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70 in a 50 zone. Doesn’t matter if its km/h or mph, that’s just idiotic.
exactly, the engineers should never have made a road with that big of a discrepancy between safe speed and listed speed limit
The engineers only make the designed safe speed. Government officials make the listed limit. It used to be EXTREMELY popular for government official to knock 20-25% off the design limit of the road, ironically so they can tell everyone how safe they were.
Traffic engineers in the US make too wide roads that psychologically encourages speeding, the posted speed limit doesn’t matter unless police dedicates significant resources to enforcing it
Everywhere in my town was 25mph until about 10 years ago.
A local politician got a few speeding tickets and went nuts over it, now it varies from 25-60mph. Engineers were brought in to advise on safe limits.
Him getting those tickets was one of the best things that ever happened to me. It was so miserable driving so slow on big open roads. I could probably sit down and figure up an insane amount of time I’ve saved over the last decade (if I weren’t an idiot).
Not so great for people walking or cycling though. Higher speeds mean more serious and fatal collisions.
Where these modes of transport mix, 20mph is becoming the default choice in western European countries, there is a global declaration on this. If roads feel like they’re made for higher streets: that’s bad infrastructure design.
https://www.fiafoundation.org/news/stockholm-declaration-focuses-on-reducing-urban-speed
No one is traveling on a bicycle or walking here. These roads are empty, there’s nothing there. I live in one of the most rural places in the country (United States).
It was seriously 20 miles straight with no houses, wide road, 25 mph. In residential areas there are still 25 mph speed limits.
On our 4 lane road, bicycles are not allowed, yet the speed limit was only 35-40.
Where there are sidewalks, the speed limit is 25 mph. If there are buildings, 25 mph.
Empty roads with nothing but fucking trees should not be 25 mph.
In all of my years driving on those roads, I don’t even think I’ve ever seen a bicycle. A couple of those tiny, slow motorcycles, maybe. I guess they call them scooters
And why do you think this is the case? Could it possibly be because the infrastructure is completely designed for cars, and using anything else is just not safe so you’d have to be a madman to go with these options?
Imran sure, I get rural, cars are good for rural areas, but not for towns etc.
Well, I mean, if a person wants to ride a bike 40 miles for 4 1/2 hours to the nearest Walmart I’m sure they could.
About 4,500 people live here and most of them have cars or they’re stuck.
We have public transit but about 30 people use it. My neighbor said it’s a 2.5 hour ordeal to go to the post office when he could be there and back in 20 minutes in a car. He got old and lost his license.
I’m seeing more cities in the US jump onto “20 is Plenty” too!
Was gonna cite 85th percentile speed but TIL on drawbacks
Engineers should absolutely include traffic calming features to get people to naturally slow down, but everyone should drive the limit.
Speed kills, kinetic energy is not linear.
Cars are tonnes of metal hurtling down the road. Thousands upon thousands die every year, and since the increased prevalence of massive US style trucks fatalities have RISEN, undoing decades of progress. (Both in the US, and elsewhere)
People driving 20 over the limit are arseholes (or have been influenced by car centric infrastructure and culture). Change my mind.
Speeding is never okay. Just that lots of people have convinced themselves it’s no big deal.
Edit because of downvotes: https://www.bts.gov/content/motor-vehicle-safety-data
Y’all are really justifying some shitty behaviour. Yeah, I get it, streets are designed shittily, and feels like it’s fine to speed (especially, from what I can see, in the US), but this doesn’t absolve you from doing the right thing.
Like, if it were 5 (km/h) over, I could perhaps forgive you. But downvoting me for suggesting 20 mph over is arsehole behaviour? You don’t deserve a licence.
Fuck these carbrains putting their feelings over completely savable lives.
USA is cooked (and Australia, somewhat cooked, since people are buying ridiculously sized cars here too).
Don’t speed, you fuckwits. Better yet, take public transport if you live in a city with cilivised transportation (obviously, not your fault if it doesn’t exist).
