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Why does everyone drive 10-15 miles above the speed limit?
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Why don’t we raise the speed limit if that’s how fast everyone wants to go?
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Why is traffic enforcement given to very expensive and ineffective police instead of cheaper and more automated traffic cameras?
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Why do we refuse to ever use ANY traffic calming measures? Yes, than you flashing digital sign for telling me I’m going 10 miles above the limit on this incredibly wide and straight and flat road with high curbs and perfect visibility.
It’s a serious confusion I have about how society is supposed to operate because it seems like a complete and total breakdown of logic and sense.
And, yes, I know there’s some thing people did long ago to set the speed limit at some percentile of what people were already traveling at, but that’s obviously a stupid way to do it and we did it anyway. So why?
Why does everyone drive 10-15 miles above the speed limit?
This isn’t really unique to the US. In my country people also consider it their right to drive above the speed limit and hate the police for telling them they can’t do it…
Why don’t we raise the speed limit if that’s how fast everyone wants to go?
Because then everyone would drive above that new limit instead. It’s a psychology thing. It’s not that everyone would rather go speed y than speed x, being above the speed limit is the very point to it. Otherwise you’d see different behaviors with different speed limits, but at least here, every speed limit sees the same behavior of people not respecting it by the same amount.
Why don’t we raise the speed limit if that’s how fast everyone wants to go?
Because then everyone would drive above that new limit instead.
I’m not so sure about that. If the speed limit in my neighborhood was 80mph I don’t think I’d be going that fast much less above it. If the nearby interstate reduced the speed limit to 25mph I don’t think I’d naturally be driving it at 35-40mph as you state.
In my experience, it’s more a thing that I think many people disregard the speed limit for the most part and have a certain speed they feel is natural and comfortable for them to drive on a given road in a given situation.
Going through the neighborhood? Some people think 15mph, some think 25mph, some think 30mph. See some kids playing on the side of the road? Most people generally would slow down a bit. Roads are tight and narrow? Well now I have to be a bit more careful in this area so I need to slow down even further.
In my experience the psychology trick has everything to do with the road, what’s around it, the condition it’s in, etc, and less to do with the sign itself.
Well, I think both of you have a point. The problem with “most people would slow down” is that this means dead children because of those who don’t.
Speed limits to have a role to play, however much better than a sign is indeed to create roads that naturally make people drive slower. Countless streets in Europe have been redesigned according to that principle, the most systematically in the Netherlands. Why? Because it works and it saves lives.
The US requires roads to built in a way that the “natural speed” would be insanely high, even in purely residential areas.
Because people want to get places faster, and everyone knows law enforcement can’t reliably say if you were going 30mph or 40mph without a radar. So everyone collectively agrees that up to 10mph over the limit is fine since you probably won’t get pulled over unless you go more than that.
If you raise the limit from 30 to 40, people will just end up driving 50.
Wow, such wrong info and opinon here. I swear, Lemmy might be worse than Facebook to find out real info.
- Because most devices that measure the speed of cars on a road have an error rate. They need to be calibrated regularly or they might be off by a few miles an hour. Calibration takes time, which means it’s expensive.
https://schwartzcohenlaw.com/how-often-do-radar-guns-need-to-be-calibrated/
Meaning that there’s little assurance that your speedometer and a radar gun will agree exactly. They might be up to 5-7 mph off. So if someone is going up to 10mph above the limit, it’s legally not guaranteed that a radar gun reading their speed accurately will result in a fine.
Also, 10-15 over is about how far you can go that if you see a cop far off, you can slow down in time.
On top of this, fines are usually proportional to speed above the limit. So the fine itself is usually not worth the time or hassle to a cop if it’s just over the limit. They prefer easy, slam dunk cases, like someone doing 35 in a 15, or 65 in a 45.
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In the US, speed limits are based on road engineering, sort of guessed tolerances for the shittiest cars on the road, and (way back when) fuel economy. So it’s a patchwork of things unevenly applied over decades. Not all these standards change in every state regularly. Not every state is in a rush to check if 1970s standards for car tolerances for grade on a curve are still helpful. Often not until someone has a reason to lobby state government to change them.
