It's impossible to enjoy driving these days.

[jcwit]

My safety was not guaranteed from the time the Dr. slapped me on the butt till now. An awful lot of that is in the hands of the Lord, but then again I'm not about to set up and play Volley Ball in 2 lanes of the Indiana toll road.

Again as far as the issue of speed, say I got bumped in a parking lot while walking by a car moving at 3 MPH, little if any injury. If I get hit by a car going 70 MPH, chances are slim to none. Speed a factor, nah, couldn't be.

 

[jcwit]

The law is full of examples in which citizens are not expected to offer blind obedience, but instead, judgment!



Ya, that'll work well in traffic court.

 

[d00df00d]

Originally Posted By: dhise
As a lawyer, are there any other traffic laws out there that you suggest we can freely ignore for our own safety? This is the core of the whole debate here. If everyone followed the rules, which are perfectly reasonable IMO, then we wouldn't have these problems. Some people seem to think that the rules don't apply to them and then we have a dysfunctional society.

I'm sure he can tell you a lot more about being a vigilante than he can say about what laws you can break.

Stop trying to act like a representative of reasonable drivers. The criticisms leveled at you were for your presumptiveness and ego, not your obedience to the law.

And by the way, it actually would not be a good thing if everyone followed the rules verbatim: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=8166277&page=1

 

[ekpolk]

Originally Posted By: jcwit
... Speed a factor, nah, couldn't be.


There you go, now you're starting to see. Speed is a factor, not THE factor. . .

As I've noted multiple times, it's NOT that speed is unimportant, but to say "speed kills" as it it's the only thing that matters, is just totally inaccurate.

 

[jcwit]

Then if that was what we were discussing "ha, thats one way to put it, right?" we were in a complete misunderstanding. I never ment or wished to imply that speed is the "ONLY" factor, it does contribute to other factors ie; reaction time being one. This I find is one of the problems with a discussion on the net, one can not express and see expressions ect like we would in a normal manner. I guess we've come to an understanding after all and that is the important thing in the end.

Best

 

[d00df00d]

Originally Posted By: dhise
excuse me? yes, speed does kill. You might be able to survive a car crash at reasonable speeds but not too many people are going to make it out of an airplane crash.

Speed makes collisions worse. It makes errors in judgment worse. It does not kill on its own. That's the point.

 

[brianl703]

There was an accident a couple of weeks ago. 6 people were in a Ford Explorer designed to seat 5, and one of them got thrown from the vehicle and was killed in the single-vehicle accident. The Explorer hit a tree.

The Fairfax County Police said that speed was a factor in the accident (and that alcohol was not), but they mentioned nothing about the obvious problem of 6 people in a vehicle that only has 5 seatbelts (and you had to determine that from the story by knowing that no model of a 2000 Explorer could seat more than 5 people).

 

[Nick R]

Originally Posted By: jcwit
My safety was not guaranteed from the time the Dr. slapped me on the butt till now. An awful lot of that is in the hands of the Lord, but then again I'm not about to set up and play Volley Ball in 2 lanes of the Indiana toll road.

Again as far as the issue of speed, say I got bumped in a parking lot while walking by a car moving at 3 MPH, little if any injury. If I get hit by a car going 70 MPH, chances are slim to none. Speed a factor, nah, couldn't be.


Ok here is the problem. You are making EXTREME examples. You say, oh well 3 miles an hour I'd be ok, but then if I got hit at 70 then I'd be dead.. Well, no [censored] Sherlock! Of course driving 5 vs even 55 would be safe and probably noone would ever die! But those examples are so absurd that it doesn't even bear explaining. And again, an idiotic careless driver at 55 is more dangerous than a safe, aware driver at 80.

 

[jcwit]

What I'm trying to explain by taking it to the extreme is that speed is a factor in highway deaths, whether the main cause is from the driver being drunk, talking/texting on the cell phone, or from lack of sleep, speed is also a factor.

The other thing I thourghly believe in, is obeying the traffic laws, that encludes the speed limits, not passing on a lellow line, tailgating ect., ect., obey the traffic laws. To my way of thinking we are not just able to pick and chose which laws to obey and which to ignore. This applies to all laws, is it OK to juat steal a candy bar "cost $ .50 cents but wrong to rob a bank of lots of money. Both are stealing, both are wrong, and the law should be obeyed.

