Highway Handbook: Why We Speed | Hacker News Reader

Highway Handbook: Why We Speed

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41 pointsdmuino18 comments

My wife's uncle taught a AAA defensive driving class for the elderly. The AAA approved course at that time (this was in the mid-90's) taught them that the safest speed is the average speed of traffic, regardless of the posted speed limit. If they could not drive comfortably at that speed, then they should stay in the right lane. If they were driving much slower than traffic and could not comfortably drive any faster, they should avoid the highways altogether.

Correct, and in California, this is codified as a traffic law.

Unfortunately, it is almost completely unenforced. Highway patrol and local agencies instead focus on speeders -- including those doing 5 over in highway "safe zones" -- because the fines for that are much higher, and it's less defensible in court.

This article plus a few choice statistics would make slow driving a lot less defensible in court. Plus cops could actually film the slow driver.

i would have loved to have this guy as an expert witness at my speeding ticket court date

Might've been fun, but probably wouldn't've done any good. Based on my experience -- numerous judges spread out across a handful of counties in California -- the judge is short on time, shorter on patience, and will decide your case based solely on whether or not you were going faster than the posted speed limit.

(Yes, I like to drive fast. No, not because I'm in a hurry or expect to get anywhere faster -- it's just how I drive. It's not something I'm either proud or ashamed of.)

Move to Germany?

And the judges are complicit! This upsets me a great deal. I was in court once, waiting my turn to be reprimanded. This old woman is called for a speeding ticket and pleads her case: she was keeping up with traffic on Sunday morning in a part of town well-known to the judge. "Yeah, if you were keeping up with traffic on Broadway, you're going too fast."

No, judge, the speed limit is set unrealistically low.

It is not codified as traffic law. California traffic laws encourage you to follow the general speed of traffic, but only if that speed is legal vis-a-vis the speed limits. If you speed, saying everybody else was speeding is technically not an excuse.

CVC 21654: http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d11/vc21654.htm

Way to cite primary sources! It enriches these discussions so much when people are willing to do a little digging like this.

I think we are talking about different things. Yes, there is a rule that says that if you are driving slower than other traffic you should go into the right lane. But nothing in this rule or any other rule gives you a right to drive above the speed limit even if everyone else is driving above the speed limit.

It actually does say (from my reading) that speed limit shall not be a factor if other traffic is going a similar speed. The very first line, "Notwithstanding the prima facie speed limits..." is where I got this explanation.

Well, yes and no. Oddly enough, I think everyone is right in this section of the thread so far:

teilo said, "the safest speed is the average speed of traffic, regardless of the posted speed limit." This is true; it may not be the legal speed, but a vehicle doing 60 MPH on a highway where the average vehicle speed is 80 MPH is indeed a traffic hazard, regardless of the posted speed limit.

teilo also said, "If they could not drive comfortably at that speed, then they should stay in the right lane." This is what I was responding to when I said "it" was codified as law, and provided a citation.

hristov responded by arguing that this doesn't make it legal to go over the posted speed limit: "But nothing in this rule or any other rule gives you a right to drive above the speed limit even if everyone else is driving above the speed limit." And he's right, too. By my reading of that law, it merely says that slower traffic must move as far to the right as possible. I don't think "notwithstanding" in that case means that the drivers can ignore the posted limits, although that's certainly unclear and a point of interpretation.

>>saying everybody else was speeding is technically not an excuse

Actually, it is. You can't get in trouble for traveling the same speed as everyone in your lane. Actual speed of traffic takes precedence over posted speed limit on California freeways.

"Drivers traveling at the limit should get a string of green lights."

I wish more civil engineers followed that. Realistically, there are a lot of other concerns leading to traffic flow management. For instance, some cities work with CHP to disrupt traffic flows in order to better stagger traffic entering the freeway.

Determining the effectiveness of this strategy is left to the reader.

Also remember that lights timed for 35 are also timed for 70.

By the way, this article first appeared in a recent Something Awful thread. It is very long but has heaps of information for anyone interested in highway design.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=317...

Some good reading on HN today. Thanks for posting this.

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