20 over the speed limit? that’s ridiculous no one should be driving over 25
I get this is a joke, but speed limits shouldn’t be set by politicians (which I’m hearing apparently is/was a thing?). Politicians have a role to play in getting regulations standards re-written by people who understand the decades of research on this.
Speeding is mostly a design issue, but I still expect people actually follow the rules.
Strong Towns, NotJustBikes, City Beautiful, Practical Engineering, among others have made great videos on this topic.
A lot of people justify speeding, and it’s kinda dumb, if you ask me.
Just because you “feel” it’s safe, doesn’t mean it actually is.
Plus, there’s a fantastic way to reduce road deaths, just have fewer cars, switch to public transport, but that takes a long time to implement if the political will doesn’t exist.
I disagree. There are two roads near me with a limit of 55 mph, and traffic on those roads regularly moves at 75-80. Driving 55 becomes dangerous when all of the other traffic is going so much faster, because nobody expects you to be that slow. You risk getting rear-ended, and if traffic is heavy, people who end up behind you now have to merge into a much faster lane of traffic to get around you.
Why don’t they confiscate driving licences and imprison all the criminals who are driving 20-25mph dangerously over the limit?
You ever tried to pull over an entire freeway full of cars at once?
A single cop car on the side of the road can get everybody to magically follow the speed limit.
That’s really dependant on location. I have had plenty of road trips up and down the I5 where groups of cars pass cops on the side of the road going 80, and no one slows down and the cops do nothing. Source: I’m one of those drivers.
same on I10. that bit in texas where the limit goes up to 80 is nice tho
For a minute, maybe. Foot goes back down when the cop’s out of view in the mirrors.
nah, it just gets them to slow to 20 over the limit here
Not personally, no - but the police would only need to catch a handful each day to get things moving a little more safely in the area.
Throw people in jail for driving too fast? That seems pretty extreme.
It’s hard to police speeding on a highway. Typically if you do get pulled over for speeding, it’s because you’re going way faster than those around you. So even in a 55, if everyone’s doing 80, you’ve gotta be doing 95 or more for a cop to single you out and arrest you. (Or maybe the cop has a quota to meet.) And where I live, local cops can’t use radar, so it’s hard to prove how fast you were going.
And then if you do get arrested, you’re most likely to get a ticket and points on your license. Get enough points and they’ll take away your license, but that means you’ve been caught repeatedly. And points expire eventually, plus if you go to your court date and plead not guilty, a lot of the time the judge will just remove the points. So a speeding ticket from years ago generally won’t have any bearing on your life except for the cost of the ticket.
So within reason, you can pretty much speed all the time consequence-free ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
All fair points for a motorway/highway/freeway/whatever. I’d mistakenly thought the previous post was referring to a smaller local road with a 55mph limit.
I don’t really care so much about what speed people do on motorways, but I have a massive problem with people doing 40-60mph in a 20-30mph limit residential area. Bear in mind where I live in the UK, the cars are driving 2 metres from the front door of everyone’s houses.
Because the road design at fault, not people.
Make roads narrower, and people will drive slower
If everyone is driving that fast and there aren’t accidents happening consistently then the posted limit does not reflect the reality of the road.
Or the road design doesn’t facilitate compliance with the speed limit. This is how policy and guidance on road infrastructure talks about these issues.
I live out in the sticks, and if I don’t go 70, it will take me forever to get where I need to go. Also everyone else is going 70, so the people doing 50 are creating an unsafe situation. It’s the wild west out here.
- Escalates the angry driver situation.
- Takes photos while driving.
Neither driver here is in the right.
I don’t need to be right.
Fuck you Kevin you piece of shit.
Who is Kevin?
Did you even read the post youre commenting in?
Didn’t notice the name 😔
going 70 in a 50
Both drivers deserve to lose their license
Probably not. It could be in the middle of nowhere or on a road where the speed limit hasn’t been evaluated and the state default is 50. There are tons of roads like that in California or even some where the limit is in the 30s but it really shouldn’t be and locals are in the 60s usually.
You, The Master Driver, are amply equipped to decide what the true speed limit should be.
