What is it? CXLV

[Bruce L. Bergman]

Ummmmm... What color is the sun on your native planet?

Speed Limits are set by morons - always have been, always will.

The Traffic engineers try to use a rationale like they're setting them at "the 85th Percentile of the average traffic flow on that stretch of road" or other nonsense, but plain and simple they're guessing. Drivers will drive at a speed they feel is safe for the conditions at the moment, and each driver has a different idea of what constitutes 'safe' (some of which are nonsensical or ignore certain hazards in their estimate), which creates an instant conflict.

Too low in many places, too high in others - you have to know to look out for blind intersections, people pulling out (or worse, backing out) of blind driveways without looking, people pulling out from curb parking without looking - on both sides, which covers the U-Turn from a standing start at the curb.

We have a stretch of secondary road that was posted for 30 MPH for several decades, to get around the defacto residential limit of 25 MPH when unposted. Then they put in killer speed-bumps you have to slow to 10 MPH to clear without damage - and left the 30 MPH signs posted...

Then you get to the open highways and the restricted-access freeways and turnpikes, where there is no cross-traffic, they're fenced off so no stray animals, broad shoulders, proper grading and drainage... And some moron in the Legislature decides that we have to save fuel, so we'll set the limits artificially low to force you to.

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[Richard Heathfield]

Yellow, last time I checked.

Nevertheless, laws are broken by criminals - always have been, always will.

In the UK, the rules are pretty simple - national speed limit applies unless overturned by local signage. National speed limits are: 30 in a built-up area, otherwise 60 for single-carriageway and 70 for dual-carriageway. Slight variations apply for various kinds of vehicle (e.g. lorries are 50 and 60 rather than 60 and 70), and drivers of those vehicles are required to know the variations.

That's why absolute limits are imposed, but these are limits, not targets. If local conditions (e.g. rain, blind corner, some idiot walking in the middle of the road, whatever) mean that it is not safe to drive at 30 in a

30 zone, then it's the driver's responsibility to be aware of this and to drive at a safe speed.

Yes. This is called "driving with due care and attention", and driving /without/ due care and attention is an offence, in the UK at least.

The speed limit is not there to protect your suspension. That's your problem. The speed limit is there to discourage you from wrapping your vehicle around trees, lamp-posts, Saabs, six-year-old children, and so on.

We get the government we deserve, alas.

[J. Clarke]

And by lumping people who disregard an arbitrary number painted on a piece of metal with the thieves and murderers you discredit the whole legal process.

In other words they have nothing whatsoever to do with the appropriate speed for the road in question and everything to do with the convenience of politicians.

By setting limits the government is substituting its own judgment for that of the man on the spot. 8 lane highway, well lighted, 2 AM, not a car in sight, why should one limit oneself to 60 MPH just to satisfy some bureaucrat?

That should be the offense, not "offending some bureaucrat by second guessing his judgment as to the maximum safe speed on a particular stretch of road".

If the bureaucrats want a 10 MPH speed limit they should establish one, not circumvent the democratic process by putting in obstructions.

Actually we get interlocking constituencies and the squeaky wheel. It's far easier to get up a lobby _for_ some piece of legislation than it is to get one up _against_ some piece of legislation.

[badger.badger]

Well some might, one city locally has a traffic planning engineer/manager that doesn't even have a driving licence, she however does have a degree.....

[badger.badger]

Another reason Richard is the number of drivers who panic brake when ever they see one, one not far away was involved in a multiple death RTI...

[Mark & Juanita]

... and when you put the wrong people in charge, you can turn anyone and everyone, by definition into a criminal.

[Moonbat bright idea: "I know, to save gas and lives, let's set the national speed limit to 35 MPH!" Moonbat legislature, "Great idea!". Reality, entire nation is turned into criminals (or idiots)]

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+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough +--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

[Richard Heathfield]

The legal process doesn't have any credibility whatsoever, which is why it requires police officers to enforce it. Everybody knows the law is stupid, but breaking it is rarely a good strategy.

[Speed limits]

That's right, but it still makes sense to observe them by driving at or below them.

No, the law requires the man on the spot to show good judgement, *and* the law requires the man on the spot to observe the speed limit.

It's to do with the thickness of your wallet. Trust me on this. :-(

The one is (at least in part) a polite way of saying the other.

So tell your political representative that you require him to get legislation passed removing the speed bumps. If enough people do the same, the law will change through the democratic process. But they won't. You know they won't. Even though you're likely to have a majority of people agreeing with you. This is just Yet Another Sign that "the democratic process" doesn't work.

Fine, so get up a lobby *for* passing a law that requires the replacement of all speed bumps with, say, pedestrian crossings or something.

[Richard Heathfield]

Yes, and we *do* put the wrong people in charge.

The problem is that the right people never stand for office, or if they do, we as an electorate ignore them completely.

[RicodJour]

Well, they have to start working up a number somewhere. I suppose they could hold speed limit elections...

It's not the 85th percentile rule that I object to, it's how they go about arriving at the number.

It used to be that they'd just have the rubber sensor strips running across the road hooked up to a little box. You wouldn't even think twice about it. Most people wouldn't even know what it was if they noticed it. In other words an honest, blind sampling. Now they put up one of those radar speed signs that flashes your speed and has the speed limit posted on it (most of the time). I think the majority of people don't worry about going a couple or a few miles over the speed limit, but when those flashing radar signs are in place, instead of getting an honest sampling, the drivers _all_ slow down to stay under the speed limit. They're never attended, it's not like you're going to get a ticket (yet). So what happens? Now everybody is doing under the existing speed limit, and they use the 85th percentile rule to drop the speed limit some more. Revenues, you know. On one of the major roads, if you can call any of the roads on the peninsula major, the speed limit is 25 miles an hour. 30 used to be the speed limit and 35 is safe. This bothers me. I always speed up five or eight miles an hour to offset the general tendency to slow down.

