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Comment by radpanda | Hacker News Reader

Waymo rides are also potentially slower because they strictly follow speed limits. Not really problematic in downtown SF but it’ll be interesting to see how it’ll be received by riders when they expand to highway driving where most people generally expect to drive over the speed limit.

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On most trips people do speeding saves an irrelevant amount of time. If somehow you encounter zero traffic from Palo Alto to SF and you go 15mph over the limit the whole way it makes the trip about 5 minutes shorter.

You have about 50% more KE at 80mph as you do at 65mph btw, if you find yourself needing to dissipate that energy rapidly.

Sure, there’s the math, but there’s also the human nature part of it. If you’re sitting in the right lane doing the speed limit, watching dozens of cars consistently zip past, it feels like you’re “falling behind” all of that traffic. I wonder how that will be received by the riding public.

When I'm traveling substantially below traffic speed I'm also decently concerned about becoming the scene of the accident. Sure it won't be me paying for the accident but I'd just rather not risk it.

This is often repeated, yet despite the studies on speed differentials being dangerous I am still skeptical of the more specific claim that driving the speed limit specifically when others are speeding increases your risk of getting in an accident.

It's likely often repeated because if you try driving 55 in a 55mph zone where people are driving between 62-70, it'sterrifying, it feels like you're stopped. Whether the stat is true or not remains to be seen, but intuitively, it makes a lot of sense. Sure, your risk of rear ending someone at that point is probably negligible, but the odds of being rear ended? Hard to say

When I’m driving the speed limit and everyone is going much faster I feel fine… they all just flow around me… if they weren’t able to flow, they wouldn’t be flying past.

In the UK the speed limit for goods vehicles is 10 mph below the limit for cars on motorways so there are plenty of vehicles driving below the limit.

The real risk is the opposite, cars bunched together at the same speed. This is where pileups occur, somebody at the front does something stupid and the people at the back end up colliding.

The US used to have different speed limits for trucks. Oh the benefits of deregulation!

Speed limits are set by the states, and most have lower limits (and other restrictions) for large vehicles.

Unless you have a specific claim and source for your claim?

For the opposite experience, take a taxi in a low- or maybe middle-income country.

There's a good chance the driver will zoom past everything else, weaving between lanes accordingly, and you'll wish you were one of the slow vehicles. Although I'd be less concerned if the seatbelts worked.

You mean like Boston? More than once I've had to tell an Uber driver I'll pay them more to slow down.

I think it'll be fine as people get used to being a passenger. If you're not staring at the speed gauge already you tend to not think about it

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