posted by
n1
on Thursday July 03 2014, @06:10AM
from the 5mph-speed-limits-in-new-york,-london-and-tokyo dept.
from the 5mph-speed-limits-in-new-york,-london-and-tokyo dept.
It's a sad day when it's surprising to see a government using scientific method to make policy, but for once that has happened in Canada. After several years of lobbying, drivers in British Columbia will see speed limits on many rural highways increased to what is commonly referred to as the 85th Percentile.
Media coverage is ranging from the confused to the outraged, and the call in shows and web site comment streams are just plain out there.
There will also be a new set of laws to enforce the practice of "keep right, except to pass" on multi-lane highways, and a new definition for "Winter Tires" to clarify that mud and snow (M+S) and mountain/snowflake tires are defined as winter tires.
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BC Government Uses Science to Set Speed Limits
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(Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Thursday July 03 2014, @06:25AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by anubi on Thursday July 03 2014, @06:37AM
Most of the people will usually drive at whatever speed they feel in control.
I know I have caught myself "speeding" many times, albeit under the conditions I felt perfectly safe to do so.
Then later find myself going 10MPH in an area where the signs clearly indicate I could go 35. My problem was so many cars parked alongside the road and kids playing nearby. No way was I going to go that fast.
A lot of this seems to be law to be selectively enforced, and a lot of it appears to be "fundraisers".
I think they are right... I, too, believe about 85% of us will seek the optimal zone. About 5% of us will be so aggressive on the road that they pose a significant threat to the rest of us, and that is what the speed limit laws need to address. The remaining 10% will drive too slow, but nothing wrong with that. They have already established their safe speed being below legal speed. I would not have it any other way.
Laws need to be there to enforce the public interest, not there to hinder the public.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 03 2014, @07:17AM
(is it scientific or a matter of belief/faith? I'll come back a bit later to this.)
The speed limit indicated by TFA is the speed at or below which 85 percent of people drive at any given location under good weather and visibility conditions. The diagram [txdot.gov] (integrated distribution of chosen speeds) shows more than 5% driving below the 85% limit; i.e. the chosen limit is not the speed that 85% of the drivers would chose as "my maximum limit" (which is a nonsensical metric - I don't think 85% of drivers would "vote" with a given speed to be enforced as a maximum limit).
The "85% magic value" - actually is the value at which the "integrated distribution of drivers vs speed" starts to show a decline in its slope - a sign that a diminishing number of drivers consider that speed as safe. The idea - don't punish "safe drivers" for whatever the "speeder" say.
But, if you look at the "bigger picture", the process of establishing the safe maximal limit is... still based on the "feeling of the fellow drivers' guts".
So to restate my opening parenthesis - is this a matter of pure belief or just a matter of scientifically processing the belief?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday July 03 2014, @08:03AM
c0lo:
Reply: 100% belief. Seat-of-the-pants observation.
Most people just seem to "do the right thing" when left to themselves.
Unless there is some bias ( usually instigated by some sort of reward ) for shafting their neighbor.
A few of us just seem to have to do the "tragedy of the commons" thing and mess it up for everybody.
That 85% thing looks about right to me, but that again is just a "feels about right" to me and I would really be hard pressed to offer any scientific confirmation.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by watusimoto on Thursday July 03 2014, @08:35AM
It is interesting that in these comments, people seem to think that "most drivers are reasonable." In other comments on this site, the general feeling seems to be "people drive like idiots."
Can both be true?
(Score: 2) by quadrox on Thursday July 03 2014, @08:59AM
I suppose most of the "people drive like idiots" comments are based on the fact that negative experiences are more memorable than normal/average experiences. You don't notice the hundreds of drivers that drove ok, but you will notice the three that were complete morons.
Nevertheless I believe most drivers drive ok only "by accident" - you might say they didn't have special opportunity to screw up - but they aren't really good drivers as such. To put it another way, the three morons from my theoretical example above may well be three different morons every day.
All that being said, I don't think the kind of driving that makes people say "people drive like idiots" is what is relevant for speed limits. People say other drivers are idiots because they cut them off, because they didn't use the turn signal, because they weren't paying attention, and so on. But none of that is relevant for speed limits, people might drive like idiots in all those ways and still drive with a generally safe speed.
