Virginia will punish fast drivers with devices that limit their speed
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
How do you reconcile "left lane is for passing, slower traffic keep right" with hard speed limits and speed regulators? I've never found a satisfactory answer besides the German highway system.
Let's say all cars are electronically limited to the speed of the Beltway that goes around Virginia and Maryland in a circle around DC(55MPH). The Beltway has left exits and right exits, as well as merging traffic from the left AND the right. Sometimes you need to get across 2-3 lanes quickly. How do you pass someone going the speed limit enough to create a safe following distance and then merge over in front of them if they are going at exactly the speed limit? Merge behind them instead? What if there's someone behind you and you can't brake?
In the Maryland side of the beltway, wherever there's a hard speed limit enforcement mechanism, i.e speed cameras, cars suddenly slow down when they get to the camera and then floor it as soon as they're out of its range. Locals who drive there every day just memorize the camera locations. The sudden drop in speed from people going 70+ down to camera speed creates a more unsafe situation than if we just allowed people to speed more in the left lane and actually formalized it instead of this wishy-washy gray zone system that depends on law enforcement feeling like pulling you over if you're unlucky or an outlier.
I’m okay with serial speeders losing the ability to pass.
The obvious answer is that you brake, and the person behind you is forced to brake as well. You can always brake.
But knowing how many asshole drivers are out there, what I predict happens next is that the driver behind you decides that you're a moron slowing down for no reason and then gets into the left lane to pass you, putting themselves in the gap that you were planning on going into. They ignored your turn signal (You are signaling, right?) that would have told them that you were getting out of their way.
You don't. It is not legal to exceed the speed limit while passing. There is no such thing as needing to violate traffic laws. There is no such thing as not being able to brake or slow down, regardless of who's behind you. Sometimes it is not possible to cross several lanes in time to make a certain exit, while driving legally. Your legal option is to proceed to the next exit, regardless of whether that makes you unhappy. If driving legally makes you unhappy... that's a YOU problem.
All of these are preferable to a too slow limit made in a different era with lower safety standards. Im talking about controlled access highways by the way. Not residential or city zones. Those need fewer cars in general.
I'm sure mandating everyone have these things would go over like a lead balloon with the current culture, but that will change. They're following the classic playbook of starting with just a very small and unsympathetic minority (in this case reckless drivers). They can then slowly expand the covered group from there until it covers everyone. And of course law enforcement vehicles won't be speed limited, nor vehicles carrying important people. It wouldn't be safe to limit them.
OTOH the US hasn't tried to do that yet...
Fun to think about why. On one hand there's the additional cost to consumers as well as overall complexity in design (how do you make that not look like ass?)
On the other hand, I'm betting that given the US justice system, at least one lobbying group would prefer more fines and/or the cost of filling up a jail cell vs preventing the action in the first place.
As far as general speed limiters... IDK I'd like to be able to outrun a tornado. Also I'm guessing some car makers wouldn't like that they cannot truly market a 'top speed' of a vehicle, then you've got the track day folks who know their business would be hurt by govt-mandated speed limiters on road vehicles.
I wouldn't expect it, and not because the population will cry about their freedoms being infringed, but rather, I expect police departments to fight against their potential revenue stream from speeding tickets.
Your either a safer driver or not.
Source? Like, are driving violations concentrated in a minority of drivers?
"Over half of the observational studies demonstrated that traffic offenders were more likely to commit a subsequent traffic violation or had elevated risk of crashes. […] Traffic offenders are a high-risk group for subsequent violations and crashes." - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10634619
"After adjusting for confounders in the regression model, drivers with three or more driving offences had 2.25 (95% CI 1.98 to 2.57), 2.87 (95% CI 1.60 to 5.17) and 3.28 (95% CI 2.28 to 4.72) times higher rates of any crash, crashes that resulted in hospital admission or death and single vehicle crashes compared with drivers with no driving offences." - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9510411
A better statistic would be at-fault crash rate. I imagine it follows the Pareto Principle: 80% of crashes are likely caused by 20% of drivers. I tried to find statistics to back up my intuition, but apparently statistics about fault are not tracked well.
Though supposedly, on average, American drivers experience one crash per 18 years, and 77% of drivers have been involved in a crash. But those stats say nothing about fault. I got into a crash only two months after getting my license, but it was because I got hit by someone running a red light, so I was not at fault. It's been 24 years and around 300,000 miles since then, and I have yet to have another crash, though I've gotten two speeding tickets over that time.
At 80MPH I would play devils advocate, I've had to go to 80MPH even in Michigan to avoid hazardous drivers[0]. But in general I'd hope that if someone got pulled over and ticketed for such it was flagrant.
At 85 It's hard to say what I'd need to avoid in an accident unless I was already doing 80.
[0] - Most recently, a 'just shy of overdimension criteria' truck that was doing 75 where trucks in general should only do 65, while on a cell phone...
Edit: the interstate, not city or back roads
Maybe I'm naive; in my state the 'norm' was 5MPH or 10% (whichever is greater) over until a combination of:
- Covid and/or bad driving habits developed during Covid
- People moving to my state for COL/Work reasons
At the same time, over the last year or two we have devolved into 18 wheelers doing 75 in a truck-65 zone [0] and apparently for many, 80 is the new 75.
On the other hand, I can think of three locations even in-state where 15MPH (or more!) is the gold standard or otherwise acceptable;
- M39, a 13-ish mile trunkline where ~10 miles or so has +15MPH as norm on the left lanes as long as traffic permits. It's
- M10, a 23-ish mile trunkline that has two distinct styles of driving along each half, the part in Detroit really helps the overall 'thunderdome' claims. Much of it is 2 lanes only, and in certain sections there's no room to safely pull someone over.
- The portion of Outer Drive that runs through Rouge park has a posted limit of 25. I've never met a human being who didn't drive 40 through it as SOP.
At the same time, I think my state tends to underpatrol/underenforce, I've seen absolute trifectas of terror (CDL in overdimensioned doing 10+ over while on a cell phone) and yet there is never enforcement out to deal with it like there used to.
[0] - Which more than anything pisses me off in that it is almost certainly causing wear in excess of the design life of the road...
If I had a dollar for every time I've passed people on their right while going the speed limit, I could make a living off of it.
Other drivers around you are going to expect you to be able to accelerate past the speed limit during dynamic driving conditions like heavy traffic, especially on the interstate. This will make some people unable to drive in a predictable way in some circumstances.
One thing that people underestimate is the danger of deviating from proper right-of-way. Letting someone go that is supposed to yield to you is an example of this. All of the drivers around you are going to expect the other car to yield, and for you to go. If you do the opposite to "be nice" and stop when you have right-of-way the other drivers around you are not going to expect you to stop the flow of traffic. It can cause confusion and that leads to accidents.
We call them "niceholes". In Portland, it's a major problem.