Well if you operate a death machine it would be realy nice if you could follow the rules and not kill somebody. Of course the rules should be reasonable but being unable to follow them means you should not be operating a death machine
There’s no reason to follow unreasonable rules even when you’re driving a death machine. Especially when not following the rules has an essentially near 0 difference in hurting someone with your cage of death(not trying to be sarcastic with cage of death). Many of these roads are designed for much higher speed limits but just have not been evaluated by the government for their speed limit and possibly never will be or they will be evaluated at a much lower than reasonable speed. For example the speed limit of most California freeways is 65 traffic moves at 80 regularly and sometimes when people are feeling frisky up to 90. Neither of those speeds are unreasonable when everyone around you is also doing them and people are used to those situations or understand they will be in those situations. A great example is Germany where parts of their freeways have no speed limit where people are doing in excess of 120 mph and semis are also using it at under 60.
Based on experience, I don’t trust random assholes to determine for themselves when a rule is unreasonable. You’re unreasonable with this take and presumption about yourself. This makes you dangerous to society. You’ll prove that even more as you disagree.
You do not get to determine on your own that your actions have near 0 consequences. That’s some level of psychopathic thought and just reinforces why we have some rules. It’s also a lack of empathy or consideration of others.
You’re breaking a rule operating a dangerous machine, and you’re trying to shrug it off as no big deal. Dangerous.
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calls random people assholes and psychopaths with little to no provocation
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claims other people lack empathy and consideration
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Dude when I said that they have near 0 consequences I was talking about how 90% of the time in these situations there basically no one around doing 150 miles an hour wouldn’t hurt anyone else. Breaking a rule when no one else is around or everyone else around is doing the same thing is not dangerous. In the case of everyone going 15-25 over the limit it’s actually safe. C’mon homie think about it.
That’s easy to agree with in isolation, but many times on the main roads near me the normal flow of traffic in the slow lane can be 20 over. Driving at or below the speed limit would create a significantly more dangerous situation than cruising along at the same speed as the nearest several cars.
Yeah, you’d be operating in a more legal way, and the faster drivers around you should be able to safely deal with it, but that doesn’t mean the risk isn’t there.
This. Speed limit laws are bullshit and their selective enforcement is proof of it.
The dangerous drivers are the ones that are impeding the flow (i.e. going well below the speed limit when road/weather conditions don’t necessitate it; cruising in a passing lane, etc) or driving unpredictably/erratically (cutting people off, weaving, etc).
Not necessarily the speeders, though there can certainly be some overlap, particularly in the latter group.
But speeders are the ones that get ticketed over while those asshats just crash into schoolbusses.
This is a bullshit talking point used by psychopaths to try to justify their antisocial behavior. If the people around you are going so fast that just doing the speed limit becomes unsafe, they are the ones wholly responsible for creating those unsafe conditions. They are driving faster than the conditions (and let’s be real, their own ability) would reasonably allow for, they are the only ones that should be held responsible for the consequences of their freakish behavior.
Cool, they are the ones that will get in trouble for the accident that I am still involved in. I’d much rather not be involved in an accident than be “right”.
Is this about safety, or is this about blind adherence to the law?
Every study we have shows that the roads are safer, there are less crashes and they are less deadly when everyone just goes slower. But apparently you would rather risk getting turned into a rorschach splat than advocate for the thing that actually makes roads safer.
Yup, I’m sure the highway is much safer if everyone is traveling at 10. However, if I’m the only one traveling at 10 I have made the highway much more dangerous.
I’m advocating for not being a fucking idiot and causing an accident because in theory it’s safer to travel at slower speeds.
You’re in the wrong argument. The argument was about speeding and you’re trying to bring up recklessness in a mote general sense. Twisting the argument to make a poor point.
You don’t justify bad behavior by pointing to other bad behavior.
What you’re advocating for is allowing entitled psychopaths to set the speed everyone is forced to go because you somehow think that if someone is doing 90 in a 55 and hits someone actually doing 55 that it was the normal person’s fault.