(Score: 1) by watusimoto on Thursday July 03 2014, @09:24AM
>>> Nevertheless I believe most drivers drive ok only "by accident" - you might say they didn't have special opportunity to screw up - but they aren't really good drivers as such. <<<
I think this is the key. What may seem to be a perfectly safe speed can suddenly become very dangerous if the unexpected happens (kid darts into the street, patch of black ice, etc.). The truly unexpected is usually rare, and most drivers don't adjust their speed accordingly. Most of the time this works, but it doesn't mean their judgment is somehow magical and should be used to define what is safe.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday July 03 2014, @05:39PM
To this you also have to add the self-perceived karma boost that people get when they post negative opinions of [insert group everybody but me].
It is the group-think here that denigration somehow exalts the denegrator.
We do it all the time. Even this post....
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday July 03 2014, @02:42PM
It's actually in one of the linked articles as *their* rationale. But yeah, I laughed when I saw it.
Tailoring the law to match what people are already doing seems a bit weird, too...but this is speeding so without going all Big Brother on us I suppose there's not really any other way to force people to slow down so just don't? Not that I'm sure whether I'm against the change, but their rationale seems a bit shaky. (cf. my other comment below)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday July 03 2014, @05:07PM
Not when you consider that traffic is a group (herd if you will) activity, where the expectations and capabilities of the average tend to become the norm, and any enforcement toward an artificial norm induces more delay, accidents, and chaos than letting it flow on its own.
Cops have learned that enforcement actions in heavy traffic induce a lot more crashes than just leaving everything alone, and often the cops themselves end up the victim in these crashes.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday July 03 2014, @08:24AM
Incidentally, c0lo: Looking at that diagram you referred to... if I were to see that and try to set the speed limit based on that data, I would set it at 55. I do not know if how I see it means anything, but for what its worth ( probably less than two cents ), there it is.
Again, based only on my belief that around 85% have found a sweet spot. Geez, this is harder to quantify than where the sweet spot is in hitting a baseball or where to hit the ball on a tennis racket. Seat of the pants is about all I have to go on here... I guess some of it comes from statistics and what would be one standard deviation ( 68% ) to two standard deviations ( 95% ).
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday July 03 2014, @04:39PM
Road Speeds are currently posted (limited) by statute, and without regard to much else.
Road advisory speeds (yellow speed signs warning about curves) are actually determined by a formula, and tested with a truck mounted accelerometer. Thats as close to science as it gets. (Unfortunately they will never put an advisory speed sign up indicating anything over the posted limit, regardless of the fact that traffic always goes faster.
But only rarely does anyone ever gets ticketed traveling over the limit as long as they are "keeping up with traffic".
Common lore indicates there are Excretions for those days when local law enforcement has to complete their monthly quota, or what ever. Professional state traffic police seldom operate this way, but there is no accounting for Barney Fife.
So to answer your questions, the 8th percentile is just the speed that 85% of the drivers will cease passing each other, based on their comfort zone, with the road, the traffic, and their perception of attracting enforcement action. Nobody is making well thought out decisions, just a collective gut feel.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday July 03 2014, @04:41PM
8th should have been 85%. and Excertions should have been exceptions.
Sorry, my best proof reading is off for the holiday.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 03 2014, @09:38PM
I would have liked Excretions better in the context.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Interesting) by zocalo on Thursday July 03 2014, @08:20AM
Everyone has their own individual comfort zone, whether that's driving, extreme sports (which may also include driving), or any other hazardous situation they are in, for whatever reason. Generally that's not going to be a problem when you are "on your own", but in communal situations like driving it's not just the top 15% that cause the problems. While they are usually ones that tend to get the bad press for causing accidents the same does apply to the bottom 15% as well. Regardless of the posted speed limit I always feel safest when everyone is moving at more or less the same speed with a reasonable amount of separation between the vehicles. If anything, I tend to see more dangerous situations caused by people crawling off the end of the on-ramp into fast moving traffic then causing other drivers to have to break suddenly than by those that try to go as fast as possible. If they are using the 85-percentile to set the max speed, the next logical step should be to use the 15-percentile to set a minimum speed on express routes.