The quote by Nick R, an idiotic driver at 55 is more dangerous than a safe, aware driver at 80, proves nothing and if said safe driver at 80 is in an accident not of his cause will have a tough time explaining that to the judge and jury and the family involved and of course will have to live with the fact of if he would have only been obeying the laws maybe , just maybe. I prefer not to have that on my conscience.

If folks can't comprehend this view point, well thats their problem not mine, and if they are stuck behind me going the speed limit or slightly under thats also their problem.

A few years my wife and I took a monthly trip to visit her mother approx 150 miles 1 way, taking the toll roads and travling 70 miph all the way took approx 1 and half hours. Traveling secoundary side at 55 mph still took appros 1 hour and 15--20 minutes with less mental stress and arriving much more relaxed for us both.

If my life is controlled by being in such a rush that 15--20 minutes makes a huge difference then it is time for me to step back and take that deep breath that was mentioned earlier. Step back folks and live life,all you're doing is hurring up to stand in line anyway, for what?, to contemplate where you're going to hurry off to next?

 

[RacerE7773]

Originally Posted By: jcwit
What I'm trying to explain by taking it to the extreme is that speed is a factor in highway deaths, whether the main cause is from the driver being drunk, talking/texting on the cell phone, or from lack of sleep, speed is also a factor.

The other thing I thourghly believe in, is obeying the traffic laws, that encludes the speed limits, not passing on a lellow line, tailgating ect., ect., obey the traffic laws. To my way of thinking we are not just able to pick and chose which laws to obey and which to ignore. This applies to all laws, is it OK to juat steal a candy bar "cost $ .50 cents but wrong to rob a bank of lots of money. Both are stealing, both are wrong, and the law should be obeyed.

The quote by Nick R, an idiotic driver at 55 is more dangerous than a safe, aware driver at 80, proves nothing and if said safe driver at 80 is in an accident not of his cause will have a tough time explaining that to the judge and jury and the family involved and of course will have to live with the fact of if he would have only been obeying the laws maybe , just maybe. I prefer not to have that on my conscience.

If folks can't comprehend this view point, well thats their problem not mine, and if they are stuck behind me going the speed limit or slightly under thats also their problem.

A few years my wife and I took a monthly trip to visit her mother approx 150 miles 1 way, taking the toll roads and travling 70 miph all the way took approx 1 and half hours. Traveling secoundary side at 55 mph still took appros 1 hour and 15--20 minutes with less mental stress and arriving much more relaxed for us both.

If my life is controlled by being in such a rush that 15--20 minutes makes a huge difference then it is time for me to step back and take that deep breath that was mentioned earlier. Step back folks and live life,all you're doing is hurring up to stand in line anyway, for what?, to contemplate where you're going to hurry off to next?

 

[sciphi]

Here's an article that touches on most of the factors we've talked about in this thread: speed, speed differentials, absolute speed, enforcement, and speed limits. It's put out by the Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center, an agency of the US DOT's Federal Highway Administration.

Traffic Study

Lots of citations on the bottom, too!

EDIT: This took a quick search of "highway speed vs. kinetic energy".

 

[jcwit]

Thank you for the stats, very interesting.

 

[Nick R]

Originally Posted By: jcwit
What I'm trying to explain by taking it to the extreme is that speed is a factor in highway deaths, whether the main cause is from the driver being drunk, talking/texting on the cell phone, or from lack of sleep, speed is also a factor.

The other thing I thourghly believe in, is obeying the traffic laws, that encludes the speed limits, not passing on a lellow line, tailgating ect., ect., obey the traffic laws. To my way of thinking we are not just able to pick and chose which laws to obey and which to ignore. This applies to all laws, is it OK to juat steal a candy bar "cost $ .50 cents but wrong to rob a bank of lots of money. Both are stealing, both are wrong, and the law should be obeyed.