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Until only very recently, a human had to weild the radar gun. Physically and legally. Most States didn’t allow automated tickets until they saw how easily fines could be collected with them. Those systems are expensive to buy and very unpopular, so not every local government wants to be the people that put up surveillance state infrastructure - and made taxpayers pay for the thing that now gives them tickets.
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Those are both expensive as well, and the if you did that, people would get less tickets. Which means lower local government budgets.
You’re really looking at this from a backwards perspective. People want to do whatever they want. Then one rule shows up. Then another. Then another. Each one is imperfect, and so each rule and method gets expensive to implement, but also makes people feel hemmed in a little more. And each rule pisses people off because they have habits that work into the gaps of the old system.
Do you have any insight on the monthly costs? I mean it’s just unbelievable to me that a camera in 2026 would cost $5,000/mo to operate. That’s an insane cost. I suspect some kind of legalized monopoly.
And you know, I’ve read breathalyzers also have to be calibrated, and that’s terrifying to know, because they’re probably not, and they generate more revenue when they’re off.
Your explanation of why speed limits are there are is basically saying there’s multiple overlapping systems, so everyone gets to be right, and everyone gets to be wrong.
I sort of understand the argument about cops needing to hold the radar gun, but I also don’t really get what they’re contributing to the legal validity of the case. The issue in question is whether you are speeding, and that is entirely dependent on the camera. If the cop is holding it or if the gun is on a pole is logically irrelevant.
One thing I don’t think I’ve seen people say is: we don’t control speeding because people want to speed. Case study: Toronto. Legendary asshat Doug Ford removed speed cameras because they were politically unpopular.
It’s the ongoing maintenance, just like how calibrating cars to exact speeds is expensive, so too are radar and laser guns. So the burden is on the radar/laser guns because there are fewer of them. And the calibration cannot be performed on site, as the unit your testing against also has to be calibrated to a much higher degree and you’re not going to throw it in the back of a truck and drive it around risking damage. And in the event of someone disputing, it’s up to the state to produce proof of calibration rather than the individual proving it was not. It’s an expensive process, as anyone who uses specialized tools (not limited to law enforcement) would tell you.
Now, it’s possible that the calibrations aren’t done, and people don’t question them and get tickets. But you want the ones that don’t constantly make mistakes. 20ish years ago DC put up cameras and it was sending tickets across the entire US because it wasn’t reading plates correctly. They had to hire more people to cross reference any matches with the make and model of the car just to double check, and that was a lot of eyes that needed paying. Even though a lot of it is automated today, you’re still paying a premium over putting a camera on a stick.
It’s not about monthly costs. It’s about up-front costs. These systems can be millions, maybe tens of millions to start, and are typically a huge, multi-year contract to a third party company that manages the system. Plus hiring human staff, maintenance and installation of a huge amout of it systems, training, tying in the car registration databases… On top of the fact that they’re politically unpopular. Most people don’t want to be tracked everywhere they go, even if the trade off is slower drivers on the road. There’s a lot of headwinds before monthly costs are ever even a consideration.
Speed limits aren’t an “everyone gets to be right/wrong” thing at all. It’s numerous new things added as band-aid and one-item “fixes” to specific situations. It’s also why the US tax code is such a mess. No one cares to overhaul it, and it’s just a huge jumble of singular tweaks. It’s like when you let a group of people take 10 years to write a story, and every week 5 people get to add or edit 1 sentence. Will you get a harmonized story with coherent plot? Likely not.
Radar guns don’t report the speeding to anyone. A radar gun sitting on the side of a county road will write a ticket… how? Magic? It’s a tool. A tape measure doesn’t measure your height for you, you have to read the number and know the context. Before radar guns cops had to base speeding on a guess, or their own speedometer, and had to testify in court to a more subjective standard.
We don’t control speeding because we mostly have passive systems that fine people for violations. And anyone determined enough will speed anyway, fines be damned. Many people speed as a flex and pay fines like a status symbol. You can’t engineer 200km or 200 miles of highway to keep people at 65mph or below. Engineering solutions are limited to pedestrian areas or slow speed areas. The systems we use to fine people have the added societal costs in that they take taxes to set up, and are surveillance state tools.