One good quite I heard some time a go: 'Remember; it's called a "speed limit" and not a "speed target"'.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Thursday July 03 2014, @11:55AM
I pretty much agree with this. People who drive slow can be a contributing factor to a crash.
There's this highway I drive frequently. In the last 15 years or so the provincial government has been working to twin the highway which use to be one lane in either direction. It's a busy highway and I still remember the days where you'd drive it for four to six hours to get from the city to my wife's hometown. In the winter it was just over an hour and a half drive and there are fewer reported incidents, seems counter intuitive with poorer driving conditioning.
The reason is in the summer the highway is crawling with RVs traveling between 50km/h to 80km/h in a 110km/h zone. The incidents happen because someone in a hurry tries to pass a caravan of RVs that hold up traffic for kilometers. My wife's hometown is a little less than midway along the length of the highway. If it takes us over four hours to get to her parents place, which should be less than an hour and a half, I can only image how long it would take someone who has to drive the length of it, which by my calculations should be a bit over a four hour drive doing the speed limit. I can imagine how frustrated I'd be knowing a four hour drive was quickly becoming 8-12 hours.
This isn't an excuse for people to speed and of course people should still be in control of their actions and are responsible if they cause an incident, but I can sympathies with them trying to get around the slow moving RVs that could be more than doubling an expected trip.
Point of the ramble is, if there is an incident it's the person trying to get around the slow moving vehicles, probably speeding to do it, that gets the write up in the paper. Slow moving vehicles are rarely involved in incidents themselves, but I see them as a huge contributing factor. In some cases I think they should be held accountable as well, if we had a minimum speed limit they would be.
When driving through Quebec their highway speed limits are posted as min 80km/h max 100km/h, which I'm of the opinion is how it should be... Despite the fact that most drivers in Quebec drive over 150km/h in a 100km/h zone, we were doing 140km/h at one point and felt like snails with other drivers zipping by us.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03 2014, @01:20PM
85% of the population don't drive RVs... hence we can ban them. Hooray!
(I hate RVs)
(Score: 1) by skater on Thursday July 03 2014, @02:22PM
And then there was Ohio, that used to enforce separate, lower speed limits on trucks and possibly RVs (I don't remember exactly) on some of their interstate highways. Fortunately they came to their senses a couple years ago.
As an RV owner myself, I generally try to keep at the speed limit, or even a bit above, because going too slow is as much a recipe for disaster as going too fast. But at the same time, plenty of people don't quite understand what "stopping distance" means - and they'll cut in front of me, then slam on the brakes for traffic. And a high speed limit might be fine for cars, but not for trucks or RVs, for example if it's windy or raining (a jackknifed trailer is a bad day for everyone). I'm going to do what I can to be safe; it's up to everyone else to do the same.
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Thursday July 03 2014, @02:51PM
And I totally get that, it's your right to own a RV and use the same road as everyone else. It's also not your fault if someone gets impatient and speeds out around you into on coming traffic.
My point wasn't to pick on RV drivers specifically. I've been stuck behind a number of older people, drunks, nervous drivers in training (We mark them with a magnetic 'N' on the license plate here), but the particular highway I'm talking about is a major travel route that MANY RV drivers use to get to the more scenic locations in the summer, which correlates to when more incidents use to happen along the road. I can sympathize with people who have to drive this highway frequently and often get stuck behind several RVs, or other slow moving vehicles, that are going slow enough they might as well be using the older highway that has a speed limit of 50-80km/h anyway. The downside of the old highway is it isn't as well maintained, it's pretty narrow and twisty and goes through a bunch of smaller towns, which might not be a disadvantage to someone that's on vacation and wants to see a bit of the country.
One thing I would have liked to have seen is every now and then for a RV to drive up an off ramp and down the other side to let accumulating traffic get by safely, but I understand they're not obligated to and it would be quite a hindrance for them.
