This is actually a great idea:
The traffic signal on North Las Vegas’s North Commerce Street had been red for at least 29 seconds, but the Dodge Challenger did not slow down. Instead, it flew through the intersection with Cheyenne Avenue at 103 mph, almost three times the 35 mph speed limit. Carnage ensued.
The crash that occurred on January 29, 2022, was horrific. The Challenger, driven by Gary Dean Robinson, slammed into the right side of a Toyota Sienna minivan crossing the intersection. Robinson and his passenger were killed, as were all seven people in the minivan (including four children).
Erlinda Zacarias, the mother of four of the crash victims and sister to another, told the local CBS station that her family was returning from a visit to a park. “I kept calling everybody’s phone because all of them have phones and nobody answered me,” she said. Fearing the worst, she drove toward where she imagined her family might be and soon found the crash site. “I started screaming,” Zacarias said.
Over 100 Americans die in traffic collisions on an average day, but 9 fatalities from a single incident is exceptional. Crash investigations are typically handled by local authorities, but in this case, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) also launched one of its own. In its findings and recommendations, which were released last week, NTSB placed blame on Robinson, whose body showed evidence of PCP, alcohol, and cocaine. Robinson also had a history of reckless driving, leading NTSB to cite “Nevada’s failure to deter the driver’s speeding recidivism.” Those findings and related recommendations were unsurprising.
But NTSB’s investigation summary also included something else: The agency recommended that automakers install technology on all new cars that can prevent reckless speeding—and, for the first time, called on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to mandate it.
That is an excellent, overdue idea.
There really is no reason why vehicles are not governed for top speeds. I’m sure as a much younger and dumber man I could come up with a whole bunch of unique circumstances and counterfactuals explaining why this is a bad idea, but as an older and just as dumb just in different ways, I know all of that is bullshit. I’ve lived my entire adult life without ever needing to drive 100 miles and hour. Ever. Are there some situations where you absolutely have to go 102 mph and if you don’t, you die. Maybe. But you know what, if that happens, you can blame statistics and the universe and you gotta die somehow.
It was another beautiful fall day today, so of course I went to the orchard. Got some more beets and a butternut squash and an acorn squash, and picked up a beautiful apple pie. Also picked up a 5lb bag of Ludacrisps, and they are crispy as all hell.
I got double of everything (except the pie), stopped by the parents to drop off some squash, beets, and to have dad cut the pie in half, and to spend some quality time with Callie, who is just a delightful dog.
She’s such a goofy little thing- she reminds me of a combination of Lily and Samantha- all after market parts, the legs are too long, the underbite, the big eyes- just cracks me up. And she is such a ball of energy.
That reminds me, I need to show you all a picture of my sister’s new cat Magnus.
Baud
I can’t drive 55.
Trivia Man
The grocery store had blemished apples on sale, cheap. I bought 4 small bags to make applesauce. Apparently there were several varieties – a pleasant mixture of still crisp and absolute mush n my finished product.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Is it too fast or too slow for you?
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RvV3nn_de2k
John Cole
@zhena gogolia: tough, but fair
Doug R
I think some cars are actually regulated to about 85 mph, or was that an urban myth from when we were kids?
Misamericanthrope
Is your sister’s cat’s full name “Magnus O. Puss”? If not, it should be.
Another Scott
@Baud: Counterpoint…
Cheers,
Scott.
Raoul Paste
So many people are running red lights in my area that other people pause when the light turns green. Things have changed and not for the better.
Another Scott
@Doug R: There was a period when US speedometers wouldn’t read above 85 MPH. The idea was to discourage kids who wanted to see how fast the car would go. Don’t think it worked…
Later, my old GM mechanic friend said that when they went to electronic speedometers, there were special secret codes they could enter to make the speedometer read up to 288 MPH or something stupid like that. :-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Another Scott:
It’s because when the car hits 88 mph, it goes back in time.
Alison Rose
Fuckin a, where was he coming from, Studio 54?
