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This comment section is a very good case study in why better public transportation is absolutely necessary: a lot of you should not ever drive.
The only reason I accept to not let these people pass is if it forces you do something unsafe, like throwing yourself over to the next lane and slamming on the brakes to match speed with the other cars. Otherwise just give them the lane and let them be a reckless ass somewhere else away from you. Safer that way. It’s not your job to enforce traffic rules.
Exactly. You have no clue why they’re speeding either. Sure it could be some a-hole, but it could also be someone with a medical situation, or someone that’s about to poop their pants.
When I was younger I used to stay in the lane. Now I move over if it’s safe, and let them pass. Not worth the chance of accidentally upsetting a psycho.
I agree it’s safer to let them pass, but a medical (or personal) emergency does not give you the right to endanger other people on the road by driving fast and/or recklessly. That’s why they paint priority vehicles in bright colours and put flashing lights on them - to make it safer for everyone.
If you have a medical emergency, you call an ambulance. Yes, they will have to drive to you first, but care starts when they arrive. If the emergency isn’t big enough to get an ambulance, there’s no reason to drive fast either.
Being in the US, I’d order an uber before I call for an ambulance. Even with insurance I’m afraid to test that debt machine.
Have you seen how expensive an ambulance ride is?
Yeah, honking at me. And those flashing lights on the roof of their car are really annoying.
what the hells a ɘɔnɒlυdmɒ
70 in a 50 zone. Doesn’t matter if its km/h or mph, that’s just idiotic.
exactly, the engineers should never have made a road with that big of a discrepancy between safe speed and listed speed limit
The engineers only make the designed safe speed. Government officials make the listed limit. It used to be EXTREMELY popular for government official to knock 20-25% off the design limit of the road, ironically so they can tell everyone how safe they were.
Everywhere in my town was 25mph until about 10 years ago.
A local politician got a few speeding tickets and went nuts over it, now it varies from 25-60mph. Engineers were brought in to advise on safe limits.
Him getting those tickets was one of the best things to ever happened to me. It was so miserable driving so slow on big open roads. I could probably sit down and figure up an insane amount of time I’ve saved over the last decade (if I weren’t an idiot).
Not so great for people walking or cycling though. Higher speeds mean more serious and fatal collisions.
Where these modes of transport mix, 20mph is becoming the default choice in western European countries, there is a global declaration on this. If roads feel like they’re made for higher streets: that’s bad infrastructure design.
https://www.fiafoundation.org/news/stockholm-declaration-focuses-on-reducing-urban-speed
I’m seeing more cities in the US jump onto “20 is Plenty” too!
No one is traveling on a bicycle or walking here. These roads are empty, there’s nothing there. I live in one of the most rural places in the country (United States).
It was seriously 20 miles straight with no houses, wide road, 25 mph. In residential areas there are still 25 mph speed limits.
On our 4 lane road, bicycles are not allowed, yet the speed limit was only 35-40.
Where there are sidewalks, the speed limit is 25 mph. If there are buildings, 25 mph.
Empty roads with nothing but fucking trees should not be 25 mph.
In all of my years driving on those roads, I don’t even think I’ve ever seen a bicycle. A couple of those tiny, slow motorcycles, maybe. I guess they call them scooters
And why do you think this is the case? Could it possibly be because the infrastructure is completely designed for cars, and using anything else is just not safe so you’d have to be a madman to go with these options?
Imran sure, I get rural, cars are good for rural areas, but not for towns etc.
Well, I mean, if a person wants to ride a bike 40 miles for 4 1/2 hours to the nearest Walmart I’m sure they could.
About 4,500 people live here and most of them have cars or they’re stuck.
We have public transit but about 30 people use it. My neighbor said it’s a 2.5 hour ordeal to go to the post office when he could be there and back in 20 minutes in a car. He got old and lost his license.
Traffic engineers in the US make too wide roads that psychologically encourages speeding, the posted speed limit doesn’t matter unless police dedicates significant resources to enforcing it
Was gonna cite 85th percentile speed but TIL on drawbacks
Engineers should absolutely include traffic calming features to get people to naturally slow down, but everyone should drive the limit.
Speed kills, kinetic energy is not linear.
Cars are tonnes of metal hurtling down the road. Thousands upon thousands die every year, and since the increased prevalence of massive US style trucks fatalities have RISEN, undoing decades of progress. (Both in the US, and elsewhere)
People driving 20 over the limit are arseholes (or have been influenced by car centric infrastructure and culture). Change my mind.
