Debate on speeding, with a side order of "For $60, you can hack a connected car (original topic)"
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How many of them are not separated-carriageway roads?
I can think of several two-lane roads - not too far from where I live, on the edge of U.S. suburbia - where the limit is 55mph, but 65mph is safely attainable. They're mostly straight and well-paved, although with some very gradual curves.
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Hell, in your very own country it has been shown that the speed cameras have actually increased the accident rates, yet they keep using them...because they are money makers. That is it. They do nothing for the safety of people, and neither do speeding tickets...for the most part.
Speed limits simply do not matter on the highway.
Once you get to highway speed, there's no limit that will protect you any better in a wreck.As a matter of fact, the deadliest wrecks are head on, with a corner collision, because not only is the force imparted twice the speed, it also produces spin.
A surprisingly low speed is deadly to the driver.
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Citation from a country that you might believe
But not from a newspaper anyone would believe.
Here's another, though.
Errors cause most UK accidents
Driver errors cause more accidents than speed, according to DfT figures
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I'd much rather see crackdowns on texting drivers, they're much more of a problem than speeders.
That said, I generally obey the speed limits.
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On I-82 through Eastern Washington, yes. In I-5 through downtown Seattle? Definitely no.
Way too much regional variance to make any kind of single statement of safe speed here.
Well, yeah. Apparently you did not read what I was replying to? Specifically:
The national limit outside of built-up areas is indeed not related to reality: it's 60, which is far too fast for a great many roads without a lower posted limit
It was right there in my reply, but I bolded the relevant bit to make it more apparent for you and your shoulder aliens.
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(Psst, that means "freeway".)
Not necessarily. We have two levels of distinctions there. “Dual carriageway” roads have separated traffic (hence the name) and a general speed limit of 70 unless otherwise posted, but will also have traffic lights, roundabouts, minor roads coming in, etc. Motorways only have grade-separated junctions (though those junctions might have roundabouts and lights) have continuous hard shoulders so that broken down vehicles can get out of the way of traffic immediately (with the exception of a few short stretches here and there, typically very well signposted) and prohibit certain types of vehicles (e.g., bicycles, tractors, horse-drawn carts). As well as a few other more technical differences relating to crash barriers, signage, etc.
There's a few roads that are between these grades that have some of the motorway rules but not all (notably the A55) but they're really unusual.
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Not necessarily. We have two levels of distinctions there. “Dual carriageway” roads have separated traffic (hence the name) and a general speed limit of 70 unless otherwise posted, but will also have traffic lights, roundabouts, minor roads coming in, etc.
Divided highway.
Motorways only have grade-separated junctions (though those junctions might have roundabouts and lights) have continuous hard shoulders so that broken down vehicles can get out of the way of traffic immediately (with the exception of a few short stretches here and there, typically very well signposted) and prohibit certain types of vehicles (e.g., bicycles, tractors, horse-drawn carts).
Freeway.
EDIT: BTW, this is one of those confusing terminology things, because most people think "Interstate Freeway" if you say just the word "freeway". But State highways can also be freeways, for example, WA-522 here in Washington is a freeway along much of its length. But it's never an Interstate Freeway.
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Your motorways are not safe to drive at 60mph? I routinely drive 80+mph on our interstate system and never feel the slightest bit unsafe.
It's 70 in the UK (except sometimes on “managed motorways”). You can often do a bit more than that safely enough, but traffic levels are often such that you can't actually go more than about 75 for more than a mile or so before you're stuck behind someone else.
We've got way too much traffic.
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You can often do a bit more than that safely enough, but traffic levels are often such that you can't actually go more than about 75 for more than a mile or so before you're stuck behind someone else.
I can understand that, but a blanket statement about it being imprudent to drive over 60mph on a motorway with no qualifier for conditions leads me to believe that either the roads are shit or the person making the statement has no business driving at all.