And yeah, there is no reason whatsoever a regular passenger vehicle needs to go over 100, or even over like 80. The highest speed limit I’ve ever seen was 70 on some stretches of I-5 out in middle-of-motherfucking-nowhere California. People want to dream up a fantasy where they’re chasing down a kidnapper or running from mobsters or something, the same way they insist they need 67 automatic weapons because of the super real imminent threat of home invasion carried out by a small army’s worth of psychopaths. It’s all bullshit. Slow the fuck down*.
(*I say this as someone who got ticketed when I was 19 for going 92, but about a minute before the cop showed up had been going just over 100. BUT I WAS 19 AND STUPID and also I was on the freeway late at night mid-week driving through northern Marin County and there were like four other cars within a mile behind or ahead of me. But still IT WAS FUCKING STUPID AND I WAS A DUMBASS who very fortunately did not lose her license or her damn life.)
SpaceUnit
Capping vehicle speed will just be another cause for the pro-life MAGA crowd to rally against.
Also fuck ’em.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Raoul Paste: I’ve noticed that happening in the DC area a lot too. Seems like a post pandemic thing but IDK why the pandemic would make people drive like idiots.
Hungry Joe
I’d be in favor of mandated maximum speed for cars to reach. Say, 80 mph. There may be extremely rare cases when it’s in one’s interest to go faster — a monster movie come to life, maybe — but many lives would be spared while few would be lost. An EMT driver once told me that ambulances almost NEVER speed, especially on surface streets; in the end that only saves a few seconds, maybe a minute or two at most, and a single crash would wipe out any possible good all that other speeding might provide. What ambulances need is the ability to drive without stopping, which is why people are supposed to pull over, and why (in most places) they can control traffic lights.
Years ago I attended a traffic school to expunge a moving violation. The Highway Patrol officer teaching the class changed my life. He did some very simple arithmetic on a blackboard— yeah, it was that long ago — showing how driving 10 miles over the speed limit saves a truly insignificant amount of time. AND you’re more likely to be in an accident. AND that accident will be more violent. AND you might get a speeding ticket. AND you spend the whole trip in a state of semi-anxiety, constantly scanning for cops. AND FINALLY: How often do you arrive somewhere and say to yourself, “Man, I wish I’d gotten here a minute and a half sooner”?
I haven’t driven over the speed limit, intentionally, for more than 40 years.
Do NOT get me started on tailgating.
Baud
@SpaceUnit:
Next thing you know, they’ll ban gas stoves in cars.
MagdaInBlack
Callie does look like a goofy-sweet little thing. What a sweetie ❤️
SpaceUnit
@Baud:
Fuck that. They can take my Jeep’s in-dash gas stove when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
RSA
Very occasionally I’ve found myself doing 90+ mph on an interstate (east coast, probably I-95). I don’t think I’ve ever needed to go that fast, though. My thinking was probably along the lines of “My car can go this fast on this road in these conditions, and in this situation I’ll do it.” If my car couldn’t go that fast, it would be fine; I’d adjust my thinking.
I’m guessing that a speed limiter on cars would get enormous pushback, though, comparable to reactions to gun control legislation.
Wapiti
@Alison Rose: There are places in Utah with 80 mph speed limit (stressful driving, imo). I agree, it doesn’t need to be that fast, but there’s lots of empty space that no one wants to waste time in.
Suzanne
@What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?:
I honestly think the pandemic exacerbated a lot of latent anger and anxiety in people and shifted some social norms around acceptable ways to express those feelings in ways that we are only beginning to understand. I’m sure social science will illuminate at some point. Not to say that everyone was well-behaved before. But there’s a lot of bad behavior that seems more prevalent…. treating waitstaff and nurses and retail workers really badly, speeding, just generalized rudeness.
As for capping vehicle speed… yes. Fuck, do it lower than 80.
