[ZTWsquared]

NOS2Go4Me,Apr 8 2009, 06:33 AM Wrote:

Focus man, Focus.,Apr 8 2009, 06:47 AM Wrote:Or you could be a law abiding citizen and do the speed limit.
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All well and good if the laws truly punished the offenders. Which they don't. Our traffic laws are less about punishment and more about tax grabs. It would also be nice if the laws punished those who can't drive properly to save their ass. But it doesn't.

When was the last time you saw a cop bust someone for a lane change without signalling? A right-hand turn at an intersection (lit or signed) without a signal? A drift-left lane change, no signal? Following too closely? What about a left-hand turn to an improper lane (ala large trucks and buses)? All should be ticketed there - but they rarely, if ever, are.
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Although to some degree I also believe their is a revenue generation element to our traffic laws, I also believe that for the most part they are indeed about keeping people safe on the roads.

And so to your points above IMO those infractions you list do not statistically represent much of a threat to safety ... they are damned annoying and often selfish but generally the rest of us are well equipped to avoid a collision when the idiots drive like that.

On the other hand, IMO it is speed-related stupidity and distracted driving that poses the greatest threat to safety.

But don't get me wrong - I don't mean outright speed - I mean relative speed, and even more succinctly: relative distance at a specified speed.

When I got my license the 4 series highways were at 70 mph (113kph) and this at a time when some vehicles had front drum brakes (my '62 Mercury panel van for example) and seat belts were just recently made mandatory. So what happened that as cars got better we were forced to reduce the speed limit?

The problem isn't the speed or the technical capability of cars ... the problem is the tailgating and the passing on the right and inappropriate speed for traffic and weather conditions.

There were and are enough idiots on the road today to force lawmakers to do whatever they can to reduce the danger ... and unfortunately there simply isn't the manpower, the equipment, or the investigative techniques to catch tailgaters and convict them. So they resort to enforcing artificially low speed limits.

With today's vehicles there's no reason why the speed limits couldn't safely be 130 or 140 ... but it would take a disciplined, courteous and sane population of drivers to make that work. And we have anything but that.

Today you can be doing 130 in the left lane keeping a sane distance behind the guy in front of you (8 to 10 car lengths) and I can guarantee you that 7 times out of ten the idiot behind you will pass you on the right in order to fill in that space. The result? He's now tailgating the guy you were behind and he's put you in a position where you're tailgating him.

The sane driver's response is to slow down to create space, but now the new idiot behind you wants to do the same thing. The only "solution" is to continously tailgate the car in front, thus preventing the pass on the right, or - what I do - prevent the pass on the right by speeding up ... but that creates it's own set of problems and it also creates a pissed-off idiot now stuck in the lane next to you - neither are really solutions at all and in reality is probably just as dangerous as tailgating. And the constant speeding up and slowing down is also a problem in its own right.

The point I'm making is this ... speed isn't the problem per se, but the only realistic option lawmakers have to mitigate the real problem, is to keep the speed limits low and weed out the idiots that way.

Until we, as a society, truly believe that driving is a privilege and not a right, and effectively teach and enforce the discipline and courtesy that is required to make high speed limits a viable option, IMO we will continue to be saddled with artificially low speed limits. So, in other words never.