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managed motorways
These are roads with variable speed limits. There are a few about (mostly close to urban areas) but they're definitely a minority of motorways. When a limit lower than 70 is imposed (with lots of very visible illuminated signs, one over each lane, repeated about every half mile or so) then they're also camera-enforced. The limit is lowered in very heavy traffic (read “California route 101 south of SF in rush hour” levels of traffic) to increase overall throughput. It works well.
I absolutely hate driving on them. But then who likes heavy traffic?
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but a blanket statement about it being imprudent to drive over 60mph on a motorway with no qualifier for conditions
In terms of road engineering, our motorways can probably support 90mph or more quite safely enough. They're insanely well specified. The problem is the other idiots on the road.
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It works well
It doesn't always work that well. Reducing the speed reduces the road capacity. Also - over driven on the managed part of the M42 on a week day morning? The speed limit constantly changes eg 60 -> 40 -> 50 -> 40 -> 60 -> 50 -> 60 and that does not improve the flow.
There are a few about (mostly close to urban areas) but they're definitely a minority of motorways.
They're increasing - at the very least the M6, M60, M1, M3 are getting some (more, in the case of the M6 and M1) managed sections added.
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In terms of road engineering, our motorways can probably support 90mph or more quite safely enough. They're insanely well specified. The problem is the other idiots on the road.
90 mph is faster than a lot of vehicles are capable of, I'd think it unsafe for that reason. Fastest I ever got my motorcycle to was 83 MPH and that was downhill on a mountain interstate, and since my pickup's a diesel (low max RPM) it'll redline around 90 - 95 MPH in top gear.
I'm really not sure where I stand on the speed limit issue, but I know I don't like it when people are whipping past me at 20 MPH greater than my speed, especially if I'm on the bike because 60% of the time they don't even know I'm there.
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90 mph is faster than a lot of vehicles are capable of
Seriously? Most cars sold in Europe can top 90mph easily. The only one that springs to mind that can't is the Smart ForTwo.
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My current pickup truck is the first vehicle I've owned capable of going that fast. I've owned three pickups and three motorcycles since high school. Even when I borrowed a friend's 750cc V-twin motorcycle for a trip, it topped out around 80 mph though I had a severe headwind.
I'm sure a lot of cars are more likely to achieve that speed.
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Modern cars? Sure. Older cars, lorries, buses, etc? I don't think so.
I always get confused by mph speeds because I don't encounter them often enough to memorize a conversion formula.
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I'm sure a lot of cars are more likely to achieve that speed.
Indeed. My Mazda 6, with a turbocharged V-6, can easily do 90 or (possibly plenty) more (80's enough for me!). My 500cc V-Twin has an official top speed in the low 90's, and I'd probably lay the fucker down if I even tried to get there.1km/h ~== 0.62mph
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I always get confused by mph speeds because I don't encounter them often enough to memorize a conversion formula.
I always remember that 100 km/h is about the same as 60 MPH.
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Mine easily does 150 km/h on flat road. Probably hits 160 too, but I've never tried, since the stretches of highway I frequently visit are either 1. limited to 100 km/h or 2. limited to 130 km/h but only 2 lanes per direction.
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My current pickup truck is the first vehicle I've owned capable of going that fast.
My Silverado electronically shuts down at 99mph.
Diesels are a different story though. They are geared so low, and redline so early, that they top out around 90mph or so.
Funny story: Years ago I was working for a company that thought that site employees were lying on their time sheets, so they subscribed to some buggy as hell service that monitored GPS on their phones to tell where they were, etc. It also had a setting where you could set an upper limit on speed and it would send an email, etc. One day, I get called in because one of the foremen on my crews had been "dangerously speeding". I get in to the office and they have a report from the service that said he was driving 130mph. In a Ford F-550 with a utility bed...
I told the General Manager that his report could fuck off because there was no way in hell that truck was capable of that speed, even if you dropped it out of an airplane. They still ended up having a talk with him, because they were too stupid to realize that the report was the problem, not him.