On the plus side because of how dangerous the main highway is it's being twinned, which has been going on for the better part of ten years now, but it solves the problem for everyone. People who feel more comfortable driving slower have a lane for that and the rest of us can just pass them without driving into oncoming traffic. Now there are just a few places along the route where it's still one lane in either direction, but it's much easier to be patient knowing you're only stuck for 15-20 minutes as opposed to knowing you're stuck for two to three hours.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday July 03 2014, @08:58AM
> A lot of this seems to be law to be selectively enforced,
I do a lot of motorway miles in the UK, where the official speed limit is 70mph. If you get caught speeding more than about 3 times you get your license suspended.
I can tell you right now that if the government were to somehow detect and prosecute *every* case of speeding on the motorway... within 3 weeks there would only be about 6 legal drivers left in the entire country, and business would completely grind to a halt.
The "normal" speed over here is 80-85. You have the big lorries over on the left limited to about 60mph, usually mixed in with a few nervous drivers / small little cars that can't go much faser. Then the middle lane where everyone cruises at 80ish, and the right hand lane where (mostly german brand, for some reason) cars zip along at 90-100, sometimes 110 on good conditions. It's pretty rare to find a car doing 70mph or less on the motorways, and even rarer to find such a car without a fragile little octogenarian peering over the wheel.
O/T but I want to vent. Something that really fucking annoys me on the motorways:
Lorries playing leapfrog. A lorry on the left is doing 55.5 mph. The lorry behind him wants to do 56 mph. The guy at the back decides to block the middle lane by overtaking. Bonus points if the road only has 2 lanes. The overtaking procedure takes about 5 minutes and results in a massive buildup of traffic behind him. Double bonus points if there's 3 or more of them in convoy and a soon as one is clear, the next one overtakes too. I've been told they do this so that they can takes turns being in front, like birds in a flock, to share the fuel cost of the drag that the lead vehicle pays. That's great for them, but what about the 40 or 50 cars who've had to anchor up behind them, crawl along at a suboptimal speed, and then accelerate back up to their normal speed? What about their fuel efficiency? Fuck you guys, keep up or keep left. If the fuel savings are that important, work out a way to pay the guy in cash at the end of the journey. Better yet, someone build an app that uses satnav and number plate recognition to calculate approximate fuel savings and transfer some money automatically.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03 2014, @09:53AM
Aren't speed limits in the UK in kilometers per hour, rather than miles per hour?
(Score: 1) by present_arms on Thursday July 03 2014, @10:41AM
Nope, we in the UK use MP/H and miles rather than KM/H and Kilometers
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 03 2014, @11:00AM
African or European unladen miles?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by present_arms on Thursday July 03 2014, @11:19AM
pass but I can tell you that a mile is 1.6 kilometers
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 03 2014, @11:31AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by present_arms on Thursday July 03 2014, @11:49AM
yes, yes I am :)
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 1) by present_arms on Thursday July 03 2014, @11:51AM
bad form to reply to myself but
1 inch=2.54 cm
1ft=12 inches=12 x 2.54=30.48 cm
1meter=100/30.48=3.28 ft
5280/3.28=1609.344
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 03 2014, @01:03PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by present_arms on Thursday July 03 2014, @02:17PM
Somebody has to do it (grins)
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 1) by present_arms on Thursday July 03 2014, @10:52AM
Just an observation, if you do 80 on a motorway you will not be bothered (assuming of course that driving conditions are ideal) as the law allows for 10% due to "speedo" errors so it's perfectly legal to do 77MPH and the extra 3MPH isn't worth the paperwork, do 90 and ya definitely in for a tug by the old bill and with luck and based basically on your attitude will be let off with a warning, with a bad attitude you're looking at 3 points and a fine. Do over 100 and you are most likely to lose your license except in extraordinary circumstances. I do agree with your rant about HGVs and overtaking though.
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday July 03 2014, @02:50PM
I read that (assuming you have the right size of tires for your vehicle) speedometers are specifically designed to *exaggerate* your speed if they have to be inaccurate, exactly for this reason (so you don't get pulled over when you think you aren't speeding).
Colloquial evidence but a friend of mine says doing 15 over may get your car impounded if they catch you, not any 35. (Are we talking about 65mph highways?) I would tend to trust him as we're recently post-college students and thus rather good at knowing how to avoid the law. Er...I mean...
