Comment by panragon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by panragon | Hacker News Reader

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I don't think it's so much about the timidity of the driver, it's the effect on driving slow has on people behind you. Driving below the speed limit increases the amount of drivers who need to do overtaking, which are moments substantially more dangerous than just driving straight. If it weren't for forcing other people to overtake I don't think we'd really care, even if it was a sign of timidity.

Very common to see older people drive slow on the highway because going 100KM/h seems scary to them. This is, of course, absurd, since driving 80KM/hs on a 100KM/h road causes way more moments for bad things to happen because you're forcing everyone to merge into the speed lane, including trucks with bigger blind spots, rather then only the drivers choosing to go above the speed limit. If you do this you should absolutely be fined, and that's not because it's a good metric for timidity (which I agree can be bad for drivers in general), but rather that the action itself causes harm.

> Driving below the speed limit increases the amount of drivers who need to do overtaking,

Nobody "needs" to overtake or is "forced" to doing something dangerous outside safe margins. Seriously, this is blame shifting when somebody does something stupid. When you do, it's 100% on you.

100km/h on a highway with everybody otherwise going 130km/h is rare. This is about a 65mph road (100km/h?) where somebody goes 95km/h and everybody behind them goes berserk. That's an attitude that needs to change, not by the 95km/h driver, but by everybody behind. Going 100km/h is not a right, does not force you to do stupid overtaking maneuvers and the time you lose by going 95km/h is negligible. At least it's substantially less than you'd expect, since there are many other factors that slow you down on a journey. You rarely drive for 3 hours straight, no interruptions, no other traffic on the road. Even if you did, doing 100km/h instead of 95km/h would get you there by 9 minutes earlier. That's the upper limit here, but you are likely going to save less than 5 min. After 3 hours.

We (for some measure of we, but at least the US and most Commonwealth countries) have laws against this. It's called "Impeding the Flow of Traffic". As far as it matters, you are absolutely and directly wrong about your statement here. It's the 95km/h driver that needs to change.

You seem to have an agenda in your comments here, and in some of them I think you have a point, in this one you are overplaying your hand.

50mph on a 65mph road may be "impeding the flow of traffic". 63mph certainly isn't.

I'm a bit confused regarding your insinuation of an "agenda" in my comments? I've been in enough situations where somebody behind me or others on the road was endangering everybody just because the car in front of them wasn't going the $safe_margin_above that they were expecting of everybody. So they go like 3ft behind them and put pressure and stress on people. It's a dangerous mentality that can get people killed. It's not the "slow person" (going at 63mph) that's the danger in that scenario.

I personally find GPs agenda of promoting patience, common sense, and safety on the roads to be both dangerous and offensive. That kind of mentality is only a hop and skip away from becoming a deranged anti-car environmentalist.

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