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Comment by taeric | Hacker News Reader

This scenario is terribly specified. If you don't have clear time to pass a car in front of you without going an absurd amount over the posted speed limit, you almost certainly are putting yourself in danger already? I'll go further and say that people that take excess speeds in this scenario are already causing more accidents today, than a limiter would cause in the future.

Edit: I should say I think it would be a bad idea to have the car force you to go slower than 1km over a limit. Having it visually alert that you are speeding, though, seems far more reasonable.

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You're also going to be aware of this system when you attempt to pass another car. It isn't going to be installed in your car mid pass.

I wholeheartedly disagree. When you’re passing someone on a two-lane highway you should always speed way up to get the hell out of the lane of oncoming traffic.

In general, you shouldn't be passing in a scenario that requires you jumping over ~10mph over the limit. And if you can see oncoming traffic, pretty much at all, you should probably not pass.

If you are in a place with very flat/straight roads, you can pass while seeing oncoming traffic. I don’t know how it is in Australia (who are known to have some of the flattest straightest roads on earth) but in Nebraska this is definitely feasible.

Fair that I can't say you should never do so. I'd stand by it as a general safe rule, though? If the road is that long and straight, I'd imagine it also has a rather high base speed limit already.

Definitely on a twisty and/or hilly road you don’t want to pass if you can see above or around. But there are lots of places in the country where you pass if you can see the oncoming cars are far enough away. And you are usually passing a truck or RV going 40 so it’s not that hard.

However, I’m so glad I live in an urban area now where such driving skills aren’t really needed much anymore. I’d defer to people living in rural areas that do this many times a day.

Agreed that it can be subjective and can/does happen often. I further agree with you that you are most often to want to pass if someone is doing 40 and the limit is 50+. In those cases, we wouldn't be in the scenario offered in this thread, as you often don't even have to speed to execute that pass.

That said, I underline again that I think a system that impacts throttle at merely 1 over the limit would be a bad idea.

If you've passed a car before, it feels pretty clear that minimizing your time spent in the same lane as oncoming traffic is a much bigger priority than minimizing how much you go over the speed limit.

I've passed plenty of cars. Usually, in this scenario, I can exceed their speed by 15+ without even crossing the speed limit. If I had to go 10+ over the overall speed limit to pass them, I almost certainly just setup a situation where I'm either speeding in general to stay ahead of them, or I moved a single car's distance in the line that I was in. Which... seems silly to argue for.

Yes. And if you're pulled over for speeding way up, I have never heard of a traffic cop who will ticket you.

Some online study aids for passing start with "increase your speed so you may finish the pass quickly" and end with "maintain a safe passing speed until you have created sufficient distance to resume a safe cruising speed." Others recommend a full 10mph speed difference to keep the passing time short.

I've known people to get a ticket in this exact scenario. Speeding is not allowed just to pass and will often times get you hit with a reckless driving charge, as well. Especially so if you go 10+ over the limit.

Now, if you mean someone that went less than 5 over the limit, I'm back in agreement with you. But, that is within the realm of speed that probably won't get you pulled over even when not passing?

I think the whole thing is quite subjective and certainly in part the subjection would depend on that particular officer's mood on that particular time on that particular day at that particular place.

The subjective assessment would be along the lines of differentiating between "driver slowly and casually accelerated to 10 mph over the limit, passed the car with a wide berth, and merged back with a large buffer" versus "driver suddenly accelerated from 10 mph below the speed limit to 3 above, spitefully passed closely to another car before dangerously cutting 2 feet in front of them"

I think most officers have been driving long enough to tell if someone is driving like a dick or cruising at 10 mph over and being chill. The latter will still get you a ticket, sure, but the likelihood of getting excoriated by them is less than say, 5 mph over the limit and you're tailgating and cutting people off. Some of those things maybe the cop can't legally write you up for, but the cop will see, can tell, and will make sure that you'll get written up for some thing or another. And hey that's a good thing, nobody likes a douchey driver.

If you casually and slowly accelerated to 10 over, passed with a large berth, and then presumably dropped back to speed; this was not a rapidly executed pass and I question if you should have even done it?

You are right that they have discretion. So, yeah, it is subjective. People online get way too defensive of aggressive driving. Seemingly without realizing they are describing aggressive behavior. And if you are at all worried you will have to exceed the posted limit to successfully overtake another vehicle, make no mistake you are driving aggressively.