Alison Rose
@Hungry Joe: Hell, even when my mom was in the backseat in labor with me and my dad had to drive about 20 miles south to the hospital since there wasn’t one in our town back then and it would’ve taken too long for an ambulance to show up (I was three weeks past my due date, so when I finally started trying to make an appearance, things moved rather quickly), Dad still barely broke the speed limit. My mom told me once she had been yelling at him to drive faster, but he — accurately — pointed out that if they got pulled over, that wouldn’t help them get there faster. I’m pretty sure later on she agreed with that, but at the moment she probably cursed him out like the born-and-raised Brooklyn girl she still was inside.
Citizen Alan
I’m generally a cautious driver in any area where there might possibly be pedestrians, but I’ve been in Fresno for 4 months and I already get annoyed if traffic on the freeway stops me from hitting 80 on the way to work. Honestly, the most startling thing to me about drivers in California is the prevalence of legal right turns on red … in all lanes. The first time I was exiting the I-41 in the far right lane and stopped at the stoplight to check the traffic and vehicles in both the lanes to left just drove straight on through, I had a “WTF Is Everyone Crazy” moment. That and U-turns being legal anywhere not expressly prohibited and lane-shifting being completely legal just amaze me.
hells littlest angel
I have to make a conscious effort to keep my speed below 75 MPH (speed limit 55), but I live in a place with very little traffic, and speeding keeps my mind on my driving.
Citizen Alan
Also, I don’t think you need to make vehicles incapable of speeding. I think you could achieve the same result with 99% of drivers by making the cars play the same annoying BEEP-BEEP-BEEP they play whenever you try to drive with your seatbelt unfastened every time the car goes above 80. Hell, my car can tell me what the posted speed limit is in most places and how far above it I am, so they could make it beep whenever I’m, say, 10 miles over the limit. That would still leave 1% of utter assholes who would find a way to disable the beeping, but then, they’d just do the same thing to an actual speed limiter. I mean, what percent of drivers roll coal?
Alison Rose
@Citizen Alan: Make it play Baby Shark.
Chief Oshkosh
Our local constabulary has been pouting ever since the George Floyd verdict. The police simply don’t do the job anymore. Total lack of useful traffic control is one outcome, which they brag about on their “internal” blogs. “Yeah, I bet they want us to enforce the law NOW.” Awful human beings.
Camden’s approach of several years ago sure looks good about now.
Baud
“You’re going above the speed limit, Dave.”
Shalimar
@Wapiti: Also Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, and probably other places I haven’t been. There is a lot of nothing in the northwestern states.
Baud
@Alison Rose:
Haha. E-bike sales will soar.
Ohio Mom
@Another Scott: That was my first car, the speedometer ended at 85. Which was way above my usual speed.
When I drive home for a visit, my brother wanted to take it out for a spin — when he came back he announced he thinks it goes up well past 90, maybe even 100.
I said, You are the reason young men under 25 pay high insurance rates.
Villago Delenda Est
@SpaceUnit: Man, you’ve got that right on the nose. “They’re taking away my FREEDUMB!”
twbrandt
Here in Michigan many drivers seem to think speed limits are floors, not ceilings.
RevRick
I was driving down the NE Extension of the PA Turnpike today with my wife to visit our daughter and her family in the suburbs outside Philly. I did 75-80 the whole way, and had cars flying by me. Interstates are designed for speed and all the speed limit signs in the world aren’t going to stop speeding. People will drive as fast as they perceive the road allows them.
If we want people to slow down, we need to design our roads to scare drivers into not speeding.
To give another example, there’s a stretch of 15th Street in Allentown where the posted speed limit is 35, but I don’t drive it much faster than 20.
Why?
Because the lanes are narrow and there’s parking on both sides of the street, and you feel like you need to grip the wheel and pay hyper vigilant attention.
Too many roads in America are designed wide and straight with little traffic conflict, and there’s always going to be someone who thinks it’s the Indianapolis 500.
delphinium
@Hungry Joe:
Was driving with a friend of mine and an ambulance was coming up behind me so I started to move to the side. She asked me what I was doing and told her you are supposed to pull over for ambulances (and other emergency vehicles). She looked at me surprised and said, “you are?” She had been driving for over 15 years and didn’t know that-yikes!