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I did 84 in a 1986 Mitsubishi Cordia-L. That was pretty scary.
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When I lived in England, I used to quite routinely hit about 105mph down the M3, if the road ahead was clear.
I got pulled over by the traffic police on one occasion, he asked me "how fast do you think you were going?". I said "probably 100". He said "I noticed you did slow down to 85 when you were going through traffic, so for that reason alone, consider yourself warned, and don't let me catch you doing it again..."
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They keep digging it up now - fat chance of over 50mph for chunks of it, let alone over 100mph.
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Yeah, that was over a decade ago. Probably twice as many cars now as well...
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90 mph is faster than a lot of vehicles are capable of, I'd think it unsafe for that reason.
Every vehicle I've driven for many years could do that; it mostly depends on how things are geared. The last one I drove that definitely couldn't have done it was a 1980 Ford Fiesta Popular, with a 4-speed manual gearbox and a sub-litre engine; that rattled very worryingly when you went above 80 (though it was around 10 years old at that point…)
Hitting 90 just requires a new enough car and a clear enough road. We tend not to build suitable roads when there's not much traffic; most through transit routes are busy, and the ones which aren't are lower capacity roads anyway. There are substantial stretches of the A75 in southern Scotland — a transit route — which are good fun to drive, with low traffic, wide lanes, and great visibility but you probably won't sustain 90 on it; the road's curves are just a bit too sharp and frequent.
I always get confused by mph speeds because I don't encounter them often enough to memorize a conversion formula.
The conversion factor is almost exactly 1.6, so 80km/h is 50mph with an error of less than 1%.
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My 500cc V-Twin has an official top speed in the low 90's, and I'd probably lay the fucker down if I even tried to get there.
My last bike was capable of 205mph (330km/h) and I had it over 190. Never owned a car that couldn't go 100. That aside, I always drive the lowest of either 7mph over the speed limit (fastest you can pass a cop around here without a large probability of getting pulled over), or as fast as conditions allow. If there is no snow or traffic, that's pretty much always 7 over. I've been well over a half million miles with only few minor incidents. All of the incidents happened in heavy traffic while going slow. My worst accident was when someone hit my car while it was parked.
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All of the electronic modules in my car are already on CAN - this has been the case for years with some cars.
Engine controls (sensors, injectors, and igniters) almost certainly aren't and the starter probably isn't. A lot of accelerator pedals are wired directly to the ECU, even if they are electronic.
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Right but I wasn't thinking of those when I said modules.
All of those things connect to the engine's ECU - it wouldn't make any sense to put them on the CAN.
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I don't know what the situation in in the US
Let's take, for example, my local neighborhood. Magarity Road is roughly 45 feet (~14 meters) across, with two extra-wide traffic lanes, cross-hatched center divider, and full width shoulders; you could drive a barge down it and still feel roomy. Let's say you do 40 MPH, which is pretty easy on a road that size.That'll be $511, minimum. $200 base fine, plus $160 ($8 per MPH over limit), plus $100 local jurisdiction surcharge, plus $51 court costs and fees. All of it goes to the state's/county's General Fund. That's before your up-to-$2500-plus-a-year reckless driving criminal case.@mott555 said:
I'd much rather see crackdowns on texting drivers, they're much more of a problem than speeders.
BONUS $500 fine! ($250 state, $250 local). That's for any kind of typing, or reading any e-mail or "text message" except contacts or caller ID. And good luck rebutting a police officer's testimony, since phones don't typically store the precise time you read a message, so you can't use the absence of a read record to show you weren't reading.
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In a perfect world, speeding tickets would not be necessary. I routinely drive over the speed limit, because that is the speed that I feel comfortable driving at. Our vehicles are in good repair and I am an active driver who always pays attention to his surroundings, etc. The chances of an accident occurring are very minimal, and would not be due to my elevated speed.