Since you're talking in MPH I'll assume you're in the U.S., although the GPP was talking Britain.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by present_arms on Thursday July 03 2014, @03:10PM
I can see some sense in that, no I'm in Britain where for some reason we use both Imperial and Metric measurements depending on whatever. For instance,speed is in MP/H. Fuel is priced at GBP/litre (currently for my diesel car is £1.35/litre), but we use MP/G to work out the fuel efficiency, (our gallons are bigger than those in the states)rather than the continental L/100KM. We use inches for tyres, yet the weight is measured in metric tonnes etc etc :)
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday July 03 2014, @03:18PM
I had heard that in Europe they measure fuel on some wacky "miles travelable per X litres" or something that just sounds headache-inducing.
Of course, I'm sort of a relic as I don't have a smartphone and have a metro map to navigate around instead of GPS, so maybe that explains why I'd prefer straight-up dollars per mile per gallon so I can easily do all the multiplication myself :)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday July 03 2014, @03:23PM
Oh, and the used car I just bought is a manual transmission, heh.
In other news, I hate Windows 8 and Unity and The Ribbon, preferred trans-fats-era McDonalds food, and DVDs over Blu-Ray.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by present_arms on Thursday July 03 2014, @03:37PM
Well in the UK we have this fucking con going on where fuel is concerned. There was a time that it was priced at £/Gal now lets for argument sake it was in the good old days £2/Gallon, in the 80's i believe, not looked it up exactly when the pumps changed to GBP/litre and overnight the price of fuel went up in average 20%, and remember that here 80% of the cost of petrol (gas) is tax. Bastards I tell ya
just for reference the price here today in my local fuel station is 1.36 /litre less .01 of a penny. so that's £6.18/UKGal give or take on rough calculations
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday July 03 2014, @04:37PM
$10.58? Damn. We're at $3.65/gal around me right now, and a month ago it was 40s I think. Although I suspect you don't need to do as much driving.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by present_arms on Thursday July 03 2014, @04:49PM
The price difference isn't as big as some might think, as US gallons are smaller in volume :) and you are correct most in the UK only average 12,000/year. I live on a small island south of the UK called Isle of Wight and it's tiny, only 25 x 11 miles approx. I do around 300 miles a week on it give or take :)
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 1) by cbiltcliffe on Friday July 04 2014, @04:32AM
If he was in the US, rather than Britain, he's have called it a freeway, not a motorway.
(Score: 1) by xorsyst on Thursday July 03 2014, @11:56AM
My observations don't match yours. I usually drive at 70 (that's a satnav 70, not a speedo 70), and it's quite common for me to have to overtake plenty of people, often ending up in the fast lane.
What I have noticed though is that it varies a lot by motorway. The M25, for example, usually goes quite slowly. The M40 is pretty fast, and closer to your observations. The M6 and M1 are kinda middling.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday July 03 2014, @01:05PM
> What I have noticed though is that it varies a lot by motorway. The M25, for example, usually goes quite slowly.
The M25 is a motorway? I always thought it was a car park!
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday July 03 2014, @01:48PM
I agree, satnav 70mph with cruise control, and you end up passing at least half of the remaining traffic.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Thursday July 03 2014, @01:26PM
driving in the uk is far more stressful than driving in the usa. from london to manchester is about 200 miles, and you feeling like stopping at least once. in the usa 3 hours driving is a single hop! Getting pulled over in the UK is a lot less random than it is in the USA. The state troopers cannot use ANPR like they do in the UK....
It seems a combination of things make uk driving a stressful experience. The behaviour you outline for starters. The aggressive driving tendencies of company cars. Of course, if you want to see comically dangerous driving practices go to southern Italy...
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Thursday July 03 2014, @11:35PM
This is called "elephant racing" in Germany and was recently mostly banned.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tathra on Thursday July 03 2014, @09:46AM
oh but there is. people driving 10 mph or more under the speed limit are more likely to cause crashes [wikipedia.org], not to mention that slow drivers, especially brake-checkers, are a significant cause of traffic jams.
people driving under the speed limit are far more dangerous to everyone else on the road than people driving faster.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Thursday July 03 2014, @10:11AM
In general, people driving too slow cause the problems and people driving too fast cause the deaths.
