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from the Wir-fahr'n-fahr'n-fahr'n-auf-der-Autobahn dept.
Brought to the floor by Senator John Moorlach of Orange County, SB-319 would direct the state's Department of Transportation to build two unlimited speed lanes on each side of Interstate 5 and State Route 99, the main north-south arteries linking cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento. The sections of the roadways in question run straight through the supremely flat Central Valley, making for ideal high-speed driving conditions.
Perhaps paradoxically, California's answer to the German autobahn would be paid for by the state's Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. The text of SB-319 points out that the recent collapse of California's ambitious plan for a bullet train between Los Angeles and San Francisco, which was originally intended to trace the same route as the proposed unlimited speed lanes, has left residents without "access to high-speed, unabated transportation across the state."
http://www.thedrive.com/news/26554/california-might-add-lanes-with-no-speed-limits-to-major-highways
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 19 2019, @11:44PM (10 children)
Sane automotive legislation from CA? Not gonna happen.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by pipedwho on Wednesday February 20 2019, @12:28AM (9 children)
A single lane of unlimited speed? So you go from one lane over where you're limited to 65MPH (if you're lucky) and have to accelerate before the guy 2 miles back doing 200MPH in the lane can hopefully react and slow down enough to avoid plowing into you. At least the German autobahns generally have progressively faster traffic over in the fast lanes, so you can use other lanes to come up to (and down to) appropriate speed before you move into (out of) the unlimited lanes.
And in CA (ie. not Germany), where idiot drivers abound that can't even merge properly, where do you go when some clown in front of you doing 55 decides to move into the 'unlimited' lane to overtake someone doing 54 one lane over - while you're coming up behind them at 200, close enough that even full anchors isn't going to slow you down below 150 before you reach the multi-lane 'blockade'?
Even if you made it a divided carriageway for that lane, there will still be choke points where you need special mid-speed min/max speed limit lanes to come up to speed to safely merge into the 'fast lane' where the slowest cars are doing 120+MPH.
(Score: 3, Informative) by fyngyrz on Wednesday February 20 2019, @12:57AM (3 children)
From TFS, emphasis mine:
So, no.
Speaking as someone who drove in Montana all the years the speed limit was defined as "reasonable and prudent" during the day, which turned out to be measurably safer [motorists.org], and has also driven in California, where the [apparently batshit insane] drivers hover within a car length or so of each other's bumpers at freeway speeds... the number of lanes isn't going to be the actual issue here.
--
After my girl turned vegan, it was
like I'd never seen herbivore.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pipedwho on Wednesday February 20 2019, @01:41AM (2 children)
Two extra each side is reasonable. The difference with 'reasonable and prudent' speeds is that the entire carriageway is moving together. In CA, keeping the usual speed limit on some lanes, and then having a couple suddenly go unlimited means that people are no longer moving 'together'. It also implies there are no 'zero-skill' drivers on the road that will do something stupid to cause a pile up.
And I agree completely with you regarding the 'reasonable and prudent' rule with no actual limit. It means people are paying attention to their surroundings and not staring at the speedo worried about accidentally creeping a little over the limit and getting done at the next speed trap.
And on crowded roads, speed limits mean nothing since you're crawling along anyway. Infuriatingly, here in Sydney, we have variable speed limits all over the place. So people are constantly driving like idiots trying to speed up and slow down when/where it would normally make no sense (except to avoid being fined by a revenue camera). No real improvement on the accident rate beyond everything else done that is not speed related, but a big improvement to revenue haul from the cameras they put everywhere.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday February 20 2019, @03:09PM (1 child)
>It also implies there are no 'zero-skill' drivers on the road that will do something stupid to cause a pile up.
How do you figure? We already know the Dunning-Kruger effect is particularly strong among drivers, so I'd bet good money that there will be plenty of people who like speed, or are just in a hurry, driving well beyond their actual ability. One of the things that makes the German autobahn work is actually rigorous driving tests before you can get your license - the American standard of "you didn't completely fail to memorize and apply the most basic aspects of driving knowledge" seems unlikely to cut it.