In good conditions around here, the average highway speed appears to be about 12mph over the posted limit. In sparse traffic, that number can easily get to 20. Traveling at the flow of traffic constitutes reckless driving? Maybe these "limits" should be... re-evaluated? Nah, it's probably better to make jailbirds out of people like this guy.
Of course, to prove myself wrong: ~15 years ago, I was drunk at a poker game with friends and bought a Corvette. After I put new tires on it (the ones that were on it were out of round and caused vibration), I picked it up and was on the interstate headed back home and wondered to myself: "Why are all of these assholes driving so slowly?" I looked down at the speedo and was approaching triple digits on the speedometer. It felt a lot different at speed than my pickup did.
It's a whole new world when you're in a car where 1st gear redlines around 50mph, 2nd redlines around 90, etc.
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Indeed. My Mazda 6, with a turbocharged V-6, can easily do 90 or (possibly plenty) more (80's enough for me!). My 500cc V-Twin has an official top speed in the low 90's, and I'd probably lay the fucker down if I even tried to get there.
1km/h ~== 0.62mph
110mph in a Nissan Sentra back in 1994, brand new, in a straight freeway in sunny max visibility weather, with no one around me. Only held it for about a mile (half a minute), for three reasons:
- The Engine was revving high, and I didn't want to overtax it (59 payments left, you know)
- A curve was due up ahead
- I was satisfied I knew the high end of sustainable speed for my car
I have not had the opportunity to test my Prius, and probably never will (unless I take a trip out to Montana or something) as that same straight freeway always has traffic now.
I got pulled over by the traffic police on one occasion, he asked me "how fast do you think you were going?". I said "probably 100". He said "I noticed you did slow down to 85 when you were going through traffic, so for that reason alone, consider yourself warned, and don't let me catch you doing it again..."
You were stopped by one cool cop.
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Mine easily does 150 km/h on flat road. Probably hits 160 too, but I've never tried
Replacing km/h with mph here forms a reasonably accurate depiction of my car's top speed. Sadly, I too have never tried. :(
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$160 ($8 per MPH over limit)
The limit is 20mph?!? Ah yes, It's For The ChildrenTM:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Westgate+Elementary+School,+7500+Magarity+Rd,+Falls+Church,+VA+22043/@38.919449,-77.205221,18z
@TwelveBaud said:I'd much rather see crackdowns on
texting driversreckless or impaired driving of any kind
FTFY. And no, "speeding" as most people define it isn't reckless.
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And I Just! Can't! Wait! for nanny-state bullshit like Ford's Intelligent Speed Limiter to come into widespread use.
I wonder how it would react to the following signs:
Sign worn out from the weather, maybe?
This set is just evil:
Given this is a Ford feature, I find this appropriate:
My personal favorite: if you're going to enforce it, enforce it with AUTHORITY:
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Who needs to stare at the speedo, rather than just check it every now and then?
The moment they spot a speed camera, practically everyone immediately looks at their speedo to confirm that they aren't over.
Some then slam on their brakes to get below, especially if they are driving an Audi or have an excessively large exhaust.
Source: My anecdotal evidence.
Somebody has probably done a study, but I'm on my phone and it struggles with Discourse.
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There are plenty of non-motorway roads where it's safe to go over 60mph
Like dual-carriageways, where the limit is also 70?
(Edit: Hanzo'd)
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This is typical of everything deployed to market at any point in history. Get
it to work, get it shipped to beat your competitors, and then patch the
problems (including security holes) later. Maybe.FTFY
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You have to be kidding me? Your motorways are not safe to drive at 60mph?
I told you I wasn't talking about motorways. Learn to read.
Well then, I am not meaning to be an ass, but it is likely that you are the problem.
Because I drive attentively, never drink (I wouldn't drink and drive if I did drink, but as it happens I can't stand alcohol, so it's not an issue), and stick to the speed limit because I'm not under the impression that I'm a special snowflake who can't make mistakes and won't need those extra seconds to react?