(Score: 1) by Lazarus on Thursday July 03 2014, @01:57PM
>people driving under the speed limit are far more dangerous to everyone else on the road than people driving faster.
Correct, and in my area there's a big problem with these low-skilled drivers driving slow in both lanes backing up traffic for miles. Not being able to get up to speed is a huge problem, and should not be allowed. If someone has some sort of handicap that causes them to not be able to operate a car like the rest of us, they need to hire a driver before they hurt someone.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Thursday July 03 2014, @03:36PM
i wouldnt go that far, but if you dont feel comfortable driving the correct speed on the interstate, dont drive on it! there are all sorts of county, state, and federal highways that you can drive on as well - a lot of US highways even run mostly parallel to interstates, like US40 to I-70, all the way across the country.
some places have wizened up to the problems caused by slow drivers and have started to put up speed signs with a Minimum limit posted on them, usually ~15 mph slower than the speed limit. unfortunately state troopers rarely do their jobs except as fund raising (have you ever seen somebody get stopped for not using their turn signal? me either), so i have little faith they're enforcing the minimums, but as a safety matter they need to.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday July 03 2014, @02:21PM
I agree that the slowpokes are truly dangerous: It forces many people into hard stops, can easily back up major highway as people move into other lanes to get around them, and causes enough frustration for everyone behind them that people start doing really stupid and dangerous behaviors to try and get by.
I disagree that they are far more dangerous than the speed demons though: While the slowpoke is more likely to cause a crash than the speed demon, the speed demon's crash is likely to be more serious. When the folks behind a slowpoke wreck, it causes people to go from 45 mph to 0 mph, which certainly hurts a lot. But when a speed demon misjudges and slams into someone, he (and it usually is "he") has to go from 80+ mph to 0 mph. The calculation of odds * impact is not clear-cut.
Another factor here: Slower drivers are often older drivers with poor eyesight and lousy reaction times. They often fail to check their mirrors, so they often have no clue how dangerous they are being.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday July 03 2014, @02:36PM
It seems somewhat disingenuous to say that 85th-percentiling it is "Science!" Statistical science, maybe...you're just polling the drivers, in effect. For it to be a "scientific speed limit" in my mind implies that they did safety studies about how different vehicles handle at the proposed speeds, in inclement weather, etc., not just say "how fast do you want to go."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by gidds on Friday July 04 2014, @07:40AM
True. But 'feel in control' ≠ 'in control'.
It's easy to get lulled into a false sense of security. After all, if you didn't actually hit anyone, you must have been driving perfectly, right? But it can take just one car pulling out unexpectedly, one pedestrian hiding behind something, one lapse of concentration, or one other road-user doing something silly, to use up all your safety margin and then some.
I'd have preferred if this study had tried to work out the speeds at which people are actually safe, rather than those at which they simply feel safe.
Also, I was going to point out that using a statistical method isn't necessarily 'science', but someone just beat me to it [soylentnews.org]. If they were going to look at this scientifically, they'd take many other factors into account along with current speeds, and try to optimise some function of safety and efficiency.
[sig redacted]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03 2014, @06:47AM
Texting and driving ... ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03 2014, @07:42AM
Damn those science nerds setting our speed limits just 'cause they never got a blowjob while driving.
(Score: 2) by iwoloschin on Thursday July 03 2014, @11:58AM
I live in Somerville, MA, and the City/State are finishing up the final touches of redesigning Beacon St, which is a fairly major artery for bicycle and car commuters heading into Kendall Square (MIT) and Boston. I use it every day to get to work. It's a one lane road in either direction, with a bicycle lane between vehicle traffic and parallel parked cars, and with the number of cars, pedestrians, and cyclists, the speed limit should be 25 or 30 MPH. Unfortunately, the state has decided to use the 85th percentile to set the speed limits, which means the "official" speed limit could easily be as high as 45 MPH, though I sincerely hope they'll avoid that.