Another interesting detail would be how they are connected with the normal highway - just adding a couple more lanes seems like it would be asking for trouble, not least of which because everyone knows the outermost lanes are the slowest. But also because you don't want normal drivers to be tempted to get on the autobahn to circumvent a traffic jam. Occasional transfer "ramps" seem like the best idea - presumably with warning marks on the autobahn at least a mile or two in advance so that drivers know there will likely be a slow patch coming up.
(Score: 3, Informative) by bob_super on Wednesday February 20 2019, @07:24PM
> We already know the Dunning-Kruger effect is particularly strong among drivers
And they are not helped by car ads and reviews. Case in point : spent an hour, two days in a row, having to clear the mess that resulted from drivers who clearly didn't know that an iced-over windy mountain road with banked turns does require proper equipment and driving technique.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday February 20 2019, @03:09AM (4 children)
How many cars, or even motorcycles, do you think can run 200 mph? Yeah, they're out there, but there aren't so many that you have to worry about them much. More and more vehicles are capped between 95 and 110 mph. In all my life, I've only owned two cars that would run over 140 - one did about 143 or 144, the other would sit at right about 148. Motorcycles? I've flirted with that 200 mile mark, but never reached it.
What you need to worry about, in California, is the fog. Californians were having pile ups on their highways when the national speed limit was 55. At speeds over 100, the potential carnage when a fog bank rolls in is almost unthinkable. I'm not a nascar fan, but watching some of their more infamous crashes is informative. Things just keep rolling, tumbling, and smashing into stuff long after the initial impact.
If Cal builds an autobahn, they better adopt the attitude of Germans who drive their autobahn. They don't want a drinks holder, no entertainment system, no comforts. At those speeds, your attention is 100% on the road, or you die. No texting, people. Doesn't matter how wide and straight and flat your travel lane is - if you take your eyes off the road, you're out of your lane, and quite possibly out of this life.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Wednesday February 20 2019, @03:52AM (1 child)
Agree...in the central valley the tule fog in winter can be a real killer. People are used to driving 80~90 mph on that highway which is fine spring to fall. However it seems every winter there are big pile-ups on I-5. This guy Moorlach is batshit crazy if he thinks this is a good idea. Wonder how many times he's been been pulled over for going over 90 on I-5 going back and forth between Orange County and Sacramento?
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Wednesday February 20 2019, @03:51PM
Well, you could potentially close the autobahn whenever fog is present, or just all winter to be on the safe side. That's one of the benefits of it being an auxiliary roadway. Drops the expected ROI by ~25% though.
I've got a real problem with funding it from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund though - the entire point is to let people drive faster, which means the trip is less efficient *and* more appealing, and will thus predictably increase greenhouse gas emissions substantially.
Sure, the abandonment of the bullet train plan means residents won't have high-speed transportation across the state - but a bullet train is dramatically more efficient than an automobile per passenger-mile, while the speed offers incentive to passengers to take the train rather than driving.
The only way I could see to even begin to reconcile the fundamental discrepancy in results is if the autobahn were restricted to only high-efficiency vehicles - e.g. motorcycles and electric cars. But then you've got the whole population subsidizing a massive fast-lane available primarily to the rich and reckless. Hardly seems like a good use of government funds.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Username on Wednesday February 20 2019, @12:53PM
2019 is the last year of the department of transportation's intelligent transportation systems pilot project. You will see mandates coming soon for vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to infrastructure communications systems soon. Pretty sure these new lanes are going to coincide with, and require the use of these systems. Basically what these systems will do is broadcast the information being sent to your vehicles blackbox, letting everyone else know your location, speed, direction and probably whether or not your airbags have deployed.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @02:03PM
Writing this from actual southern Germany - Autobahn is generally kind of full and the unlimited speed is not really unlimited. Most sections are limited to 120 and sometimes even 80 (km/h, btw, you do your conversions).
And you have like 3 lanes and sometimes that can be even 2 lanes of traffic (each direction). Even at night, with lighter traffic, the right lanes is almost exclusively trucks going 80 (they are mandated to right lane and speed) and then middle lane is buses (limited to 100) and cars going maybe 120. The left lane can have people going maybe 160 or 180 (again, km/h)... and they have to watch from people moving over from middle lane to take over slower traffic which is far cry of the "unlimited" spouted around.
In Germany, if you want to go fast and not fly, you go on the train.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Germany [wikipedia.org]