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: And Huey Lewis and the News starts blasting out of nowhere.
Starfish
@Chief Oshkosh: Our police department explained why they are not catching the people speeding around at night.
There are a lot of cars making very loud noises street racing at night.
Contrary to movies, police are not allowed to get involved in high speed chases because high speed changes endanger the community.
A lot of the cars doing the street racing have temporary tags that cannot be seen at night, so they are having a hard time identifying the drivers.
SpaceUnit
I damn near rolled the first new car I ever owned. It was a Honda Prelude and I was going about 100 on the freeway the day after I bought it. Because I was an idiot. Spun it nearly 360 degrees. These days I avoid the freeways and rarely drive above 50.
In my defense my previous car was a Chevy Citation.
Villago Delenda Est
@Citizen Alan: Got you beat on “right turns on red.” A friend was driving and I was just enjoying the view south of Seoul, approaching Osan AFB, we were on a four lane highway with two left turn lanes, stopped at a light, when this Korean woman passed us on the left and right turned across all four lanes. Barely slowing down to make the right turn.
mrmoshpotato
@Suzanne:
The orange shitstain made matters worse too.
Jay
There have been many times where I have relied on speed, acceleration, braking and quick reactions to avoid an accident, but here, in the city, you go with the flow and keep your distance. Too many idiots. I drive in the “old fart” lane.
Off the main highways, (all two of them), there are many highways with single lanes each way, limited passing areas, (dotted yellow line) and often twisting mountain roads. On the minor highways, one of the main PITA’s is semi’s, (now allowed to be “trains” in many areas, one rig, two to 3 90 foot trailers), doing 120/140kph on a downhill where a pass is allowed, and crawling up the next hill at 50kph or less. So often, to pass where you can pass, it’s go, go, go.
Starfish
@Shalimar: Some cities are geofencing the e-bikes and the scooters so they have max speeds and so they cannot be driven far out of town. With the way newer cars are just computers now, there is no technological reason why every town could not set their own maximum speed limit in a geofenced area.
delphinium
@Ohio Mom: One of my brothers did the same thing. I was out of town and had stupidly left my car keys laying out (had an old Chevy with a 350 engine). When I came back, he proudly told me that he got it well above 90.
Villago Delenda Est
@RevRick: Autobahn. Germany. In stretches outside of urban areas, between cities, there is no speed limit. Fire up the Porsche and see how fast you can go. BTW, if you’re overtaken in the left lane on the Autobahn, you’re at fault for hindering traffic.
MagdaInBlack
@Suzanne: My theory is people have been through 2 traumatic experiences: The pandemic and trump ( for those of us who consider him traumatizing) We are somehow expecting to go back to the old normal without dealing with what has happened. That usually doesn’t go well.
Parfigliano
@Chief Oshkosh: They are cops. Awful people by nature. Its in their DNA.
Harrison Wesley
Got no driving stories since the last time I drove a car was over 50 years ago.
Villago Delenda Est
Perhaps I’m a weirdo civilized person or something, but I make it a point to be very polite to waitstaff and retail and medical staff people. They have to put up will all sorts of shit and I want to be remembered kindly by them for trying to brighten their day.
El Muneco
There are speed governors in other countries e.g. Japan. To forestall the most common excuse, they have GPS coordinates for racetracks so the governor is turned off when you’re on private property for a track day.
Dan B
@Villago Delenda Est: In Italy on the Autostrada you can drive as fast as your model vehicle is legally allowed. Bug Mercedes sedans can go very fast. I recall 120 mph.
Parfigliano
Vast areas of NM the speed limit is 75 because its 60-70 miles between “towns”. Nobody goes 75 more like 85-95. Always.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: That would be one way to slow ’em down – just open the pod bay doors.
RevRick
@Villago Delenda Est: My uncle, when he was in Germany for a visit, rented a Mercedes and did just that. US Interstates are based on Autobahn designs.