I’m obviously not saying anyone should be doing fucking 10 on the highway, I’m saying nobody needs to be doing more than the speed limit.
Again, that sounds good on paper. In reality, I turn into an on-ramp and I’m approaching a line of cars going 75 mph. There happens to be a sign that says they should be limiting themselves to 55 mph.
If I merge at 75mph, the state of the roadway is essentially unchanged. If I merge at 55mph, I am introducing a new risk that was not there previously.
The state of the road in your scenario is already unsafe because of the people doing 75. Every. Single. Study. Shows that there are less crashes and they are less lethal when everyone just slows the fuck down. But none of you entitled fuckwits will accept even the tiniest bit of personal inconvenience for the sake of your own safety and that of everyone around you, so we have to live in fucking Mad Max instead.
-sees traffic moving down the road with no accidents
“Is this Mad Max?”
I don’t think losing their license is the right approach. I don’t think scolding them is the approach either. I think most people don’t realize that driving is a cooperative event. And to not only accept that and also expand on it helps most road rage go away.
😭 I see the error of my thinking Comrade Stalin. I will do better in the future
Fun little Stalin fact: when the Bolsheviks first took over the Kremlin, food was a scarce commodity. Stalin faked being sick so he could have a whole chicken to himself every day.
This one made me bust out laughing. Such a perfect combination.
The previous one is great too. Both new to me, at least.
Yeah, honking at me. And those flashing lights on the roof of their car are really annoying.
what the hells a ɘɔnɒlυdmɒ
This comment section is a very good case study in why better public transportation is absolutely necessary: a lot of you should not ever drive.
The only reason I accept to not let these people pass is if it forces you do something unsafe, like throwing yourself over to the next lane and slamming on the brakes to match speed with the other cars. Otherwise just give them the lane and let them be a reckless ass somewhere else away from you. Safer that way. It’s not your job to enforce traffic rules.
Exactly. You have no clue why they’re speeding either. Sure it could be some a-hole, but it could also be someone with a medical situation, or someone that’s about to poop their pants.
When I was younger I used to stay in the lane. Now I move over if it’s safe, and let them pass. Not worth the chance of accidentally upsetting a psycho.
I agree it’s safer to let them pass, but a medical (or personal) emergency does not give you the right to endanger other people on the road by driving fast and/or recklessly. That’s why they paint priority vehicles in bright colours and put flashing lights on them - to make it safer for everyone.
If you have a medical emergency, you call an ambulance. Yes, they will have to drive to you first, but care starts when they arrive. If the emergency isn’t big enough to get an ambulance, there’s no reason to drive fast either.
Have you seen how expensive an ambulance ride is?
Being in the US, I’d order an uber before I call for an ambulance. Even with insurance I’m afraid to test that debt machine.
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Using phone while driving… Great.
Fuck everyone who ever touches their phone while the vehicle is on. This shit is not okay, ever.
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The phone is clearly mounted on the dashboard.
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It’s not uncommon for people to record their whole trip for social media, not just take to a picture.
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This caption could have been pasted over a completely unrelated screenshot of someone else’s video for all we know.
Don’t touch your phone while driving, but also, don’t believe everything you see on social media.
Ikr the number of people going “hurr they do phone use” has me wondering when the fuck people lost basic cognitive skills.
On your last point… It’s still damaging because it normalises it. UK has very harsh stance on this and you’d get in shit even for point 1. There should be zero tolerance on this. They’re a dickhead driver regardless. Two dickheads don’t make it right.
Incorrect, in the UK you can touch/use the phone if it’s mounted in a cradle. Touch it un-cradled though and wham that’s instant points even if it was out of battery and turned off
UK is a paper tiger on this.
It’s not uncommon for people to record their whole trip for social media, not just take to a picture.
That’s still a distraction. Even if they don’t intend to upload the entire recording they are paying less attention to the road in order to pay attention to their “performance”.
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I have some great news for you. Look at what took effect yesterday in my state! Using a mobile device, including at a red light, is now a primary offense (you’ll get pulled over for just that).
