I’m talking specifically about obeying the speed limit, doing a full stop at stop signs, etc. After receiving a speeding ticket for doing 53 in a 50, As an experiment I went a full day obeying all traffic laws 100% and it caused so much road rage. For example, there is a 2 lane road near me with a speed limit of 50 (where I got the ticket), traffic usually moves at about 60/65. There was a huge line of cars behind me and nowhere to pull over. As soon as an opening came up on the shoulder I was about to pull over and one of the cars behind me blew past me on the on the right blaring their horn. Then another truck passed me at the next opportunity and brake checked me. Both of these cars proceeded to run a red light about 1/4 mile ahead of me endangering others. By far the worst part of driving on this 2 lane road was the 25 mph work zone which is completely ignored by everyone else. It effectively resulted in me doing 25 mph in a “60” which is very dangerous.
Having needed to spend the entire day pulling over at every opportunity to let people pass I inevitably picked up a drill bit and got a flat tire.
Even matters as simple as stopping completely at a stop sign for 1 second cause immediate anger and dangerous behavior from other drivers.
What on earth are we expected to do? All I want is to avoid speeding tickets and drive safely.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6611240-three-felonies-a-day
It’s a feature, not a bug.
Your not expected to obey all laws all the time, its a tool in the toolbox for selective enforcement punishment, taxation.
Ironically, self driving cars will do more to make traffic laws more sensible, since the cars will OBEY every law, no matter how silly… and that will back up traffic until the law is fixed.
I’ve always thought that if you want to fix bad laws, go to the capital city where the law makers are and obey the law very carefully, such that the cost of obedience is paid by the lawmakers.
That looks like a pretty interesting book, will definitely give it a read.
I personally feel that speed limits, etc are actually quite reasonable given the average human’s response time, and the fact that impact force increases non-linearly with increased speed. I think the bulk of the problem is that so many drivers far over-estimate their driving abilities and are out of touch from the outside world being completely isolated in their cars. The fact stands that if you hit a pedestrian at 25 mph, they have a 75% chance of survival but at 35 mph it is 75% likely to be fatal. The 2-lane road in my original post has a lot of hikers, bicyclists, and even horseback riding not to mention the deer that regularly jump out in front of you. Efficiency of literally every car on the road goes up just by slowing down a bit, too. Don’t people like spending less on gas?
Funny you mention the self-driving car thing, I’m a tesla FSD beta tester and thats how I made sure to obey every limit and road rule to the T. It was the only way I could get through it since obeying the laws gave me so much anxiety I wanted to speed up at every chance. Using the FSD in real life, though it has a setting to always go x% over the posted speed limit. As if the word “limit” has lost any and all meaning in our society.
I think you would really enjoy reading about the strategies used in traffic engineering. Where they not only take into account the physics of driving, but the human psychology of drivers.
The highway manual indicates for new roads a traffic survey should be done and the 80% speed should be the traffic limit for the road (this doesn’t always happen). From a TE perspective you want the law to encourage everyone to work at the same flow.
For roads where drivers go to fast for the conditions, you can create visually hostile environments where drivers naturally slow down (not just speed limit signs, which most people ignore). I.E. add trees, break up sight lines, add curves and chicanes, making lanes more narrow, speed humps, REMOVE traffic markings (this forces people to pay more attention to figure out whats going on).
The highway manual manual is based off gut feelings and little else. Why 80%, where did that come from? How is the currently set speed limit impacting the survey? If you go to a speed trap town by the highway, you’d say the speed limit is dead on, as no one speeds since they know its a trap.
Roads should be designed for the speed you want, and not the other way around. Your last paragraph is dead on. Real solutions look like this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bglWCuCMSWc
The speed limits were set at 80% many years ago when driving a car at that speed felt a lot faster. Physics and impact forces haven’t changed since then though.