The exceptions are the older freeways built around NYC and in Connecticut. There was an entrance/exit ramp on the Merritt Parkway we used. 20 mph exit, and a 50 foot acceleration lane. It led to a lot of cooperative behavior.
Villago Delenda Est
Just as Dwight Eisenhower envisioned them. He was very impressed by the Autobahns.
You mentioned cooperation on the onramps. Germans totally grok the “zipper method” of merging into traffic. German driving training is rigorous and I felt much safer on an Autobahn than I ever have on an Interstate, because the majority of drivers were well trained. Of course, you still had crazy GIs testing the limits of their Subarus on them…
Barbara
@RevRick: I was in Germany last year and no one was driving that fast because of the sheer volume of traffic. Ditto with “right lane only” unless passing. Way too many cars for that. Those norms were established in a different era.
Professor Bigfoot
@Villago Delenda Est: That was my experience of driving in Germany also– the drivers are SO MUCH better trained, the vehicles better maintained, the roads better built.
There’s nothing like pushing your little rental to the limit to make a pass, then to have two or three Benzene or Porsches blast past you in the left lane.
Dan B
@RevRick: Louisville had an old freeway with entry ramps that came in at 20°. One second you’re on the ramp and the next you’re mid freeway. Did I mention many were blind. Fun times!
danielx
@Alison Rose:
South Dakota has places on I-90 where the speed limit is 80. I was sort of grateful, I wanted to get through the state as fast as possible.
Pete Downunder
I saw an article about why self-driving cars would never work in my home town – NYC. There the pedestrians assume the lights are there for decorative purposes only and only yield to traffic for fear of being run down by a crazed cabbie. A self-driving car would have to be programmed to never run over pedestrians so it would be stuck at, say, the corner of 57th and 5th for like ever. Here in Oz they have speed cameras everywhere so most people keep to within 4 or 5 kph of the limit. Many intersections also have red light cameras.
kalakal
I remember years ago seeing a challenge in the UK to promote safe driving. They had to go from London to (I think) Manchester, you ‘won’ by a combination of quickness and fuel used. The extra twist was a shallow bowl stuck above the dashboard with a wired up ball in it and you got penalty points every time the ball flew out of the ball due to hard braking accelerating. A late middle aged Jackie Stewart won ( safe driving is his thing) by about 1/2 an hour, the ball never left the bowl, he never exceeded the speed limit. As he said in the days when he was paid to do 200 mph, if you want to get somewhere quickly the trick is to smoothly maintain a constant speed, if you’re always speeding up and slowing down, you’re slow.
I’ve never driven over 80, but I have had to accelerate/break hard once or twice to prevent an accident
Matt McIrvin
What I hate, hate, hate is interchanges with left exits and left entrances, because they’re basically forcing you to abuse the left lane for some purpose other than overtaking, and it’s guaranteed to piss everyone off.
RevRick
@Villago Delenda Est: The entrance/exit ramp I’m particularly thinking of was for CT 106, which was at the base of a valley, so that you’d have to signal you were getting off at the top of the hill to let drivers behind know you were going to be soon standing on the brake pedal. So, they’d move left. And they’d stay left to allow the poor schlub stuck on the entrance ramp enter and get up to speed. The Merritt and Hutchinson River Parkways were notorious for this.
thalarctosMaritimus
@Another Scott: One of the most concisely-told stories I’ve heard, right up there with (popularly attributed to) Hemingway’s (but maybe not) “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”.
kalakal
@Matt McIrvin: I couldn’t believe that when I first came to the US. I was used to the UK where lane discipline is slammed into your head and I was horrified. It’s really dangerous.Same with exits/ entrances that go from the innermost lanes
SteveinPHX
@Another Scott: I remember reading a story about Joe Walsh many years ago. He showed up at a restaurant to meet some friends covered in aluminum foil, including his head.
He’s a one-off.
