Higher Gas prices = Better Drivers? I hope gas goes up

General Discussion
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The discussion is not about civil disobedience and we are not talk about about personal rights as they pertain to anything else other then traffic laws and how they are made and who is responsible for enforcing them.

Oh, speeding and the demise of the 55 limit is ABSOLUTELY about civil disobedience! Americans, as a whole, don’t comply with laws we don’t agree with, and it has shaped our national identity…for better or worse. We INVENTED civil disobedience, and coined the term. (That said, I don’t recall mentioning CD, per se.) Toss the tea…open a speakeasy…run numbers…hold a clandestine poker game…roll a number. Speed limits >55, legal liquor, lotteries and casinos exist in this nation PREDOMINATELY because the citizenry disobeyed, ridiculed, and made a mockery of the law…and eventually, the lawmakers raised the white flag. I can drive 70 MPH legally because I, and many others like me, voted with our right feet.

That said, I do not feel any moral imperative to speed…I do it if the “marginal utility of speeding” exceeds the “marginal costs of speeding.” Right now, for every hour I could save in my F150 by driving faster, I pay $18 in extra fuel; hence, I do not speed. If I drove a more fuel-efficient car, I probably would speed. (There are many other laws I do feel a moral imperative to disobey…but I cannot discuss these here, any more [GRR!])

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vote with your mouth mean joe!

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@dagosa‌

You are not the one to determine good or bad drivers by some natural means. Why don't you instead argue for individual license allowances that allow people with gold stars to do what they want as determined by reflex test....definitely not past traffic offenses.

So… something like what I said on Page 19?

Speed limits are a long standing policy, and long-standing policies are very difficult to change. However, when technology becomes a little cheaper, I wouldn't object to having to take an advanced driving test every year which would determine how fast I can drive among other things. Many ways that this could be implemented - such as writing my driving level to a card the car would use to limit acceleration and top speeds on different roads. But there are plenty of holes in that idea, just like there are many problems with speed limits.
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@whitey:

Since the Hurt Report was a study of motorcycle accident data, and doesn't apply to this discussion, I think you should look in the mirror when you "call bovine scatology." Seriously, if you think the Hurt Report is relevant to a discussion about cars in a car forum, you might want to try reading it first.

In the absence of more directly pertinent data refuting it, the Hurt Report IS relevant. It concerns (well, this one wrinkle of it) highway travel; it concerns motorcycle collisions with (predominately) passenger vehicles. Also, it should be noted it was commissioned by the NHTSA, and they got a result they really didn’t want. My skeptical mind assigns extra weight to studies that refute the intent of their sponsors, as it had to “swim upstream” against any bias.

It says–generally–that speed relative to traffic, NOT absolute speed, is what matters (in motorcycles). YOU said the exact opposite is true (in cars). Given that there’s at least SOME carry-over relevance, you are most likely to be wrong in your assertion. Any impartial observer can easily see that.

If you have more relevant (i.e. passenger-vehicle specific) data that contradicts the Hurt Report, please produce it!

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Wow Carolyn! you are being very tolerant of this arguement-even when I was essentially correct ,my discussion would still be closed-Kevin

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@‌meanjoe75green
Well my good friend, you’re fighting the wrong war. The civil disobedience has nothing to do with shaping your national identity when you speed. It has to do with some local law enforcement agency, whose officers are just like you and me. We have families and we work for a living. His job just happens to be doing what his employer, the citizens of the town and state and hire him to do. If you want speed laws changed, you partition them to do it.

Vote at a real ballot box and elect officials that agree with higher speed limits locally and state wide, where it counts. When the speed limit was 55 most drivers drove slower and the usual were about 5 mph over exactly as they are now. It was retail pressure from long haul trucking and businesses along with interstate commerce including tourism that did more to force the change back on the national level then your right foot. Don’t give your feet that much credit. Though we talk a good game about our right to do things including speed, it’s economics that are the deciding factor, not your perceived ability to alter the direction of the federal govt.

267

“Vote at a real ballot box and elect officials that agree with higher speed limits locally and state wide, where it counts.”

That plan worked in Texas. The speed limit on route 130 is as high as 85.

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@starman1‌
I hope in your suggestion to have grade level test for driving you include past infractions for things like speeding. After all, what ever superior reflexes you and all the teenage drivers in the world out there have, they can’t be mitigated by poor judgement. Fortunately, past infractions for violating driving laws are considered by many to be an indicator of poor judgement

269

@kmccune, I agree the rules are being inconsistently enforced.

@MikeInNH: “I’ll tell you the same I told whitey - drive the MA and NH roads doing the speed limit…”

I get it now. It’s not the way you New Englanders drive, it’s the roads themselves that make you and your fellow drivers drive in such a reckless and dangerous manner. Now it all makes sense. [/sarcasm]

270
I get it now. It's not the way you New Englanders drive, it's the roads themselves that make you and your fellow drivers drive in such a reckless and dangerous manner. Now it all makes sense. [/sarcasm]

No…it’s the people like YOU who drive the speed limit on those roads when everyone else is doing 70 that is EXTREMELY RECKLESS. If it’s SO reckless to drive with the flow of traffic…then why do the cops do it? Why don’t they give out tickets for driving that speed? I’ve been in traffic with cops doing about 75…NOTHING happened. I do see cops pulling people over for driving too slow in the left lane (usually they’re driving the speed limit)…or for driving in the break-down lane.

