Still no paycheck gracing my mailbox. Whee.
So, I'm mildly obsessed with road safety versus speed these days. I come across websites advocating speed, and others advocating speed limits. On both sides, they really hit my bullshit-o-meter hard. I don't need to quote Mark Twain for you.
Only very rarely have I driven my car at speeds greatly in excess of the speed limit. I try to follow the rules, what can I say? I get the feeling that many Minnesotans behave similarly, as most traffic on the highway (well, outside the beltway, at least) travels within a few MPH of me.
The speed camp seems to indicate that most people pick a speed to drive, independent of what the posted limit is. While I know most people generally don't respect speed limits, they certainly seem to factor them in.
Still, the logic goes, increasing or removing high speed limits only brings the total traffic speed up by a few MPH. I would have to think that this varies from region to region, depending on driving customs as well as road quality.
The limit camp likes to quote large numbers for “speed related” crashes. However, the numbers they use tend to be overall numbers that include surface streets and uncontrolled highways as well as limited-access freeways, and sometimes the numbers include crashes that had more to do with aggressive driving and underspeed situations than overspeed.
Few statistics that I have seen are put together in a way that I would consider to be reasonable, directly comparable data. You can say that x people died on the Interstate and y people died on city streets, but there is important information missing. How many miles of city streets are there versus the Interstates? How much traffic runs on one set of streets versus the other?
Well, I suppose I'm just going to end up talking myself in circles. Time to go to bed.
For anyone who has nothing better to read, check out Minnesota's traffic laws. Apparently we do have a “keep right” law of sorts (look at Subdivision 10).
I didn't know that. Why didn't I know that?
I knew it was an advised practice, but I had no idea it was codified into law. Of course, the rules are somewhat loose, as it just says cars moving “less than the normal speed of traffic” need to move right. I've even seen signs in Minnesota for this, but I've really only seen them strategically located on hills.
Anywho, time for bed.
Posted by mike at July 30, 2003 12:30 AM | Car , Work | TrackBackWell, if you look at the Keep Right law, the main purpose of the law is to keep you from ramming head-on into the opposing traffic. It doesn't affect people driving in the left lane of a divided highway. They tried to make a law about that, but Jesse vetoed it.
Posted by: Brian Hicks at July 30, 2003 03:28 AMI meant the (poorly named) “Slow-moving vehicle” section, not the “Keep to the right” section. Of course, it can be interpeted in different ways…
Posted by: mike at July 31, 2003 09:08 AM