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"I hate these damn bike lanes. Screw your studies. I'm not reading that"
"Cut gas taxes. I see no reason why I should pay to support public transit"
"Fuck speed limits. I'm proud to break the law"
This sense of entitlement is insane.
I'm actually sympathetic to these folks, because there's a bunch of studies that show that people drive the speed that feels safe. You can't engineer a road to be safe for 15 mph over the posted speed limit and be shook when folks do the speed that feels safe (the US does this ALL THE TIME). That kind of engineering is all but guaranteeing that an enforcement control is going to be a money printer.
I've encountered a few roads in my time driving where the speed limit doesn't match actual driving conditions at all.
I think by now we should have the technology to do statistical analyses on actual road data (currently observed speed vs. speed limit speed) to more accurately assign speed limits that are safe enough that enough people actually follow them.
@Gork @three_trains_in_a_trenchcoat
My understanding is, when they design a road they do calculate the "engineering speed limit", the safe speed given road geometry and surface and visibility, etc., but then they mostly ignore it and assign an arbitrary limit from the standard list for that type of roadway.
We botched raising the limit for 400-series. We should have gone to 120km/h with actual enforcement, but what we did was 110 and a wink, and now 1 in 3 drivers do 130km/h.
Problem: Driving faster doesn't make anyone safer, so that's not true. Studies usually show that people drive at what "feels comfortable" for the design of the road, which is vastly different from what's safe.
I've been driving for decades and never felt compelled to drive at excess speeds of what's posted. I've certainly never had the urge to go 90km/h in a 40km/h or 100km/h in a 60km/h zone.
If people are unfit to drive at the posted speed limits, they should consider taking other forms of transportation.
What you're describing is what I meant. If you're driving at a speed that feels uncomfortable, it's likely because it feels unsafe. I'm glad you're a human cruise control, because I'm not, I often do vibes based speed control and I'd be very vulnerable to speed traps. I know I'm a bad driver, and I'd much rather take the bus, train, or bike lane if it was realistic to do so; I honestly hate driving.
I think the distinction they're trying to make is that whether or not a given speed feels unsafe on a road doesn't necessarily correlate with whether it actually is unsafe.
Oh, absolutely. But that doesn't stop civil engineers from making residential roads that are wide enough to function as interstates, post a 25 mph speed limit, and be SHOCKED when people do 50. It's not safe to do 50 mph on that road in any sense, but it feels like it is, so that's what people do.