Chip NoVaMac said:
It is not that it is that much faster than allowed. It about respect for the law, and what society expects. not pegging you alone, but that attitude allows for it to creep into other areas that it matters. Breaking the law, is breaking the law.
Well, true. But the laws are often made in order to allow for tickets to be written and therefore to produce revenue. Traffic laws should be dictated by what is safe, not by what is enough slower than what is reasonable that officials can therefore expect constant ticket revenue.
At least around the outskirts of Boston, there is practically zero attempt to enforce the speed limit during rush hours. Why? Because, if traffic weren't moving at 75-80, the necessary volume of traffic required to get that many people to work on time wouldn't be supported, and business would suffer. On the other hand, late in the day, plenty of tickets are written.
It would seem that, if the speed limits were there to promote safety, more tickets would be written when more people were "at risk" - not when the roads were nearly empty.
Obeying the law - driving 65 or 55 on the expressways north of the city during rush hour - causes traffic backups and increases the risk of accidents. Given a choice between obeying the law and doing the safest thing - which is always driving at the speed of traffic, not much above it nor much below it - I pick the safest course of action. Which also happens to get me to work faster.
Road rage is driven by slow traffic, not by lots of traffic. Slow traffic is, more often than not, caused by people driving too slowly relative to other traffic. Others behind them brake to slow down, creating a ripple effect. In other words, if everyone agrees to go 60mph, traffic moves at 60mph. But, counter-intuitively, if most agree to go at 70 mph but some decide to go at 60, the net traffic speed actually sags
below 60 in congested traffic due to the fact that people typically reduce their speed faster than they increase it.
The higher the speed limit, the more traffic volume is allowed. The key is to get people to drive at that higher speed and
especially to get them to get up to traffic speed ASAP when joining the flow from on ramps.
So, in way too long a post, basically I think that traffic finds its preferred speed, and that preferred speed is almost higher than the posted speed. Not because people want to break the law. But because speed limits are - significantly, in places - below the speed people "feel" they should go. And that is intentional - it allows lucrative tickets to be written.
Hence, those particluar laws - speed limits - are written expressly to allow ticket income when desired and to allow them to be ignored when useful. I have a hard time respecting laws written with the hope I would break them.
). I never realized just how much traffic you could have at six in the morning or even any time of the day. And the roads here don't go anywhere in particular. They make no sense. Haven't you people ever heard of placing roads on a grid?!?