Speeding is never okay. Just that lots of people have convinced themselves it’s no big deal.
20 over the speed limit? that’s ridiculous no one should be driving over 25
I get this is a joke, but speed limits shouldn’t be set by politicians (which I’m hearing apparently is/was a thing?). Politicians have a role to play in getting regulations standards re-written by people who understand the decades of research on this.
Speeding is mostly a design issue, but I still expect people actually follow the rules.
Strong Towns, NotJustBikes, City Beautiful, Practical Engineering, among others have made great videos on this topic.
A lot of people justify speeding, and it’s kinda dumb, if you ask me.
Just because you “feel” it’s safe, doesn’t mean it actually is.
Plus, there’s a fantastic way to reduce road deaths, just have fewer cars, switch to public transport, but that takes a long time to implement if the political will doesn’t exist.
I disagree. There are two roads near me with a limit of 55 mph, and traffic on those roads regularly moves at 75-80. Driving 55 becomes dangerous when all of the other traffic is going so much faster, because nobody expects you to be that slow. You risk getting rear-ended, and if traffic is heavy, people who end up behind you now have to merge into a much faster lane of traffic to get around you.
Why don’t they confiscate driving licences and imprison all the criminals who are driving 20-25mph dangerously over the limit?
You ever tried to pull over an entire freeway full of cars at once?
Not personally, no - but the police would only need to catch a handful each day to get things moving a little more safely in the area.
A single cop car on the side of the road can get everybody to magically follow the speed limit.
nah, it just gets them to slow to 20 over the limit here
That’s really dependant on location. I have had plenty of road trips up and down the I5 where groups of cars pass cops on the side of the road going 80, and no one slows down and the cops do nothing. Source: I’m one of those drivers.
For a minute, maybe. Foot goes back down when the cop’s out of view in the mirrors.
If everyone is driving that fast and there aren’t accidents happening consistently then the posted limit does not reflect the reality of the road.
Or the road design doesn’t facilitate compliance with the speed limit. This is how policy and guidance on road infrastructure talks about these issues.
Throw people in jail for driving too fast? That seems pretty extreme.
It’s hard to police speeding on a highway. Typically if you do get pulled over for speeding, it’s because you’re going way faster than those around you. So even in a 55, if everyone’s doing 80, you’ve gotta be doing 95 or more for a cop to single you out and arrest you. (Or maybe the cop has a quota to meet.) And where I live, local cops can’t use radar, so it’s hard to prove how fast you were going.
And then if you do get arrested, you’re most likely to get a ticket and points on your license. Get enough points and they’ll take away your license, but that means you’ve been caught repeatedly. And points expire eventually, plus if you go to your court date and plead not guilty, a lot of the time the judge will just remove the points. So a speeding ticket from years ago generally won’t have any bearing on your life except for the cost of the ticket.
So within reason, you can pretty much speed all the time consequence-free ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
All fair points for a motorway/highway/freeway/whatever. I’d mistakenly thought the previous post was referring to a smaller local road with a 55mph limit.
I don’t really care so much about what speed people do on motorways, but I have a massive problem with people doing 40-60mph in a 20-30mph limit residential area. Bear in mind where I live in the UK, the cars are driving 2 metres from the front door of everyone’s houses.
Because the road design at fault, not people.
Make roads narrower, and people will drive slower
I live out in the sticks, and if I don’t go 70, it will take me forever to get where I need to go. Also everyone else is going 70, so the people doing 50 are creating an unsafe situation. It’s the wild west out here.
Have you ever slipped and accidentally honked at someone?
Oh yeah. At a stop sign or traffic light, slow traffic, kinda rested my arms on the wheel and hit the horn on accident. Felt like an ass.
How is that even possible?
Very possible st stops. I’ve done it once, shocking myself more than the other driver.
All fun and games until you get someone willing to escalate 😁
A pit maneuver is easily defendable as an accident if nobody is looking.
- Escalates the angry driver situation.
- Takes photos while driving.
Neither driver here is in the right.
I don’t need to be right.
Fuck you Kevin you piece of shit we could’ve been something you asshole! But I’m a bigger asshole so long as you don’t pull a gun out on me. Biiiitch. *spits*
Who is Kevin?
Did you even read the post youre commenting in?
Didn’t notice the name 😔
going 70 in a 50
Both drivers deserve to lose their license
I don’t think losing their license is the right approach. I don’t think scolding them is the approach either. I think most people don’t realize that driving is a cooperative event. And to not only accept that and also expand on it helps most road rage go away.