It is poorly specified but also pretty common with the obvious variations. Eg: the person you are trying to pass, passive-aggressively speeds up.

> Eg: the person you are trying to pass, passive-aggressively speeds up.

Happens all the time to me. It's usually people in big trucks who get angy that a car dares to pass them. They'll go up over 80mph in a 45mph zone if you don't (or can't) finish the pass, or give up. And if you give up, they'll brake check you for your audacity.

Having your controls start misbehaving while accelerating, or loud beeping (which is currently reserved for "you're about to hit something" while driving) is asking for a driver to lose control.

Here's a protip for dealing with impulsive / aggressive big truck drivers.

Big trucks go max 30 mph uphill. It's their achilles heel.

Cool your jets let them cuck you and be in front of you going slow all they want. When that big hill comes up, with that sweet passing lane, just pedal to the floor.

Now, if you get in front of them, or any car, and have the balls, and it's hilly country, you do this. Imagine they're tailgating you hard. You're going down a big hill. Put your gas pedal to the floor, downhill, You're max-accelerating. BUT .. ... LIGHTLY touch your brake pedal. Brake lights on. The tailgater will now back off because brake lights, as you rocket ahead at maximum acceleration. Aha! The tailgater catches onto the ploy and puts their pedal the floor as well. Now they too max-accelerate. Now you're at the bottom of the hill. Now you let go completely of the gas pedal, and the brake. You are now going uphill and you are slowing down quite aggressively, just from the uphill consuming momentum.... ... BUT your brake lights are now OFF! Thusly: you have maximally accelerated while braking, and maximally braked while accelerating. This will melt in anger the mind of any aggressive tailgator and they will either back off believing you're a total psycho, or shoot you (also believing you're a psycho). But it is a lesson in non-impulsive tactics & strategy versus impulsive driving. Patient strategy wins every time.

I think your tactic is too much of an escalation. Prefer Morse code on the brake light: it will make them think, wonder who or what you are, get less angry.

The big trucks I'm referring to are a Dodge Ram, or Ford 250, etc. They have more than enough power to do hills.

Shitty semi drivers are thankfully super rare, if you drive normally. AKA, I've never had a semi driver get annoyed at me. Might help that their CDL can be pulled regardless of who's at fault in an accident if the DOT thinks they could have de-escalated the scenario.

There is nothing passive aggressive about speeding up when being passed. The previous behavior of going too slow is what was passive aggressive; but once that driver accelerates, they have disrobed themselves of all pretence of passivity.

That might be true but only if we know their motives, which we usually don’t. One could argue that any driver isn’t passive aggressive because they are actively driving their vehicle. However part of the passive aggressive definition includes intentionally making mistakes in response to others demands. All of that being said, the difference is subtle and probably not worth arguing in this context.

If this is common where you are, you are near some pretty bad drivers? Passing on a two lane road is something that you pretty much should only do if the lead car is below the speed limit.

Half half the drivers on the road are worse than median. And road rage is a very real thing. Being passed triggers road rage like you wouldn't believe sometimes.

Yes, even when they're going under the speed limit.

Funny framing of it, but that isn't necessarily how the median works. Consider, what are the median number of fingers on a person's hand? How many people have less than the median number of fingers? :D

Is a fair point that it could be more common than I'd expect. I remember being a teenage driver and we were quite bad. Would love to see data on this.

The normal way I hear it stated is "half of X are worse than average". But an average would not work with that statement in a pedantic environment. HN is a pedantic environment.

"On a distribution curve of driver skill, half of the drivers will be of lower skill than the driver at the median of the data set. Unless there's an even number of entries, in which case there is no median driver, just an inferred skill value based on the values to either side of the middle of the data set."

Before I finish typing this, I want to make it clear that I'm just having fun with the numbers/math/language here.

Even that statement doesn't really work outside of fully unique values across a specific distribution. Take samples where you have many duplicates, and you can easily have the vast majority of values flat out be the average/median when you have some distributions. Is why I picked average number of fingers. The VAST majority of counts there are the same value. The outliers being dwarfed to insignificance both high and low.

For more continuous distributions, https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/326304/in-a-given-... is a pretty good quick google of what I mean.

Now, what is the distribution of driving ability? I have no idea. I see no reason to think it is a normal distribution, though.

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