So, one in twenty road accidents is caused by speeding? That's a hell of a lot of deaths and injuries (and damage to property and cost to the emergency services and all the rest) caused by something that 'doesn't kill or injure anyone'. And how many of those would have caused less serious injuries, involved less people (someone swerves across my path because someone else hit them, that's already an accident whether or not I'm going too fast to stop) if people hadn't been speeding?
Also, if you're trying to find citations that a Brit won't be instantly skeptical of, avoid the Daily Fail.
Incidentally, I'm not arguing the case for speed cameras, at best they're poorly implemented.
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one in twenty road accidents is caused by speeding
FTFA:Exceeding the speed limit is a contributory factor in five per cent of all accidents; driving too fast for conditions accounts for nine per cent.
For one, many speed limits are ludicrously low, which you'd know if you watched the video I posted upthread.
Not only that, but even assuming that the speed limits in that number *do* make sense (and like I said, many don't), it's only a contributing factor, not a primary cause. Even the "driving too fast for conditions" bit could be wildly subjective; we'd need to see the actual study to get a clear picture.
Lies, damned lies, ...
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Also, if you're trying to find citations that a Brit won't be instantly skeptical of, avoid the Daily Fail.
Hence the alternative source I added.
That's a hell of a lot of deaths and injuries
Yes but 19 times more are not caused by exceeding the speed limit.
And how many of those would have caused less serious injuries, involved less people (someone swerves across my path because someone else hit them, that's already an accident whether or not I'm going too fast to stop) if people hadn't been speeding?
How many accidents were avoided by speeding?
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Because I drive attentively, never drink (I wouldn't drink and drive if I did drink, but as it happens I can't stand alcohol, so it's not an issue), and stick to the speed limit because I'm not under the impression that I'm a special snowflake who can't make mistakes and won't need those extra seconds to react?
Have you ever had a collision?
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;)
You can weaponise anything if you're creative enough…
This reminds me of what someone wrote about the Soviet definition of anti-tank weapons in the WWII era, something like, "Any weapon can be an anti-tank weapon, if you use it against a tank."
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"Any weapon can be an anti-tank weapon, if you use it against a tank."
One presumes that would also include using a tank
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"Any weapon can be an anti-tank weapon, if you use it against a tank."
"Effectiveness as an anti-tank weapon not guaranteed"
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This reminds me of what someone wrote about the Soviet definition of anti-tank weapons in the WWII era, something like, "Any weapon can be an anti-tank weapon, if you use it against a tank."
One presumes that would also include using a tank
"Effectiveness as an anti-tank weapon not guaranteed"
Well, the Soviets were pretty ingenious at combating the German tanks with improvised weapons. They did thinks like burying heavy chains and steel cables to lock up the crawler tracks and take out the seals on the final drive mechanisms. The German tanks also had a very fatal flaw, they had no close support machine guns on some models and the Soviets realized that as soon as the tanks were separated from infantry they could just get close to the tank and burn them. Even if it did not damage the tank, it would suffocate the troops inside. They would also just jump on the tanks and start firing through the view ports. Empty a magazine or two and the ricochets would take care of the rest.
Not that they really needed to, the Soviets were closer to their production lines and could replace their tanks pretty quickly. The Germans had the problem of being low on steel and other raw materials, and by the Battle of Kursk were far enough away from their homeland that any tank they lost was not able to be replaced.
The close support issue was such a fatal flaw that the Germans devised rifles that could fire around corners in order to help when they got separated from infantry.
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"Effectiveness as an anti-tank weapon not guaranteed"
That was my thought when I read the book where I saw it. But then again, some of the weapons people not in the Soviet Union have used against tanks, even those that were specifically designed to be used as anti-tank weapons, have the same caveat.
Everything which is not forbidden is allowed - Wikipedia