Probably not. It could be in the middle of nowhere or on a road where the speed limit hasn’t been evaluated and the state default is 50. There are tons of roads like that in California or even some where the limit is in the 30s but it really shouldn’t be and locals are in the 60s usually.
You, The Master Driver, are amply equipped to decide what the true speed limit should be.
Well if you operate a death machine it would be realy nice if you could follow the rules and not kill somebody. Of course the rules should be reasonable but being unable to follow them means you should not be operating a death machine
There’s no reason to follow unreasonable rules even when you’re driving a death machine. Especially when not following the rules has an essentially near 0 difference in hurting someone with your cage of death(not trying to be sarcastic with cage of death). Many of these roads are designed for much higher speed limits but just have not been evaluated by the government for their speed limit and possibly never will be or they will be evaluated at a much lower than reasonable speed. For example the speed limit of most California freeways is 65 traffic moves at 80 regularly and sometimes when people are feeling frisky up to 90. Neither of those speeds are unreasonable when everyone around you is also doing them and people are used to those situations or understand they will be in those situations. A great example is Germany where parts of their freeways have no speed limit where people are doing in excess of 120 mph and semis are also using it at under 60.
Based on experience, I don’t trust random assholes to determine for themselves when a rule is unreasonable. You’re unreasonable with this take and presumption about yourself. This makes you dangerous to society. You’ll prove that even more as you disagree.
You do not get to determine on your own that your actions have near 0 consequences. That’s some level of psychopathic thought and just reinforces why we have some rules. It’s also a lack of empathy or consideration of others.
You’re breaking a rule operating a dangerous machine, and you’re trying to shrug it off as no big deal. Dangerous.
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calls random people assholes and psychopaths with little to no provocation
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claims other people lack empathy and consideration
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That’s easy to agree with in isolation, but many times on the main roads near me the normal flow of traffic in the slow lane can be 20 over. Driving at or below the speed limit would create a significantly more dangerous situation than cruising along at the same speed as the nearest several cars.
Yeah, you’d be operating in a more legal way, and the faster drivers around you should be able to safely deal with it, but that doesn’t mean the risk isn’t there.
This. Speed limit laws are bullshit and their selective enforcement is proof of it.
The dangerous drivers are the ones that are impeding the flow (i.e. going well below the speed limit when road/weather conditions don’t necessitate it; cruising in a passing lane, etc) or driving unpredictably/erratically (cutting people off, weaving, etc).
Not necessarily the speeders, though there can certainly be some overlap, particularly in the latter group.
But speeders are the ones that get ticketed over while those asshats just crash into schoolbusses.
This is a bullshit talking point used by psychopaths to try to justify their antisocial behavior. If the people around you are going so fast that just doing the speed limit becomes unsafe, they are the ones wholly responsible for creating those unsafe conditions. They are driving faster than the conditions (and let’s be real, their own ability) would reasonably allow for, they are the only ones that should be held responsible for the consequences of their freakish behavior.
Again, that sounds good on paper. In reality, I turn into an on-ramp and I’m approaching a line of cars going 75 mph. There happens to be a sign that says they should be limiting themselves to 55 mph.
If I merge at 75mph, the state of the roadway is essentially unchanged. If I merge at 55mph, I am introducing a new risk that was not there previously.
The state of the road in your scenario is already unsafe because of the people doing 75. Every. Single. Study. Shows that there are less crashes and they are less lethal when everyone just slows the fuck down. But none of you entitled fuckwits will accept even the tiniest bit of personal inconvenience for the sake of your own safety and that of everyone around you, so we have to live in fucking Mad Max instead.
Cool, they are the ones that will get in trouble for the accident that I am still involved in. I’d much rather not be involved in an accident than be “right”.
Is this about safety, or is this about blind adherence to the law?
Every study we have shows that the roads are safer, there are less crashes and they are less deadly when everyone just goes slower. But apparently you would rather risk getting turned into a rorschach splat than advocate for the thing that actually makes roads safer.
Yup, I’m sure the highway is much safer if everyone is traveling at 10. However, if I’m the only one traveling at 10 I have made the highway much more dangerous.
I’m advocating for not being a fucking idiot and causing an accident because in theory it’s safer to travel at slower speeds.
What you’re advocating for is allowing entitled psychopaths to set the speed everyone is forced to go because you somehow think that if someone is doing 90 in a 55 and hits someone actually doing 55 that it was the normal person’s fault.