This just applies to PA, but it’s a pretty big state with a population between Sweden and the Netherlands, so it’s not nothing!
Doesn’t matter if it’s not enforced. We have no holding phone rules in GA and I routinely see people using their phones while driving.
Worse, too often these laws are selectively enforced only when cops are looking for an excuse to profile minorities and poorer drivers.
yeah i was gonna say. they enforced the no texting law for maybe a year here, then they just started using “I thought I saw them texting” as probable cause to pull over anyone they wanted.
They put up cameras to detect phone and seatbelt offences here in Queensland a couple of years ago. It’s been quite lucrative for the state.
I live in PA and I’m not holding my breath for this shit to ever be enforced. I’m a school bus driver and last year I had a local cop pass me when I was stopped with my red flashers on letting kids off the bus. He was driving with one hand and looking at his phone in the other - never even saw me.
tbf, going 20 in a 50 zone is probably not a terrible situation to be multitasking in. not at all like multitasking at 50 in a 50 zone
hevicle
Given the size bloat, I think heavy vehicle => hevicle is appropriate.
I’m a school bus driver and many of my coworkers use their phones (talking, texting and even doom scrolling) while driving a bus - sometimes even when they have kids aboard. And these buses have internal cameras that are always recording! I don’t understand how they’re not fired or at least suspended for it, but I suppose the driver shortage has something to do with it.
I just let them pass you. Not worth some lunatic you piss off even more and end up shooting you.
If it’s a 2 lane per side road the best way to get them to pass you is to not break check them but just take your foot off the gas until they get frustrated enough to just go around but this contextually sounds like a single lane sitch which you are correct is dangerous.
I’m a school bus driver and the course material (and test questions) for the CDL state this explicitly. If someone is tailgating you, you slow down. Tailgaters are gonna tailgate no matter what, and slowing down means the damage will be less if they do happen to hit you. If that makes them mad tough tittie (the course material does not use “tough tittie” but you can tell they wanted to).
The great irony of people who tailgate school buses is that WE CAN’T EVEN FUCKING SEE YOU BACK THERE. Even in your fantasy world of the person in front of you feeling pressured and speeding up (which never ever actually happens), it can’t possibly happen if they don’t even know you’re there.
Unfortunately for some, that pressure is real and entirely illogical. For the longest time my wife would start getting anxious and frustrated when someone tailgated her and would start to speed up… Only to contue getting tailgated by the same person. Took a lot of insistence from me to not play their stupid game for her to realize that not only was it stupid to speed up for them, but more dangerous and entirely illegal to start speeding just because of a tailgater.
I’m not doubting you at all, but how dumb does one have to be to tailgate a bus? As if you can force a bus into anything.
If you tailgate a larger vehicle, all you do is put yourself into mortal danger.
how dumb does one have to be to tailgate a bus?
Pretty fucking dumb but it’s a low bar. The only upside to tailgating a larger vehicle like a bus is that our stopping distance is a lot greater so the tailgater is less likely to slam into us.
I slow down to allow them to pass me safely and easily.
I would fully agree that confronting a lunatic face to face is dangerous, but the chances of getting shot for driving slow is next to zero.
https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/driver-shot-at-for-going-too-slow-eyewitness-says/804586303/
Boom, it happened one time so it will happen every time
Just let them go, because they are eventually gonna crash into a cop car and then you’ll see the grest confrontation between fascist pig vs unhinged sov-cit in real time, great show!
But is not zero
people in my region have been shot at for flashing their lights at someone to tell them their lights were off. that’s why i think escalating a scenario where one or both of you are wielding/controlling deadly weapons/machinery is the only way to go.
This is correct. It’s never worth it.
Love reading threads about driving cause everyone is very upset for no discernible reason.
Driving is dangerous, and intentionally making it more dangerous deserves anger
The beauty of this comment is that it could be in support of either position.