The quote by Nick R, an idiotic driver at 55 is more dangerous than a safe, aware driver at 80, proves nothing and if said safe driver at 80 is in an accident not of his cause will have a tough time explaining that to the judge and jury and the family involved and of course will have to live with the fact of if he would have only been obeying the laws maybe , just maybe. I prefer not to have that on my conscience.

If folks can't comprehend this view point, well thats their problem not mine, and if they are stuck behind me going the speed limit or slightly under thats also their problem.

A few years my wife and I took a monthly trip to visit her mother approx 150 miles 1 way, taking the toll roads and travling 70 miph all the way took approx 1 and half hours. Traveling secoundary side at 55 mph still took appros 1 hour and 15--20 minutes with less mental stress and arriving much more relaxed for us both.

If my life is controlled by being in such a rush that 15--20 minutes makes a huge difference then it is time for me to step back and take that deep breath that was mentioned earlier. Step back folks and live life,all you're doing is hurring up to stand in line anyway, for what?, to contemplate where you're going to hurry off to next?



I can understand and respect that. Personally, I don't feel that speeding is that bad. To a point, obviously. There is a reason police don't pull you over for doing 1mph over the speed limit. Anyway, with a 150 mile trip it won't. BUT, let me show you some math. For our trip to Orlando that we drove it florida, it was roughly 1200 miles one way. Assuming a speed limit of 65 (it is 55 and 70 most of it, but to make things easy say 65)

1200/65 = 18.4
1200/70 = 17.1
1200/75 = 16
1200/80 = 15

As you can see here, each 5mph over the speed limit saves about an hour of travel time. So going 75 vs the speed limit of 65, saves almost 2 1/2 hours of sitting in the car. I'll take that. Heck. most of south carolina was easy 78, 80 cruise.

 

[sciphi]

I lived in SC for 2 years. I saw a lot of cars that had flattened trees along I-95. Knowing how people drive there, I bet the 70 mph speed limit was too slow for them. Especially on the stretch from I-26 to the Georgia border on I-95, the trees are really close to the road, and the shoulders are very narrow. A second of inattention that could have been recoverable at 65 mph turns into flying (as in car in the air) into a stand of pine at 80 mph. I saw many vehicles that had left the road in this manner.

Yes, you save 2 hours by going 80. But at what higher risk, and what opportunity cost when your high speed turns a controllable problem into a wreck?

 

[MCompact]

Originally Posted By: jcwit

Ya, that'll work well in traffic court.


It did when I presided over it!

 

[jcwit]

Originally Posted By: MCompact
Originally Posted By: jcwit

Ya, that'll work well in traffic court.


It did when I presided over it!


Thats good.

I have no use for Judges, and just have another reason why.

 

[ekpolk]

Originally Posted By: sciphi
I lived in SC for 2 years. I saw a lot of cars that had flattened trees along I-95. Knowing how people drive there, I bet the 70 mph speed limit was too slow for them. Especially on the stretch from I-26 to the Georgia border on I-95, the trees are really close to the road, and the shoulders are very narrow. A second of inattention that could have been recoverable at 65 mph turns into flying (as in car in the air) into a stand of pine at 80 mph. I saw many vehicles that had left the road in this manner.

Yes, you save 2 hours by going 80. But at what higher risk, and what opportunity cost when your high speed turns a controllable problem into a wreck?


OK, I'm sorry, but driving your car into a tree at 65 is only "slightly less fatal" than driving your car into a tree at 80.

Now using this logic, why don't we all just decide to drive at 30 mph on the interstates? Really, if the only meaningful variable is speed, then the slower the better...

 

[ekpolk]

Originally Posted By: jcwit
I have no use for Judges, and just have another reason why.

Wait a minute -- I thought you were "Mr. Respect-the-law". . .

 

[Autobahn88]

Originally Posted By: ekpolk
Originally Posted By: jcwit
I have no use for Judges, and just have another reason why.

Wait a minute -- I thought you were "Mr. Respect-the-law". . .

That is why it is a waste of time responding to this individual. Obviously confused.

 

[jcwit]

The law is written by legislatures and interperted by judges.

Respect the law as its written by the elected officals not by how the judge interpetes said law.

Sorry Autobahn88 I'm not the ones that confused, of course I have no idea how they do it North of the U.S. nor do I care.