I’m obviously not saying anyone should be doing fucking 10 on the highway, I’m saying nobody needs to be doing more than the speed limit.
You’re in the wrong argument. The argument was about speeding and you’re trying to bring up recklessness in a mote general sense. Twisting the argument to make a poor point.
You don’t justify bad behavior by pointing to other bad behavior.
You know, I get it, they’re probably just an asshole. Maybe they’re having an emergency, though. How about just letting them get around in case there is a good reason for driving recklessly? Or maybe just in case they’re nuts enough to make things violent?
I mean, the text say the guy honked for going “70 in a 50”.
If you take it at face value, the person posting is the asshole and a terrible driver endangering everybody on the road.
No one is in danger strictly because of 20 over. Please. Our speed limits are insane and not grounded in safety.
I never really looked into this (relation between speed limits and accidents/safety), so I figured I’d verify your statement with a quick google search and it turns out you’ve got it all wrong. There is a deep well established link between speed limits and accident risk, see for example here:
Now you know! :)
We’re talking about speeding and you post some study about absolute speed? GTFO🤣.
You want to talk about absolute risk? What’s the increase in risk when you set an arbitrarily low speed limit on a highway clearly able to handle high speeds? When you look at the reality of induced road rage and creating large deltas in speed?
You’d be that politician giving yourself a pat on the back while ignoring the actual effects of your policy.
I would actually hear you answer these questions. I don’t see how lengthening break zones, decreasing reaction time and so on wouldn’t increase risks more than people being getting dangerously mad at the speedlimit. And as a cronic speeder i would like to have something other than shrugs and shitty excuse for my behavior.
Most people don’t drive speed limits. They drive the speed the road is designed for. When you put arbitrarily slow limits on highways most speed. Those that don’t then create dangerous speed deltas and road rage. These well known behaviors are already included and designed into the stats and engineering.
Typically highways will have higher percentage of fatal incidents but a much much much lower frequency and lower absolute number per mile. Well designed variable rate highways, even with a higher % fatality rate overall are safer.
NHTSA Road Type Crash Rate (per 100M VMT) Fatality Rate (per 100M VMT)
Urban Local Roads ~350–500+ ~1.5–2.0 Rural Local Roads ~200–300 ~2.0–3.0 Urban Collectors ~200–300 ~1.0–1.5 Urban Arterials ~100–200 ~1.2–1.8 Rural Arterials ~80–150 ~1.5–2.5 Urban Freeways/Interstates ~60–100 ~0.5–1.0 Rural Interstates ~40–80 ~0.6–1.3
By pushing traffic more quickly and reducing congestion you’ll lower the totals while increasing the frequency that an individual is killed.
The speed must be designed into the infrastructure and if you’re designing roads where you commonly have a 20 mph delta it’s likely a shitty designed urban artery. And unless you’re going to invest in trains and start kicking people off the road or put them into debt for speeding, people are going to do what makes sense at the time.
Oh hey look a guy on the internet who doesn’t when someone contradicts his baseless claims with evidence. There’s something you don’t see every day.
Oh hey, some guy mouthing off who doesn’t understand how relative and absolute risk work who just went off to have Google to search for the phrase that validates their assumptions. Rare sighting indeed.
Facts don’t care about your feelings. You’ve presented zero evidence to the contrary, how are you this confident about your assertion? This is such a joke
The forces involved in a collision grow exponentially with speed. It’s basic physics
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 bravo. Further showing the lack of understanding. Just fantastic.
No one is in danger strictly because of 20 over
More speed = more danger. Simple as that.
Source: https://www.transport.nsw.gov.au/roadsafety/topics-tips/speeding
She’s taking selfies while driving, clearly she’s the better person
I could be wrong but it looks like a dual direction dash cam. Since it’s the internet, the text and pic might have never been related. Also, the person doing over 70 in a 50 couldn’t overtake at 20? The whole thing seems like rage bait.
The other person would have to be doing 70 as well, in order to honk at them.
Could’ve honked while being overtaken
Sure. There can be more than one terrible driver endangering everybody on the road at the same time.
I’m constantly, endlessly disappointed at how hard it is for human brains to accept that two people disagreeing with each other can both be wrong.
The only thing I was in disagreement over was that you said “was the asshole”.
When they were both assholes all along.
I mean, fair enough, on a technicality at least.
The destination was the assholes we met all along.
