Drivers in VA don't often leave room between their car and the one in front, the world would end if someone squeezed in.
Drivers in VA don't often leave room between their car and the one in front, the world would end if someone squeezed in.
Your math is probably correct but your analysis and inference are flawed.Originally Posted by Chuck Haggard
Rarely, if ever, traffic goes from whatever speed it is doing to a standstill. So the "distances to brake from X speed to zero" argument is a moot point.
If we followed your analysis we would post all roads, and I mean ALL roads, at 10 mph and leave it at that.
Speeds in Ohio continue to creep up year over year regardless of what legislators think we should do on the roads. We're to the point that 80 mph on I-75 in the Cinci-Dayton-Lima corridor is not unusual outside of weekday rush hour. And we drive it safely.
I used to live in Wichita and drove over most of the state, so I have a pretty good idea of traffic in Kansas. The Kansas Turnpike should be posted at 85 - 90 for most of its length.
Except for frequently in major metro areas like Seattle, LA, DC, Chicago, hell I've seen it in Indianapolis. And you know, stoplights.
Traffic comes to a stop from x-speed all the time, that's why front to rear crashes are the most common crash, followed by failure to yield right of ways to cross traffic.
I've put a couple people in prison by being able to show that if they were going the speed limit, that they wouldn't have killed someone. When you're the guy in the hot seat, no one cares what everyone else gets away with 99.99% of the time.
Do you even know how to calculate stopping distance using a skid to stop formula for 80, 85 or 90mph on a highway?
He was speaking of the car in front of you, not the speed of traffic in general.
When traffic comes to a stop on a highway either you should see it coming a long ways off, or the cars in front of your start braking. Granted there are differences between how far is required between cars and their condition, but the average car will stop in a distance that is reasonably similar. And for the cases where the stopping distance is different that is why you leave space between you and the car in front of you, to account not just for reaction time, but the stopping distance differences.
Exactly!!! It's not a moral thing and I don't think speeding is wrong. I think driving recklessly is. However...there are fees for higher performance. Pay the ticket or phone a friend and move on. Anger at an officer who ticketed you is stupid and just projection so long as you truly were speeding. Just business.
One can often get away with 85-90 on the parts of Turnpike, agree with that, but if we are going to be allowing high speed Autobahn type driving I think we need to crack down on both driver's licenses and hoopties. You also may be shocked just how clogged up even the three lane each way bit between Topeka and Lawrence has become over the past few years.
In the KS the licenses system is the worst kind of joke, and there is zero vehicle inspection being done, so we have uneducated, inexperienced people driving POS cars, and they regularly crash.
My analysis is based on having actually worked multiple fatality accidents, and way too many non-fatal but everyone gets hauled off in the meatwagon type wrecks, on top of a rather well rounded education on emergency and other high speed driving and vastly more time behind the wheel that most people ever get.
How many fatal wrecks have you had to work?
Your 10mph comment is flippant bullshit, I clearly said or infered nothing of the sort. Your "we drive this speed every day" tells me you haven't really analysed the driving tacts needed for something like that to work all day every day.
Oh, and BTW, enroute to Paul-E in Ohio I drove up on two injury different accidents along the way, one was mangled and burning.
I don't need to have worked any traffic wrecks or calculate some stopping distances from skidmarks (both reductio ad absurdum) to know what I know: that millions of miles traveled happen in my state at speeds above posted speed limits with absolutely nothing going wrong. This despite weak licensing rules and no vehicle safety inspection in this state either.
Is that anecdotal evidence? It sure it, just like LE's anecdotal evidence of "I worked x many crashes so...."
And yet you use that wobbly logic to proclaim that people should be able to go yet even faster, with zero evidence to the contrary.
Working wrecks gives one at least the perspectives of what the factors are, much like many of us here deconstruct gunfights and self defense shootings, which are also rare events.
How many times have you been robbed, assaulted or attempted murdered? If none then why do you even bother to carry a gun? (if you do...)
It's not always the odds, sometimes its the price of failure during a given event. Cars wrecks at 80+mph don't look like cars wrecks, they look like airplane crashes.
Areas where traffic enters and exits the highway are also high danger zones. Dipwits using cruise control who don't want to touch the brake pedal, dipwits who dally in the left hand lane, a semi or two and someone trying to enter the highway is a perfect storm for fiery death. Whenever I see an exit/entrance area coming up I assume the worst case scenario and try to position myself so that I'm not involved in what I habitually assume will be a massive accident.
It's worked well for me so far.
3/15/2016
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