I’m going 10 miles above the limit on this incredibly wide and straight and flat road with high curbs and perfect visibility
This is the reason why people speed. If you want people to drive more slowly, you have to design the road/street in a way that discourages higher speeds. Do this, and you won’t need any invasive speed cameras or pay traffic cops to enforce.
On highways I suspect no one gives a shit. If it feels natural to drive 10 mph above the speed limit, it’s probably safe. But raising the speed limit would probably lead some people to speeding even more, with fewer options for punishing them (in my country at least, the fine is dependent on how much above the limit you were going).
I don’t speed.
I mean I do, but only if I’m not paying attention. I naturally want to go fast. If there were no cars on the road, I’d be going as fast as I want. During the pandemic, when no one else was on the road and cops weren’t pulling people over, I was getting to work in 30 minutes. Normally it takes no less than 45, and usually more like an hour and a half.
However, I don’t speed because there are other cars on the road.
I’ll drive at the speed limit if I can. I used to drive about 5 mph above the speed limit, but the last time I was doing that, I stopped for a school bus dropping off kids, and the guy behind me didn’t even stop looking at his phone (I assume). And it occurred to me that he was going 5mph faster than he would have been because I let him.
So now I try (again, fighting my nature) to never go above the speed limit. I also never drive closer than 4 seconds to the car in front of me. I also very slowly decrease my speed down to 10 mph below the speed limit if someone is tailgating me.
Prior to the pandemic, people would be annoyed, and they’d aggressively pass me when it was safe to do so. Since the pandemic people just cross the double yellow line into oncoming traffic to pass.
They’ve made it much harder than it used to be to get your license in PA, but it’s still too easy to get and keep your driver’s license. Every driver should have to repeat a driving test every five years.
My wife has health problems, and voluntarily stopped driving about 15 years ago when she noticed she was developing muscle weakness. The only time she’s driven a car since was an early Sunday morning when I took her to the empty high school parking lot and had her drive our civic around so she could just see what it felt like.
My dad drove him and my mom to church on the day he died. He had been having increasing number of car accidents, but no one could stop him from driving. My wife and I refused to ride in a car with him driving. I think the last accident he had was with a light pole in a parking lot because “the sun was in his eyes.”
If his heart had given out on the highway on the way instead of in church, my siblings and I would have had to bury both parents.
Give most humans an inch and they’ll take a mile.
- Idk human nature or some such
- Because then people will go 10-15 mph faster than that. Believe it or not, speed limits are actually chosen with the understanding that people will go 10-15 over. Thats why going 10-15 over is almost never enforced and driving the exact speed limit is seen as an act of aggression.
Mostly politics and grafting. There is a piece of highway in Florida where there is a nonsensical low speed limit. The stretch is “owned” by a little village with a police force nearly as big as the population in total, and the police is basically generating a good income by speed trapping on the highway 24/7.
- Why is traffic enforcement given to very expensive and ineffective police instead of cheaper and more automated traffic cameras?
Fuck. Off. With. Your. Surveillance. State. Bullshit.
We had a driver for a trip near London. The driver was driving quickly, but then slowed before getting to a speed-averaging camera checkpoint, saying how they weren’t going to catch him speeding.
I thought about it, I did. But I can’t justify that logic. If you can’t cross that line until a certain time (or else get a citation), then you’re not speeding unless you break that rule. If you speed up and then slow down to average-out your speed, you’re just driving bad, not saving time.
Anyways, I was just amused that they had a system that seemed more foolproof, and yet it wasn’t accomplishing its intended goal for this one driver. That was just one person, I know.
Exactly. And that why these average speed zones are more effective in enforcing speed limits. Most people get the point and grasp the idea of average speed.
By the way, I’ve been driving in England for several weeks over tge last moths. They drive like idiots over there. And I must admit we Belgians aren’t the best drivers either but damn…
I was amazed by the courtiousness I’ve encountered on Slovenian and Montenegrin roads. The contrast is huge.
