There might be hope speed limit

[luvit]

you assume i'm up to my eyeballs in debt and you hope for $10/gal soon?
your comments are overgeneralized to make a lame attempt at being a great carsoni.
---


my experience concurs with old mech on proper driving for light timing.
you know, we see signs with excessive lettering, like littering penalties, stimulus project signs, etc.
why not put a simple sign about light timing AT the stop light? ..like when people have time to safely read it...

[tjts1]

The only thing speed limits on the highway have ever done is generate income for the local PD.

[shovel]

Originally Posted by tjts1

The only thing speed limits on the highway have ever done is generate income for the local PD.

Agreed 100% - this type of tactic is why good honest people still don't have love for police - they turn it into an "us vs. them" scenario when we should all be on the same team.

[Bicycle Bob]

People might learn to time the lights if there was a fairly continuous LED display along the road, with reds and greens moving like a movie marquee at the right speed to get you through the light if you drove beside the green portion.

[Christ]

I still make attempts to drive on unposted roads out here... they're few and far between, any more, but by and large, most of the areas I want to drive have at least a few of them, and there's hardly any traffic on them. I can cruise at 45 or so in high gear, and never really have to slow down for any of the curves because they're old dirt roads that have naturally banked, etc..

Here's the thing about purchase prices of various products, in my POV:

You need certain things, no two ways about it. If you don't have, or have access to, an alternative fueled vehicle, you need gas or diesel.

You probably need electricity for your house, heating oil or some other way to heat, etc.

In some cases, a long commute to work can't be avoided. There is no available job within 50 miles of me that pays enough between wages and hours available to support a family, so that leaves me with a 1+ hour commute each way to even begin to be financially "able".

On the flip side, there are compromises for everything in life, and it's a part of life. You deal with it, and move on. If gas prices continue to go up, just like the last time, many people will begin driving less - spending more time at home with their families, as opposed to leisure driving. Driving will (once again) become something abhorrent to many people, rather than something to do when you're bored. You will start rationing your fuel use, or you won't be able to drive.

The last time gas prices really started to go up, it didn't bother me in the least, because I just didn't really care to drive as it was. I had a wife at home, and no need to go anywhere else that I couldn't just as easily (and in some cases, more quickly) have walked.

We used to walk to the grocery, buy $200+ in goods, then walk home with it. It was 14 blocks total. 90% of the time, from what I see in watching around me, people would rather get in a car and drive to a grocery to get milk than get it from a gas station around the corner (yes, there's always one just around the corner if you live in a large town/city), even though it's regulated to the same price at either place. I also find that people don't fully weight the cost of their lifestyles when deciding to "save money" on their purchases... if you had to spend $3 in fuel to get to the "deal" that's only $1 off from what you'd have paid originally, it wasn't worth it at all, unless you were already going that way. People around me tend to not think too much about how they're wasting resources to provide for themselves, because they feel that if it's "necessary", it's "not going to change" for them. They've retired to the fact that they're "going to have to" spend $20 a week or more on fuel costs, at current prices, and it's going to keep going up. They haven't tried to understand that by budgeting your miles, and not your money, you can save on both.

The "rich get richer and the poor get poorer" attitude is self-perpetuating, by the way. The rich got rich off the backs of people who spoke, but did not act. By continuing to speak without action, you're doing exactly what made them rich in the first place, and nothing will change. If you wish to be monetarily wealthy, follow their example, not your own. They're the rich ones, not you. What makes you think your idea could be better than theirs?

OTOH - if you want to be truly wealthy, just learn to be happy with what you have, and stop looking for every excuse to blame others for your insufficiencies. Money means nothing to a large number of people in this world, and it's been proven time and time again that you do NOT need it to survive. Self-sufficiency is practiced in a large part of the world, and US citizens could benefit from the teachings of the poorer among us.