I’ll do something similar to the OP. If I’m doing 29 in a 25 and you ride my ass, we will now do 24 in a 25. I like to think I’ve improved the safety of the local roadway. I won’t negotiate with terrorists.
anger
Is a big reason why it’s dangerous
This is why we should move the horb somewhere and have great big spikes on the steering wheel - the danger should have never been outsourced to others.
I get, i know it’ll never take off, but the current madness of 2T shockers is indefensible to me
Driving is inherently stressful. Hell, merely being around cars is proven to negatively impact your health: https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/newsroom/editorial/are-you-noticing-the-harmful-noise
Driving seems to bring out the second-worst in people.
You know, I get it, they’re probably just an asshole. Maybe they’re having an emergency, though. How about just letting them get around in case there is a good reason for driving recklessly? Or maybe just in case they’re nuts enough to make things violent?
I mean, the text say the guy honked for going “70 in a 50”.
If you take it at face value, the person posting is the asshole and a terrible driver endangering everybody on the road.
She’s taking selfies while driving, clearly she’s the better person
I could be wrong but it looks like a dual direction dash cam. Since it’s the internet, the text and pic might have never been related. Also, the person doing over 70 in a 50 couldn’t overtake at 20? The whole thing seems like rage bait.
The other person would have to be doing 70 as well, in order to honk at them.
Sure. There can be more than one terrible driver endangering everybody on the road at the same time.
I’m constantly, endlessly disappointed at how hard it is for human brains to accept that two people disagreeing with each other can both be wrong.
The only thing I was in disagreement over was that you said “was the asshole”.
When they were both assholes all along.
The destination was the assholes we met all along.
The alternative interpretation is that the second driver was doing 50, and honked at the first driver when they passed doing 70.
I mean, fair enough, on a technicality at least.
Could’ve honked while being overtaken
And the other guy is the bigger asshole for honking at the poster for going too slowly when she’s doing 20 over.
If you take it all at face value, that is.
No one is in danger strictly because of 20 over. Please. Our speed limits are insane and not grounded in safety.
I never really looked into this (relation between speed limits and accidents/safety), so I figured I’d verify your statement with a quick google search and it turns out you’ve got it all wrong. There is a deep well established link between speed limits and accident risk, see for example here:
Now you know! :)
We’re talking about speeding and you post some study about absolute speed? GTFO🤣.
You want to talk about absolute risk? What’s the increase in risk when you set an arbitrarily low speed limit on a highway clearly able to handle high speeds? When you look at the reality of induced road rage and creating large deltas in speed?
You’d be that politician giving yourself a pat on the back while ignoring the actual effects of your policy.
I would actually hear you answer these questions. I don’t see how lengthening break zones, decreasing reaction time and so on wouldn’t increase risks more than people being getting dangerously mad at the speedlimit. And as a cronic speeder i would like to have something other than shrugs and shitty excuse for my behavior.
Most people don’t drive speed limits. They drive the speed the road is designed for. When you put arbitrarily slow limits on highways most speed. Those that don’t then create dangerous speed deltas and road rage. These well known behaviors are already included and designed into the stats and engineering.
Typically highways will have higher percentage of fatal incidents but a much much much lower frequency and lower absolute number per mile. Well designed variable rate highways, even with a higher % fatality rate overall are safer.
NHTSA Road Type Crash Rate (per 100M VMT) Fatality Rate (per 100M VMT)
Urban Local Roads ~350–500+ ~1.5–2.0 Rural Local Roads ~200–300 ~2.0–3.0 Urban Collectors ~200–300 ~1.0–1.5 Urban Arterials ~100–200 ~1.2–1.8 Rural Arterials ~80–150 ~1.5–2.5 Urban Freeways/Interstates ~60–100 ~0.5–1.0 Rural Interstates ~40–80 ~0.6–1.3
By pushing traffic more quickly and reducing congestion you’ll lower the totals while increasing the frequency that an individual is killed.
The speed must be designed into the infrastructure and if you’re designing roads where you commonly have a 20 mph delta it’s likely a shitty designed urban artery. And unless you’re going to invest in trains and start kicking people off the road or put them into debt for speeding, people are going to do what makes sense at the time.