There are still plenty of old fashioned speed cameras, no surveillance required.
I know what you’re trying to say but literally any camera is surveillance. It takes pictures/video of a given area. It provides overwatch in lieu of a human. It just surveils for a specific thing.
That data can be used for other, nefarious, purposes and Americans tend to hate that unless it’s a private company doing it.
Automated speed or red light camera’s aren’t the same as the invasive ANPR/ALPR crap.
We have red light camera’s for ages. They only register when someone runs a red light. That’s used to be a hoge problem when I was young. These days it’s non existent.
Same for speed enforcement camera’s. You don’t speed, you’re not under surveillance.
Either way they were absused, if not for servillaince then for revenue.
I haven’t payed any speeding tickets in years since I stick to the speed limit.
That’s what they claim, but you have no way to verify
Actually I do and I did. I’ve requested the DPIA and the technical specifications through freedom of information request.
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Because the average American believes speed limits aren’t meant for the especially skilled drivers like themselves.
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If the speed limit is raised, then people will drive 10-15 MPH over the new limit. Natch.
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Traffic enforcement cameras have been routinely abused by the government and so have to be regularly taken away from them like the naughty children they are.
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People will assure you that civil planning has done their job and everything is already working like a well-oiled machine. I don’t know why people keep saying this when it’s obviously not true. It’s astounding.
Traffic enforcement cameras have been routinely abused by the government…
People focus on the nasty abuse like stalking etc. but in my experience traffic cameras (specifically stop sign cameras) are abusive in another way: the fines are low, the crime is classed as civil, and no points are added to the drivers license. Which means if a citation is issued, people just pay it because contesting a false positive case is impossible because you have to schedule a court date, take a day off work to go to court, and pay the court fees even if the judgement is in your favor (which are higher than the actual fine). This only gets worse as more of these cameras switch to AI flagging with “human review,” which we know translates to “no one fucking watched the video, they just isssued the fine.”
Even before AI was in the mix, local governments were pulling crap like shortening yellow light timers to less than their own laws require for safety. And fine citizens (or habitual yellow-light runners) did the leg work to catch this crap. We’ve always had to be on our guard. That isn’t a new phenomena.
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…as a licensed US driver who finds public transit much less stressful.
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where I grew up, we didn’t. I also grew up in a state that was always in the top 3 for speeding fines given.
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Because, at least in theory, speed limits in the area should be set for safety, not desires. The US is generally really bad at safe road design (e.g. less wide and straight in residential and similar areas) which enables those speeding
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fees based on things like net worth and/or salary would theoretically help. That will never happen though. Some places use cameras to offer civil penalties, but I’m not sure where camera enforcement is otherwise legal. I haven’t lived in the US in over a decade, though.
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ah, yeah, I wrote my point 2 before this. The US is way too car-brained and me-centric for that in many areas.
That said, where I live in rural Japan, people customarily go 10-15 kph over the limit and pass like idiots even in 30kph residential areas. The police seem to mostly only give a shit during specific enforcement campaigns that happen a couple of times a year. I try to walk, cycle, motorbike, and drive in that order depending upon what I need to do and where. Even on my motorbike, it can be scary on our roads.
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Cops want it that way.
In the USA, you can follow the average driver on a 10 minute drive and they’ll technically commit at least 1 infraction. My FIL got a $90 ticket last month for not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign.
The rules of the road are so anally technical so that cops have a valid reason to pull you over whenever they desire. That’s it.
Not stopping at a stop sign is far from “anally technical.”
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Stop signs in the US are so damn common you guys invented the “rolling stop”. Outside the US I think I’ve met like ten stop-signs total. You can bet your ass I’m coming to a complete stop when I see one, since they’re so rare I know they’re there for a good reason.
For some reason the US decided to put stop signs all the places everyone else just has a “yield” sign (unsure of the proper English term, but it’s the upside down triangle indicating you have to yield to any other traffic), or just ordinary right-hand rule with no sign at all.
Come to France, they love useless stop signs. Then a random village has 9 intersections where you have to yield right and you can’t see shit.
