Comment by IronWolve
5 days ago
Driving in montana before the state implemented a max speed, I'd have my cruise control set at 100 mph. I remember seeing limos pass me like I was sitting still.
I miss those days.
5 days ago
Driving in montana before the state implemented a max speed, I'd have my cruise control set at 100 mph. I remember seeing limos pass me like I was sitting still.
I miss those days.
Reasonable and prudent is objectively the best speed limit.
Going 110 on a dry empty highway? Carry on.
Going 110 on I-90 right outside of Billings? Pull over young man, its time for the highway patrol to have a philosophical discussion with you on the side of the road.
The problem is that it's literally subjectively the best speed limit, at least from the standpoint of that young man outside of Billings.
110 MPH is never a safe speed for a car on a highway. Crash rate increases exponentially with speed. At 110 MPH you are placing your life and the lives of other road users at risk for no real good reason.
The #1 thing for driving safely is being predictable. Too many people seem to think "driving safely" is mechanically being able to control your car on the road, but that's the easy part. The difficulty is there are other people on the road all taking their own independent actions.
On a US highway you can glance in the mirror and see a vehicle, and you can work on the assumption that it's not going (much) more than 65mph. Or see a gap and have a general idea of how long you know it will still be a gap. Having a massive variety in possible speeds harms that.
I think many people seem completely unaware about how fast a car at 110mph (for example) can appear. It's in the order of time it takes to check your blindspot and other mirror - there's a hard limit to how many directions you can be looking at one time after all. No amount of "Personal Driving Skills" or "Being More Aware" can help that if the timing is unlucky.
This is cringe, and I refuse to engage with it further.
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Driving through Montana is how I discovered my current car won't let me set the cruise control higher than 90 mph.
Probably for the best, they do have 80 mph speed limits now, but lots of drivers there still drive like there's no speed limit.
Visit Germany. The right stretch of Autobahn at the right time and you can still experience this. I just did two days ago.
Note insurance companies can not pay out if you drive too fast even if there’s no limit.
It depends where in Germany. Many parts of Autobahn have local speed regulations.
To be exact: Out of 25,758 km Autobahn in Germany 18,115 km have no speed limit (70.4%) and another 1,608 km (6.2 %) have gantries without speed limit under favourable conditions (construction sites not taken into account).[1]
There are also some other roads that are not included in these figures because they are not classified as Autobahn, but Autobahn-like carriageways. Germany has around 3,350 km of them, a few without speed limit.[2]
[1] Source: ADAC report from 2024-04-22 (in German), see https://www.adac.de/verkehr/standpunkte-studien/positionen/t...
[2] For examples see the German Wikipedia article "Autobahnähnliche Straße" at https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn%C3%A4hnliche_Stra%C3%...
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I never really got to enjoy those days. The path I'd typically take through Montana had a speed limit: 90 was about as fast as I could go and still get good enough MPG to make it to the next gas station...
What a perfect invitation to get on one of my favorite soapboxes. Spoiler: I'm a big fan of Brock Yates.
Speed limits are an imperfect tool for an important problem. They were generally much higher, or nonexistent, on US highways before the 1973 oil crisis [0]. They were intended to save fuel, but weren't very effective. Nowadays, most people discuss them as a safety tool.
They aren't great for that, either. Speed disparity is the best way to cause an accident, with those going at least 5MPH under or 15MPH over the 85th percentile speed being the most dangerous drivers on the road. Limits force people to choose between going a comfortable speed and following the rules. When the difference between comfortable and legal speed is too high, you get situations where raising the limit can reduce the rate of accidents (citation discusses stats, my suggested reasoning is more speculative) [1]. There are still of course many cases where setting a slower speed limit has reduced accidents [2], but that effect is not universal. Also worth considering is that, even if higher limits reduce the rate of accidents, accidents at higher speeds are almost universally more severe.
Consider long, straight, flat roads with 2+ lanes on each side, a median, no sidewalks, infrequent turn and/or merge lanes, with ample room to speed up or slow down, and speed limits of 50 MPH or lower. There are several near me. They are painful to drive, because they breed traffic tickets, tailgating, and accidents. Hell, the people on either side of the "go a comfortable speed" and "go a legal speed" even fight each other, making rolling roadblocks to slow traffic, or giving way to road rage.
Either raise the limit, or add curves, trees, sidewalks, bike lanes, etc to convince people to slow down. I tend more towards the "I can't drive 55" side [3] because I think it's generally better for the economy when people and goods can move faster. Edit: For a specific example, from Kansas City, the 9+ hour drive to Colorado Springs or Denver (at 70MPH) makes it nearly impossible to go there. There's very little traffic on I70 past Topeka. Without a speed limit, I could easily do the trip in a little over 4 hours in my C350. That would be FANTASTIC for the economies on either side of that stretch (not to mention along it).
If you're not familiar with Brock Yates and his influence, check out [4, 5, 6].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law
[1]: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/12/181212135021.h...
[2]: https://jalopnik.com/iihs-finds-that-lowering-speed-limits-a...
[3]: https://youtu.be/RvV3nn_de2k?si=mLYQIkwlHCDPr6ec
[4]: https://www.caranddriver.com/features/columns/a15143608/the-...
[5]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9fZI3wBA1o
[6]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTT1_JZp2Sg
> Also worth considering is that, even if higher limits reduce the rate of accidents, accidents at higher speeds are almost universally more severe.
Obviously this is true, and especially important at low speeds, but I wonder how much difference there is between 70 and 80 — I would have assumed they are both typically fatal
The energy is exponential. It takes 30% farther to stop going 80 than it does going 70.
One of my favorite trivia is the scenario that a car going 50 mph sees an obstruction in front and slams on its brakes and stops just in time just tapping it. A car next to him going 70 mph sees the same object, has faster reflexes, and hits his brakes at the exact same spot of the road. He slams into the object at 50 mph.
Just the difference between 70 and 80 is the energy of going almost 40 mph.
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