They're not equivalent illegalities. Speeding involves a much higher energy state than rolling stop. If there's an accident, very clearly one is much worse.
I feel like a Unicorn, but I obey the speed limit as closely as I can. My speedometer says a perfect 60 on the highway in my area, and I am always being passed like crazy. I've never received a speeding ticket.
I'm not a "nuisance" for not going faster and breaking the speed limit. Everyone else is the "nuisance" and I vote for stronger enforcement where possible.
One of the most frustrating things I deal with is people driving too fast on the main street that is (basically) just outside my cul-de-sac. It's a 35 mph limit but people drive 40-45. That makes it harder to see them coming, making the road less safe.
Too many people seem to believe that the only thing that matters is the road in front of them, they don't consider the side roads at all. The city is talking about narrowing the lanes on the main street to reduce speed and add bike lanes, and it can't happen soon enough.
Also your chance of surviving an impact at like 50mph is next to zero as a pedestrian. You have a higher chance surviving an impact at 35mph even though its still pretty small.
It's not just the highway, I am frequently passed on roads of all kinds for following the speed limit and going no faster.
They are absolutely, for breaking the law, the nuisance in these situations. The number of people breaking the law does not change what the law is or, even necessarily, what the law should be.
The number of people breaking the law definitely changes what the law should be for traffic laws that primarily are about coordination. If 80% of the population starts driving on the opposite side of the road, or stopping in green and going on red we should absolutely change the law. Speed limits are primarily a similar law. It hardly matters what they are as long as people go the same speed.
People generally drive the safe speed for the road they are travelling on. The fact that you're being passed (probably on the right a lot of the times) means you are driving slower than traffic and are actually a danger to other drivers. You might think you are being morally high and mighty but you are actually putting innocent lives in danger. Please have some introspection here.
> People generally drive the safe speed for the road they are travelling on.
Can you substantiate that assertion somehow? People drive the speed that they feel safe with, but that is not necessarily true. It may be safe most of the time, but change due to external circumstances. It’s safe most of the time to drive 50km/h in a residential zone, except that one time when a child jumps out from behind a car.
The taxi study proved that drivers tend to take greater risks in cars equipped with ABS (although the difference in collision rates was not significant). In short, ABS may do more harm than good.
No, you are just more conscious about speed-related issues than your local council. They should engage in road work to reduce the road width, making everyone slow down.
You are behaving dangerously. Accidents are caused by speed differences (one reason). People changing lanes to pass you introduces all sorts of additional complexity, increases speed deltas, reduces reaction time, limits visibility, requires quicker maneuvers, forces other drivers to double and triple check that others aren't trying to pass simultaneously, increases the risk to pedestrians and cyclists, etc.
Deliberately going the speed limit when it results in other drivers constantly passing you increases the danger to to everyone else around you significantly.
Please give this some thought.
Ideally, the German model would be enforced. Slower traffic keeps right, left lanes are for overtaking. And many places are unrestricted, meaning there's no speed limit. The system works quite well, and the flow of traffic is _vastly_ more predictable, and feels a lot safer than the US interstate system.
It's a bad law that endangers people and should be changed. Going an unsafe speed is another law, and its entirely possible that there is no speed that does not violate one of those laws. The law is a relic of when cars were less safe, and the same safety can be achieved with much higher speeds.
You drive the speed you feel you can drive without undue risk to others, those around you may do the same. I take the exceptional viewpoint that neither of you are necessarily 'nuisance.' Reasonable rate of speed depends on vehicle type/design, driver skill, sobriety, wakefulness, attentiveness, safety features of those on the road, density of traffic and environmental conditions. Reasonable rate of speed does not depend on whatever arbitrary number is on a sign.
All roads are not built to perfect standards. Chances are your freeway interchanges are not built to be taken at full highway speeds. If you tried to go 75mph to make the 101s to 110s interchange in LA, you would crash into the wall like many have done because the recommended speed is 35mph (and speaking with experience it is VERY sketchy going above that because the turn is entirely unbanked and the lanes are narrow and there is zero shoulder to speak of).
There is also the issue of meatspace. Maybe your modern car can exceed the speed limit of the road surface and safely handle itself. Meanwhile, we still have our biology to deal with, which has not hardened itself to survive an impact at a high speed with a car. Only after millions of years of pedestrian deaths will that evolution be possible. When you find yourself driving 45-50mph on a road signed for 35mph, just know that if a pedestrian were to step out and appear in front of you, you are virtually guaranteed to kill them at this speed, and if you respected the signage, they have a better chance of surviving this impact.
Most accidents happen at intersections, and you don't know how fast the other car is going. I would consider rolling stop far more "dangerous" in that regard. If I were programming it and laws were not a concern, I would probably look at speed limits on both streets and disallow on higher speed intersections, or those with obstructed vision (data allowing of course).
There’s nothing magical about a full and complete stop. The reason we do it is to force humans to slow down and give themselves some objective standard for how much time they need to evaluate the conditions of the intersection. And the reason rolling stops are so common is that in many situations, it’s very obvious that the full stop is an unnecessary bit of ceremony. I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to say that a competent self driving car should be equally capable of making the necessary safety decisions whether it’s paused for a full stop or not. Given the premise that we are approving computers to make high frequency decisions about multi-ton hunks of metal driving around on our streets, there is simply no way in my mind that the difference between a full stop and a rolling stop for them is actually a safety issue.
It's more a question of whether it's a problem for the other driver. But yes, I agree the best thing would be to change the laws. Instead they have gotten even more ceremonious in my area over the last few years. Tesla is taking on a ton of liability even by going 5 mph over the limit. This recall will be used in a court case over another FSD feature for sure.
This makes the big assumption that the other driver is playing by the rules and respecting the speed limit and also not going to ignore the stop sign (which I see happen more and more lately in socal).
If someone rolls a stop in a non-4-way stop and there was a car approaching at 55mph at the same time from a transversal road then a close to 55mph t-bone crash is prone to happen. (And the vehicle involved might be a truck with a heavy load vs a tesla rolling a stop)
Presumably the cars driving on the intersecting lane of travel could very well be in the aforementioned higher energy state when an accident during a rolling stop occurs.