But also don’t use French roads they’re covered in illegal speed bumps with inconsistent sizes not conformant with international standards for clearance of road vehicles, random illegal obstacles pretending to be “traffic calming” and no enforcement of actual rules that improve safety like speed limits in towns, safety distances and phone use.
You’re coming to a 4 way stop. No one is around. You slow to approx 3 mph, then move through as no one is around. That’s pretty fucking anal
Clearly someone was around if the police were able to spot it.
Just press down on the damn brake pedal until all four wheels come to a complete stop. It’s really not that hard.
Why does this improve safety
Cops aren’t people though
You come to a stop at a stop sign, how many seconds do you have to wait for it to be considered a full and complete stop?
Can you prove it? Does proving it even matter to the cop that pulls you over for running the stop sign?
I’ve had this happen and luckily the cop failed to show to court so the ticket was thrown out…but what if he had shown up? I have no idea.
I dunno about over there but in Australia it’s 3 seconds
I got “let off with a warning” once when I only came to a complete stop for 1 second on a dead quiet stretch of road with no other cars anywhere. Then out of spite I started doing the full stop for 3 seconds thing, which is really more like a 5–7 second stop if you account for the time you’re going extremely slowly
Other cars get really mad at me, obviously, because it’s ridiculous. Then another police officer gives me a warning for being an obstruction to traffic for following the rules the other police officer told me to follow. There’s actually no fucking winning
Seems anal given every other damn country would use a “yield” or “give way” sign which you can drive through if you see it’s clear. Like, on a very open junction at an oblique angle you may barely need to slow down. Or just slow down enough to make the turn.
Yep. America used to have a shitload more yield signs, but they’ve almost all been replaced with stop signs because some stupid idiots can’t be bothered to pay attention when driving. All these overdone rules exist to treat every driver as the lowest common denominator of intelligence and capacity, frustrating the fuck out of those of us who actually know how to drive well & don’t like coming to a complete stop when it’s unnecessary because it’s inefficient, and often just “safety theater.”
Yeah, a big part of the reason I don’t go over the limit anymore is to limit my interaction with cops. I don’t do well with social interactions and these motherfuckers are likely to find me suspiscious. So I drive the speed limit and just plan to invoke my right to remain silent.
Bad news, they can and will pull you over for going too slow in some places
Well, they can always make up some bullshit, the thing is not to let them go on fishing expeditions. Assert your right to remain silent to any questions, ask them what the purpose of the stop was, and ask them if you’re free to go.
Of course, they can always “smell marijuana” if they want. I’m very frustrated with how cars are automatic excuse to violate your rights, and I already fucking hated cars.
I knew i wasn’t crazy when my friend who is a lawyer said he was starting to take the bus to work because driving cars opens one up to too much liability.
Yeah so true, ultimately we don’t have much control over our interactions with police, ugh
I think the dissonance about speed limits is why there are so many awful drivers, at least in my neck of the woods. You go through drivers ed and you’re trained to go exactly the speed limit in all circumstances, and then you get let loose and find out on some highways, driving under the speed limit is so slow compared to the actual rate of traffic that doing so would be dangerous. People learn that and figure that all of the rules of the road are stupid and bad and you have a country of awful drivers
it doesn’t help that, as another commenter mentioned, you can be ticketed for not moving with the flow of traffic. follow the law, and you’re still breaking the law! plus all the asshole drivers who will get right up on your rear bumper if they decide you aren’t going fast enough. damned if you do, damned if you don’t! although ultimately, going slower is almost always the better choice from a safety standpoint because of that whole “physics” thing
The short answer to all your questions is that America specializes in stupid in all kinds of ways. This is one of them.
Do you think regularly exceeding the posted speed limit is a uniquely American thing? Do you think traffic enforcement is as well?
85th Percentile Rule (where applicable): In many states, a common engineering principle is to set the speed limit near the speed at which the majority of drivers travel under free-flow conditions. Some states adapt or supplement this approach with safety-oriented judgments.
https://thelegalguide.org/who-decides-speed-limits-federal-state-local-roads/
