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Comment by fyi80 | Hacker News Reader

Number of times I have stopped for gas on a 30-mile stretch of local toll road: 0.

Why would someone stop, just to get an excuse to speed later, at the same average? The few people drag-racing, maybe. Not the vast majority who want to to arrive at destination ASASP.

You are conjuring up a ridiculous hypothetical and claiming it is the common case.

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>Why would someone stop, just to get an excuse to speed later, at the same average?

You do understand that there are service plazas on toll roads. People stop for gas because they need gas, not because they want to speed. But once someone has stopped, or intends to stop before the toll booth, they're no longer subject to the timer and end up creating a dangerous speed differential against the drivers who are.

If you stopped, nobody forces you to speed up. (And they could still put some police people on the beat, just to check up on the stoppers.)

>If you stopped, nobody forces you to speed up.

Is that supposed to be an argument that people won't do it?

>And they could still put some police people on the beat, just to check up on the stoppers.

Or they could just do that to begin with and forget about the toll booths, no?

As someone who lives in South Florida (east coast, Jupiter southward), I can state that the only toll roads in the area that also have service plazas are the Florida Turnpike (north/south and can be used for commuting) and I-75 west of US-27 (runs east/west across the state, and at the point it becomes a toll road, you are basically heading away from the population center towards the middle of the state; also, practically no one lives west of US-27 until you get to the west coast of Florida). The other toll roads (Sawgrass Expressway, 924, Dolphin Expressway, parts of I-95 in Miami, Don Shula Expressway and I think 826 (it's been awhile since I driven that one)) are all very short (longest is the Sawgrass Expressway, at 20 miles) and all in a very dense urban setting and absolutely no service plazas.

Also, all the toll roads in South Florida use the same electronic system (EZ-Pass); it's also usable up through Orlando (from personal experience). With such a system, there's no need to even slow down to pay the toll (and there are no more toll booths in Miami; if you have no EZ-Pass system, a photo of your license place is taken, and a bill (not a ticket) is mailed to the license holder).

Edit: There are also three service plazas along the Florida Turnpike in South Florida, one in Dade County (Miami), one in Broward County (just north of Ft. Lauderdale) and one in West Palm Beach (towards the north end of the county), each separated by approximately 30 miles. Depending on where the cop in question lived and worked, he might have never even passed a service plaza (and besides, the gas there is more expensive).

On today's roads there are always some people driving over the speed limit. By your logic we should abolish speed limits to remove this "speed differential".

You mean like this?

http://www.motorists.org/press/safe-to-raise-freeway-speed-l...

Existing speed limits are pointless but mostly harmless because people just ignore them. Their primary purpose is to serve as a source of ticket revenue and an excuse for police to stop any vehicle they don't otherwise have cause to stop.

number of times you've not stopped for gas which are relevant: 0

the point is that if you intend to stop, or must stop, you are free to speed without fear of automatic ticketing.

So how's that worse than the current situation?

not worse, just misguided.

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