I would much rather a traffic engineer looked at the road design, in combination with the incredibly dense residential neighborhoods it passes through, and unilaterally suggest the speed limit be set to 25 MPH. Using this 85% nonsense on a surface level street in a residential area is just asking for drivers to act like idiots. Save the 85% "science" for limited access highways without pedestrians, cyclists, houses, or parallel parked cars.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday July 03 2014, @02:53PM
And that's assuming that people don't say "oh, the speed limit is 45 now? Then I'll keep doing 5 over," too.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 03 2014, @07:10PM
The science is sound and proven. Point in fact, you are likely in the lower 15% that drives "unreasonably slow". i.e. at a slower speed then conditions, which is not just weather, strictly calls for.
Just to clarify for people who aren't familiar with the 85th percentile or didnt RTFA's links, the lower 15% drive slower than the majority of people, and the top 15% drive dangerously faster than the majority of people.
Generally speaking, while its dangerous to be driving significantly slower than everyone else, its less dangerous than driving significantly faster than everyone else. So the 85% includes the 15% that drive slower than most people.
The point of this however, is to set speed limits to what the majority of people can and will safely drive at. This way you don't "penalize" more people who ignore the limit or don't pay close enough attention or otherwise would just be frustrated (leading to road rage) by the slow speed.
(Score: 2) by gman003 on Thursday July 03 2014, @01:14PM
I need to stop trying to do unit conversions in my head before my morning caffeine. I got my ratios flipped and ended up seeing "120kmh" as "200mph" rather than the correct "75mph". That put a rather different spin on the article.
Either that, or we need to switch this country over to metric so I can stop having to do conversion (or having to think in such a weird system).
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday July 03 2014, @04:14PM
When they started putting automatic radars in many European cities, I've actually heard of two different instances where they had to raise the speed limits, in areas where actual enforcement of the posted limit was causing major traffic jams.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Thursday July 03 2014, @04:42PM
... then the speed limits on rural freeways might rise to 80 mph and the truck speed limit will be raised to something higher than 55 mph. That lower truck speed limit is the cause of so many bottlenecks on most of I-5 in California, where one truck going about 62 mph passes another going 60. In the mean time, the much faster cars pile up behind them. In Arizona and Nevada the speed limits on I-80 are 75 mph for everyone. It makes much more sense.
In short, people tend to drive between 75 and 85 mph anyway and do so safely. Making it legal to do so and speeding up the trucks would be an improvement.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 1) by cliffjumper222 on Thursday July 03 2014, @08:55PM
I totally agree. The speed limits in California (I'm from the UK) are unreasonably slow on some roads and cater to the lowest-common denominator. As a result, a lot of folks drive much faster than the speed limit - and do so safely I might add. But like all things, changing speed limits cost $'s and you can see how they even tried to save $'s by affixing 6's to 55mph signs. Unlikely they'll spend any money on upping the speed limit and replacing signs when they barely do road repairs!
He who dares wins, Rodney
(Score: 2) by mendax on Friday July 04 2014, @12:08AM
As I recall, the national speed limit in the UK is 70 mph, which means when you pass a cancel speed limit sign [openstreetmap.org], it really means that the speed limit is 70. And as I recall from my last visit there, people drive considerably faster on motorways than they usually do in California. Of course, the motorways are better maintained making it safer to drive at higher speeds. So it seems that the UK has the same problem. But you lot in the UK have an much greater incentive to drive slower: money. The cost of gasoline/petrol/diesel being more than twice what it is in the US, going slow makes a lot more sense.
You're also right about road repairs. I-5 has in the past been in awful shape but the state has been slowly fixing it, but there are still a couple stretches of nearly 50-year-old concrete that have yet to be paved over. At least when I drove along there last month it seems that they'd patched the worst of the potholes. And I-80 over the Sierra Nevada mountains and into San Francisco is vastly improved in recent years. The state finally finished blacktopping a 15-mile long stretch of concrete that was laid down just after World War II. But this is only a piece of a larger problem in the US. The highway system needs a huge infusion of cash in order to rehabilitate pavement and rebuild older and substandard bridges and the skinflints in Congress, particularly the Tea Party bastards don't want to spend the money. No doubt they're prefer toll roads like in France, Italy, and China.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.