Thank you for a well writen respone!
Oh hey look a guy on the internet who doesn’t when someone contradicts his baseless claims with evidence. There’s something you don’t see every day.
Oh hey, some guy mouthing off who doesn’t understand how relative and absolute risk work who just went off to have Google to search for the phrase that validates their assumptions. Rare sighting indeed.
Facts don’t care about your feelings. You’ve presented zero evidence to the contrary, how are you this confident about your assertion? This is such a joke
The forces involved in a collision grow exponentially with speed. It’s basic physics
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 bravo. Further showing the lack of understanding. Just fantastic.
No one is in danger strictly because of 20 over
More speed = more danger. Simple as that.
Source: https://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/roadsafety/topics-tips/speeding
👌👍
Going 20 is the definition of “letting them pass”. Or should she have ran off the road so the tailgating ahole could continue on going 90 in a 50 zone?
Move out of the passing lane generally is the simple and legal thing to do.
This.
Lived in Korea for awhile, and they generally seem to not have this kind of vindictiveness or self-righteousness. They’re usually like, “I dunno. Either they got a reason, or it’s not worth the effort for me to do something about it.”
That said, social pressure is much more effective here, so the vast majority of people fall in line. See COVID
This is why I’m in favor of public transit. So many people should not be on the road. This goes for the granny under the speed limit drivers and the insane road ragers.
Once she gets to work she finds a sign taped to the back of the car saying “honk it’s my birthday”
I’ve never understood why people pick on drivers under the speed limit. It’s called a limit, why do we expect people to be over it?
There are speed limits in both directions, in every jurisdiction I’m familiar with it’s illegal to drive both too fast and too slow, to exceed the posted speed limit or to drive so slowly that it impedes other traffic.
Oh, that’s very interesting. Where I live there are only upper speed limits on most roads except highways. On other roads you can drive as slowly as you want, though everyone will overtake you if they can or honk at you if you don’t.
Where I live there are only upper speed limits on most roads except highways. On other roads you can drive as slowly as you want,
Are you sure that you really don’t have any traffic rules against causing a hazard or impeding traffic flow by being too slow? That seems both unusual and unsafe to me.
Where I’m from an officer can always pull you over for “reckless driving” or “impeding traffic”. The argument can literally be made that you’re driving dangerously no matter how fast you go. These days I just stick to the literal posted speed (as long as road conditions and traffic allow) and I’ll let a lawyer defend me from any citations. I stay in the slow lane and am constantly getting passed but I’ll be damned before I get another ticket for going 6 over.
The argument can literally be made that you’re driving dangerously no matter how fast you go.
Well, that’s certainly true also in every jurisdiction I’m familiar with, as it should be, common sense, really.
Idk I don’t think an officer should have the right to pull over a person driving the posted speed limit in clear weather with no other proximate reason but maybe I’m insane.
Depending where it is, a figure of speech up to a certain point of where they actual enforce it, most cops don’t even go the speed limit on some roads and highways.
They’re low and out dated as fuck, and mostly just a money grab, again, depending on the street and the limit, for example excluding in front of schools and parks
because they are assholes who think anyone going slower than them is stupid and they are very smart and the speed limit should not apply to such very smart people.
I say this to every coworker who asks why I have a car I rarely drive. It’s honestly just less stressful to commute that way. Idgaf about the weirdos at the bus stop for the most part. 90% of them are high or drunk af passed out cleanly. Every once in a while I have to nudge them out of the way to sit but that’s not usually an issue they just grunt and shift and they’re usually too shitfaced to move in their sleep once they’re out again. One is a lady who is always drunk af but awake and basically just uses the bus stop as a people watching spot and tells me neighborhood drama. There’s a pair of northerners who are polite in a northerner way. There were a brother and sister who were sleeping there for a month but last I heard she found a job and I wished them luck and haven’t seen them since. I’ve had a few really good philosophical conversations. One was a guy who had gotten his phone stolen and we chatted about the positive effects of increased mindfulness of the day to day and not being constantly observed and reachable by both your personal contacts and the faceless corporations. I got bothered by one guy but groundskeepers were hanging kinda close and the admins pass me on their way from their cars into the building I haven’t seen him since so either the facility took care of it or the other inhabitants did. Sometimes I talk, sometimes I just eat my Bacon and biscuit from the cafeteria and drink some tea. I’m trying to listen my way through the Bible just to know what’s in it. Right now I’m listening to the long long list of shit you’re not allowed to do while living in an aggressive war tribe in tents the desert like shitting too close to camp or having sex that doesn’t make more babies to keep fighting the other tribes. The cadence is weirdly chill almost seussian.