[gone-ot]

SOLUTION--on all three-lane interstate highways, label each lane appropriately:

1) LEFT (highspeed) lane SPEED LIMIT = >75 mph
2) CENTER (normal) lane SPEED LIMIT = 55-75 mph
3) RIGHT (slowspeed) lane SPEED LIMIT = <55 mph

...I kinda like 60 mph, simple: one-mile-per minute!

[AJI]

It's funny, before I went to the States a few years back I'd always assumed that you guys still had a 55mph limit, so I was surprised when some highways were posted at 75 which is higher even than the maximum permitted in the UK. I was even more surprised to sit at that speed and having big-rigs edging past at 80mph+... when again, over here all heavy goods vehicles are limited to 56mph.

I'm torn on lowered limits though. Seven years ago when I started driving I would have hated the idea - I've never been an all-out speed-freak who travels everywhere at more than the limit and believed it was my right to do so, and admittedly my 60bhp Ford Fiesta wasn't really the vehicle in which to trouble speed limits too much anyway without the whole thing rattling like it was about to deconstruct itself. However, when on motorways I'd usually sit at about 80mph - the car seemed happy to do so and it got me where I wanted to go.

Things have changed since then. I'm still a performance car enthusiast, but I also appreciate fuel efficiency too. I got to the stage where I'd take a lot more care with my driving and go for better fuel figures - my average consumption went from 35mpg when I first started driving to mid forties instead (UK gallons) over the last couple of years. Now, I have a Mazda MX-5. It's not as fuel efficient, but if anything I drive it even more sedately most of the time (perhaps I feel like I have nothing to prove now that I have some performance to expoit should I want to). I can't remember the last time I touched 80mph on the motorways - now I travel at between 65-70mph. It's enough to clear lorries, and as long as I keep checking my mirrors I can usually pass at that speed and pull in before I get in the way of someone doing 75mph+.

Motorway driving has become a rat-race with plenty of people doing 85+ - I don't want to compete with that, I'm quite happy doing 65/70.

But would I want to do 55mph? I don't think I would. Although I'd appreciate the fuel savings, I suspect that at low speeds other drivers' concentration would be even lower than normal ("why bother looking where I'm going? I'm only doing 55...") and the roads would actually become more dangerous. Speed is also a liberty, no matter what you think too. Speed is useful and can be exciting, and reducing roads to a relative crawl just takes away that extra frission of excitement you get from a car journey. And much as there probably isn't much difference in journey time between 70 and 80, I suspect that for longer journeys there's quite a large difference between 55 and 70.

[wdb]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

If flagrant wastage of a finite resource is against society's best interests, I'd call that anti-social. Doesn't matter which side the "majority" falls on.

Is it really finite? For whatever reason reserves keep going up. Shortages occur because men form cartels or natural disasters destroy transport and processing facilities, not because raw material runs short.

I like the idea of a MPG limit a lot more than a MPH limit. Mandate a gizmo in the car that determines occupancy and MPG, set a limit, and deduct the overage from peoples' paychecks.

[Frank Lee]

Originally Posted by luvit

you assume i'm up to my eyeballs in debt and you hope for $10/gal soon?
your comments are overgeneralized to make a lame attempt at being a great carsoni...

I'm not assuming anything. Anyone that has chosen to spend that much of their life commuting is incurring quite a cost, in several ways... enjoy!

[Frank Lee]

Originally Posted by Old Tele man

SOLUTION--on all three-lane interstate highways, label each lane appropriately:

1) LEFT (highspeed) lane SPEED LIMIT = >75 mph
2) CENTER (normal) lane SPEED LIMIT = 55-75 mph
3) RIGHT (slowspeed) lane SPEED LIMIT = <55 mph

...I kinda like 60 mph, simple: one-mile-per minute!

Not comfortable with that because it is the speed DIFFERENTIAL of vehicles in close proximity to each other that causes the impact problems... and we know how much people love to mindlessly switch lanes. Reminds me of setting two food bowls down in front of multiple cats or dogs; the bowl in front of them is NEVER "the right one" so they swap bowls, sometimes several times, because they think the other guy must have something sooo much better. Yup, that's pretty much it.