common.

They're not great at math, and they come out "a little bit ahead" when you ask them how they did.

 

I.e. you are still a statistical beginner.

Let us know when you have reached 100,000,000 driving miles without being involved in any fatal accident, regardless of fault. Then we will know you are slightly better than today's average driver. Or equal to the average driver of about a decade ago, pre-Pandemic.

Let us know when you reach the wisdom of understanding that obeying traffic law, and defensive driving rules, are required elements of good driving, not merely "supplemental".

 

How about tickets? 2007, that’s when I bought my first Prius.

 

Its nearly impossible to not get a ticket with a decades worth of driving, especially in the early years.