I do this and then wonder why the fuck the asshole honking won’t just pass.
I turn it into a game to see how slow I have to go before they leave.
I have come to a full stop before, and they just kept honking. they did drive off once I got out and grabbed a crow bar from the bed of my truck and walked towards them with a smile.
I had no intention of hurting them and it was more for my own protection than anything. They clearly wanted an altercation and fled once they realized how utterly stupid they were being.
some folks just want to feel some kind of power because they feel powerless and they just need a wake-up call.
some folks just want to feel some kind of power because they feel powerless and they just need a wake-up call.
This is, like, the perfect summation of the human condition. Probably an awful lot of it, anyway.
When people ride my ass while I am doing (at least) the speed limit I just take my foot off the gas to gently slow down until they go around me. If its only one lane then I will go under the speed limit. Im petty too like that
It’s not just petty, it’s safety.
You can’t influence the size of the safety margin between you and the car behind you. But you can influence the speed at which the person behind you slams into you in case of an accident, by reducing the speed that both of you drive.
When I drive in deer country, especially at night, I will always slow up when encountering a tailgater because I might have to brake hard for an animal and don’t want to hit a deer AND/OR get rear ended - going slower means they will at least hit me less hard. They can go around if they don’t like my speed. Also, statistics show that drivers that stay well behind other vehicles have far fewer accidents. Finally, traffic tends to travel at the speed of the slowest drivers on the road, so they gain little on our curvy, hilly two lane roads.
Only time I’ve been close to road rage was when a Mercedes CL had a really bright LED strobe light installed inside it’s front grill and he activating it, if somebody was in his way.
It wasn’t a cop or other emergency vehicle. Just an asshole.
I was lucky to be in front of him for 15 minutes when traffic got compacted enough to prevent lane change.
For a moment I considered hitting the brakes on that particular tailgater.
Sometimes you can adjust your side mirrors to reflect such a light into the driver’s eyes
That works. Also, back when I delivered pizza I kept a rather large LED flashlight in my cupholder all the time, ostensibly for spotting mailboxes and house numbers. (This was back in the day when having a powerful LED flashlight was a big deal, not like nowadays when you can get 3 for $10 on Amazon or whatever.) Pointing it out the back window usually got the point across when asshats felt the need to sit three feet off my back bumper and shine their high beams at me.
Shit if I find myself night commuting again on back roads I might have to keep such a flashlight in my car. I’ve had so many trucks light up my entire fucking cabin with their illegal light mods
My attorney has advised me to make no statements whatsoever regarding the applicability of the Lumintop Thor Mini I just bought the other week, which outputs a mere 250 lumens but does so in a narrow cone that’s got, to my reckoning, a divergence of only about four or five degrees.
I’ll have to do some measuring later, but at rear-windshield-to-asshole distance it’ll only throw a spot that’s probably about a foot wide, delivering maximum fuck you with a minimum of collateral damage.
that’s pretty expensive for 250 lumens. i can get 500 for a third the price.
In an LEP light? A regular LED, sure. But those lack the novelty of being able to lance somebody in the face with a laser beam.
People keep saying this but I tried it and its really hard to do that and concentrate on driving.
Yeah the one time I tried it I ended up just mucking up my own mirrors and not managing to shine the light back in their eyes
What to do when you have a tailgater behind you:
- Foot off the gas.
- Wait until the tailgater tries to overtake you.
- PIT maneuver.
- Keep driving safely.