As I said Whitey…you haven’t a clue to what it’s like to drive in New England…So you really shouldn’t comment on it. All it’s showing to everyone here…that you don’t really care about driver safety…all you care about is that some people get to drive faster then you do without getting a ticket…and you can’t handle that. It makes your skin crawl. Has NOTHING to do with driver safety…just driver control.

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@Whitey‌
It’s in the water. The high content of particulates and radon, especially from NH, called the granite state, makes them absolutely insane drivers. As a matter of fact, no one, including my daughter and family who live there should be trusted on matters of any kind pertaining to the automobile. I have noticed the subtle changes over the years in her family. She can’t even back up any more ! Fortunately, we in Maine get to dump on Canadian drivers so we become insulated from attacks of being poor drivers. It’s all about the Canadian tourists from the north and the Mass. / NH drivers from the south driving up to shop at LLBean and Bangor for water front concerts who occasionally break down and stay in our lovely state, only to pollute our pristine driving habits. Up to now, it’s be no big deal. But, if they populate like rabbits which NH types are prone to do, the entire eastern seaboard could be awash of insane lower NE drivers. Pray it desn’t happen. Global warming will be an afterthought if in deed it does come to pass…

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@whitey:

Whatever. If you want to drive the S/L on a road full of folks doing 20 over, feel free. It’s your right–it’s not like you’re breaking the law or anything.

Just realize you are taking on an additional risk in doing so. The best available data says plainly that deviating from prevailing traffic speeds increases your risk. You are entitled to your own opinion, not your own facts, whitey, and the best available facts say YOU ARE WRONG.

273

It is not as simple as deviating from the prevailing speed. Within 20 MPH or so, there is not a significant difference in danger. It is when the difference grows larger that danger increases dramatically. I am on I-95 by 5:30AM most weekdays. Traffic is heavy enough that it is not uncommon to have it stop in the 15 mile stretch I ride to work, especially at the end since it is the last exit before the Beltway. Because it takes so much longer to stop, trucks often don’t go as fast as 65 (speed limit). And it just gets worse from there, often until 8PM or so. Yet, there are still people that want to go what appears to be approaching 90. I see spreads of 30 MPH daily, but no accidents occur. But there may be a lot of people that want to go 80 that feel cheated because someone is always in their way.

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These comments remind be of a local pastor who said “we love to loudly decry that sin which does not tempt us”.

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around here we call the crazy drivers on the way to the beach “baltimorons”

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…or rather we used to, now it s just normal because they all moved here

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Even the people from DC get called that? Do you have any uncomely names for people from Delaware?

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Speeding IS Aggressive Driving

Some people speed because they have too much to do and are running late for work, school, their next meeting, lesson, soccer game, or other appointment.

Many otherwise law-abiding citizens often justify speeding when running late, almost as they would a medical emergency. Speeding because one is running late to pick up a waiting child or getting an elderly parent to a doctor’s appointment is often deemed as okay in the minds of even some of the safest drivers.

It does appear that civility and respect for authority has decreased, the trend reenforced by the phrase, “I’m just looking out for number one.” (AKA The alcoholic Attitude.)

Most motorists rarely drive aggressively, and some never at all. For others, episodes of aggressive driving are frequent, and for a small proportion of motorists it is their usual driving behavior.

Occasional episodes of aggressive driving might occur in response to specific situations, such as speeding and changing lanes abruptly when late for an important appointment, when it is not the driver’s normal behavior.

Among the chronic aggressive drivers there are those who learned the driving style and consider it appropriate, and others who may have learned to drive properly, but for whom the behavior is an expression of illness.

If a Motorist is Willing to Flagrantly break the law by speeding they are also more likely to break other laws as well, traffic and otherwise.

IE: White collar Bob says….“hmmm… I speed all the time and never get caught… Hmmmm… Let me embezel some money! Its ok no one is getting hurt!”

Blue Collar Billy says…"Hmmmm… I speed all the time and never get pulled over… I am going to buy these steaks out of the trunk of a car for next to nothing, I know they were hijacked from a semi truck down by the docks, but its ok no one got hurt…

The theory behind these examples is the “Broken Windows” theory of crime. The analogy being that a few unrepaired broken windows attracts further crime and delinquency …a “repair” (even through removal) of criminal and delinquent behavior holds its spread at bay.

279

I know the solution to this, Zero tolerance for speeders.

No tolerance means no tolerance, just as a 15 MPH school zone means 15 MPH, not 25 MPH if someone makes fails aherence; on the surface it seems a benign law, until disaster results from some “innocent mistake.”

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yeah, we call em all baltimorons, DC too. there is no life west of the Chesapeake bay… and its slower lower Delaware, and its the communistwealth of Massachusetts. geez, don t take it so seriously, I was just following up on dagosa s post from the previous page. sarcasm is lost on some people. I can laugh at myself as well as others.