The alternative interpretation is that the second driver was doing 50, and honked at the first driver when they passed doing 70.
And the other guy is the bigger asshole for honking at the poster for going too slowly when she’s doing 20 over.
If you take it all at face value, that is.
Going 20 is the definition of “letting them pass”. Or should she have ran off the road so the tailgating ahole could continue on going 90 in a 50 zone?
Move out of the posting lane generally is the simple and legal thing to do.
This.
Lived in Korea for awhile, and they generally seem to not have this kind of vindictiveness or self-righteousness. They’re usually like, “I dunno. Either they got a reason, or it’s not worth the effort for me to do something about it.”
That said, social pressure is much more effective here, so the vast majority of people fall in line. See COVID
Wait, so the dude honked after her because she was speeding 20 above the limit (imo justified), and she’s pretending of taking the high road by slowing down 30 under the limit just to spite him for her being wrong? 🤔
Or maybe it’s oddly phrased and he was going 30 over and the petty lane is justified. (Personally I’d go 40-45, just to be not too slow as to be dangerous).
Where are y’all going that you gotta pretend real life is GTA? Ain’t nobody need you that bad. You’re late. Get over it.
Sometimes i really wish i had the time to get into a fenderbender, just so that the asshole behind gets their comeuppance.
Not an actual encouragement for break checking idiots, please be safe.
I was on a 3 pane highway going interstate. Doing 80 in a 65 on the fast lane. Big rig in the middle lane. Slowly gaining and will pass the bog rig.
Then a pickup is coming up in the fast lane TOO FAST. Easily 100mph. She tailgates me. Now boxxed in with me in front and the big rig on her right. A sane person would go in the third lane and pass us since zero other cars around. But no.
She lays on her horn and starts swaying with impatience.
So I match speed with the big rig. Maintaining the box. She honks ways more and sways even more. Shaking her fist at me.I maintain it for another 2 minutes until my wife gets concerned she’ll rear end us and we end up spinning off the highway or under the big rig.
I give in and speed up past the big rig and change lanes to her wacko pass. They speed off.
Yeah it’s never worth it. You never know what people will do.
Yeah, better to just get them the fuck away from you ASAP than to be petty. They’re not worth the risk since they’ve already established they’re shitty drivers.
Very true. Many people act irrationally behind the wheel. Only God knows how pathetic their life must be that they want to risk life and limb to get somewhere 3 minutes faster.
It wasn’t even about going faster at that point.
I was trying to force them to slow down and go around… Instead they went apeshit.
Truly. I’ve been on the motorway before with a dude seemingly angry about something I did, not sure what, that he was chasing me across the motorway even if I went from lane 4 to 1 and back he was there.
Some people are insane. Best to avoid them even if you can handle yourself as some people won’t let it go and not worth the fight if you’re not immediately in danger.
It’s good to slow down to get the traitor off your ass, but be careful: our traitor zoomed around us and cut us off out of spite. My girlfriend pointed out that behavior like that will get that worthless dumbfuck shot one day.
Love reading threads about driving cause everyone is very upset for no discernible reason.
Driving is dangerous, and intentionally making it more dangerous deserves anger
This is why we should move the horb somewhere and have great big spikes on the steering wheel - the danger should have never been outsourced to others.
I get, i know it’ll never take off, but the current madness of 2T shockers is indefensible to me
anger
Is a big reason why it’s dangerous
I’ll do something similar to the OP. If I’m doing 29 in a 25 and you ride my ass, we will now do 24 in a 25. I like to think I’ve improved the safety of the local roadway. I won’t negotiate with terrorists.
The beauty of this comment is that it could be in support of either position.
Driving seems to bring out the second-worst in people.
Driving is inherently stressful. Hell, merely being around cars is proven to negatively impact your health: https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/newsroom/editorial/are-you-noticing-the-harmful-noise
I do this and then wonder why the fuck the asshole honking won’t just pass.
I turn it into a game to see how slow I have to go before they leave.
I have come to a full stop before, and they just kept honking. they did drive off once I got out and grabbed a crow bar from the bed of my truck and walked towards them with a smile.
I had no intention of hurting them and it was more for my own protection than anything. They clearly wanted an altercation and fled once they realized how utterly stupid they were being.
some folks just want to feel some kind of power because they feel powerless and they just need a wake-up call.
some folks just want to feel some kind of power because they feel powerless and they just need a wake-up call.
This is, like, the perfect summation of the human condition. Probably an awful lot of it, anyway.