On another road some miles from here the speed limit is 55. There used to be _one_ speed limit sign in an eight or ten mile stretch of road. This area is pretty populated, and people don't expect a 55 mph limit except on the highway. They didn't want people to know the speed limit, and consequently, people drove more slowly. That road's still

55 and they've filled in with more speed limit signs, and sure enough, the average speed on that road has picked up considerably. Why they haven't used their tactics to drop the limit on that road, I don't know.

If there are no signs warning of those speed bumps that's a nice law suit waiting to happen.

R

[J. Clarke]

The traffic engineer if he's doing his job lets the drivers decide. He does a study, finds out the 85th percentile speed (or whatever the research showed--this was done in the '30s if I recall correctly and the purpose of the research was to figure out what speed limit produced the fewest accidents or fatalities--it's not a number somebody pulled out of his butt) and sets the limit there. If he's good then he does another study to see what the change in speed limit has done to the speed.

[CBFalconer]

... snip ...

AIUI the Germans have a more intelligent system on the Autobahn. They concentrate on unsafe driving habits, such as tailgating, or failure to keep right, combined with careful initial licensing provisions. I also understand that the resultant statistics confirm the efficacy of this.

[J. Clarke]

In 1995 the Congress rescinded the National Maximum Speed Limit and in Montana the speed limit reverted to "reasonable and prudent". There was a decline in fatalities each year that that was in effect. In

1999 the Montana legislature for whatever reason chose to implement a 75 MPH speed limit. The result was a doubling in fatalities.

[Dave Balderstone]

The case I was talking about is here in Canada, not in the US. Different courts and our Charter of Rights and Freedoms is interpreted by those courts.

[Dave Balderstone]

Really? You're willing to take legal responsibility for someone else's behaviour simply because they borrow your car?

Where do you live? I'd like to stop by and test drive the next car you sell.

[Dave Balderstone]

You should go back and re-read what I posted. I think you may have misunderstood it.

[Henry St.Pierre]

Richard Heathfield wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Can't argue with that.

[Henry St.Pierre]

"badger.badger" wrote in news:1p0ah.20880 $ [e-mail]:

And her degree is in ..... ?

[Dale Scroggins]

A fraction of a second can be a long time. I stopped trying to squeeze through yellow lights a couple of years ago.

I was sitting first at a stoplight in the left lane of a two-lane access road, both lanes going north. The on-ramp was about a hundred yards beyond the intersection. The left lane of the access road led to the on-ramp, and and right lane continued straight. There were four or five cars behind me. The right lane was clear; everyone was planning to enter the freeway.

Some local drivers had developed a technique of timing the light; they would coast to the light in the right lane, accelerate as soon as the light changed to green, pass all the stopped cars in the left lane, then whip over into the on-ramp.

The local driver that day was a young woman in her early twenties. The man in the pickup squeezing the yellow light (going east) was about my age, around fifty. It is still hard to believe such impact is possible on urban streets, at relatively low speeds. But the impact was real, and fatal. The young woman was dead before she reached the hospital.

The driver of the pickup said he entered the intersection under yellow. I know the young woman entered the intersection under green.

I saw my first fatal auto accident at age eight. I was nearly killed at age twelve when a car hit my bike. Five percent of my high school class died in auto accidents within two years of graduation. Over forty years of driving, I have witnessed scores of fatal accidents. Aunts, uncles, cousins, and in-laws have all died in traffic accidents.

I'm libertarian in most all areas EXCEPT traffic laws. I believe I share roads with dozens of people each day who would kill me to save two minutes' driving time, if they thought they would face no consequences. Through the years working my way up as a prosecutor, nothing gave me more satisfaction than traffic convictions.

[Bruce L. Bergman]

Bingo. They made it "Reasonable and Prudent" during daylight hours, and 75 at night AIUI. That made everyone think about being reasonable and prudent while they were driving... And an officer can still bust people with that, but he has to make his case before the Judge.

Things that can easily knock down the limit are blind curves, upcoming ramps or interchanges, "Lane Ends Merge Left/Right" and other momentary changes in road conditions. You have to pay attention to the signs and the other cars around you.

If the drivers coming up on these types of hazards aren't at least off the gas and covering the brake, ready to react, and actively leaving holes for merging traffic and other courtesies, those omissions can easily be considered unsafe by a reasonable person.

But it's a lot easier to hand out drivers licenses to practically anyone with a pulse, and set artificially low speed limits to allegedly make it safe for them to be out there with those of us who take our driving seriously.

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[Bruce L. Bergman]

Sorry, but from the details you have given it sounds to me like the (late) young woman was 100% at fault here.

She entered from a rolling start as the signal went green - But she did not, in fact *could not*, check to see if the intersection was clear before she proceeded into and through it - the rolling start would preclude that. And you didn't make it clear which way the local driver was going, but the pickup was probably coming from the left, and she couldn't see him through the line of stopped cars in the left lane she was planning on sliding around to gain fifteen seconds on her trip.

This is a patently dangerous move that a lot of drivers make, without thinking about the consequences. Some people only learn that one after hearing about accidents like that, getting into an accident like that, or after their first really close call.

The pickup driver probably was going through legally on the yellow - or might have been squeezing it slightly and entered on the yellow, but if the truck was heavily loaded you don't stop on a dime. But that does not matter, the driver entering the intersection on a fresh green light still has the responsibility to Make Sure The Intersection Is Clear Before Proceeding.

She committed vehicular suicide by proxy. He was legally in the clear but was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and probably still has guilt issues and/or nightmares about it.

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