BR
Is this good news? I would think that everyone who’s been talking about a ceasefire would celebrate the US’s role in negotiating this? I know, wishful thinking.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/11/18/us-israel-hamas-reach-tentative-deal-pause-conflict-free-dozens-hostages/
Ksmiami
@Villago Delenda Est: me too and I always overtip. That’s funny, we are both considered harsh here but it’s only because we direct our ire at the truly horrible people in this country/world- the Magas, Putin and of course the whorish sycophants in the MSM
NotMax
AFAIK there have been speed governors installed on school buses for many decades.
Topically related:
Leto
@kalakal: that was one of the biggest adjustments the wife and I had to make when we eventually came back to the US. It’s also what led to my motorcycle accident 5 years ago now.
Harrison Wesley
@BR: It sure sounds like good news to me.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
I always speed. But I have a personal rule to stay within 20 percent of the speed limit. I’ve been pulled over for speeding, but never when complying with this rule
ETA: I also make a point to be following at a safe distance. This rule is inviolable.
Leto
@NotMax: that was a thing when I was growing up, governors on school buses. I don’t think that’s a thing anymore as most buses I’ve been behind, recently, were doing at least 55. They topped out at 35 when I was kid back in the 80s. Maybe that’s just in PA where I am? Idk.
RevRick
@Dan B: Having grown up in the NYC metro area and dating a gal on Long Island (now the Mrs.), I got used to driving in similar situations. The rule was bumper-to-bumper at 50 mph, merge was a reflexive verb, and you used a turn signal to exit.
Matt McIrvin
@kalakal: Left exits tend to appear on urban freeways where space is tight, to solve some kind of weird interchange-design constraint. They seemed to be all over the place in Seattle. Seem to be relatively common on the Washington, DC Beltway too.
The left entrance I have to deal with the most is in Charlestown, MA near Sullivan Square–the merge onto I-93 north from the ramp that comes from the Storrow Drive connector bridge. If it’s not rush hour, you have to merge with traffic that is absolutely screaming along in the left lane, and most of them will immediately pass you on the right making it difficult even to get out of the left lane, and it’s pretty scary.
BR
@Harrison Wesley:
It sounds like good news to me as well. What surprises me is that it’s not blaring as news everywhere. WaPo is leading with it, but I’m not seeing much discussion online generally.
NotMax
@Matt McIrvin
Left lane exits? New Jersey replete with them.
Also too, traffic circles (roundabouts for the Brits).
Yutsano
Protip: avoid Seattle.
EDIT: you beat me to it. :P
TF79
@BR: yes, I also was surprised to not see this anywhere but WaPo (yet). Hopefully not false hope
NotMax
@Yutsano
It’s been rebuilt since Antifa rendered it naught but ash and rubble?
//
Matt McIrvin
@NotMax: I live in Massachusetts–rotaries are second nature here. They’re fine if well-designed. But not all of them are well-designed.
Is it true that in New Jersey, they don’t have the rule that traffic in the circle always has right of way?
Ohio Mom
@BR: Yes! Good news and Biden deserves lots of credit.
Would we like a ceasefire that’s longer than five days, we will take what we can get.
I am reminded of parents trying to get little children to try new foods. “Just take one bite. That’s all you have to do.” “Bibi, just stop fighting for five days. That’s all you have to do.”
Lyrebird
Go VDE!
Even on days when I don’t feel like being civilized, I usually remember the self-centered observation that acting at least a little gracious to people who have power over me getting what I want is likely to do a lot more towards me getting it (food, postage stamps, prescriptions) than acting like an _ssh_l_.
On holiday travel I try to be extra EXTRA polite to people behind counters. I never want to be the person screaming at the poor low-level airline clerk about something they had no control over and holding up the rest of the line of other people who were also inconvenienced and need help from that lucky ducky clerk.
Harrison Wesley
@BR: I didn’t see anything at AP or Reuters. Top news at Reuters was a big air strike in southern Gaza.
catclub
race car drivers. The story that was most memorable for me was a group that included race car drivers and journalists in Mexico City in a horrible rental car that had effectively no clutch. After a few blocks the race car driver had figured out its peculiarities and the ride was perfectly smooth. Smooth is fast.
Another Scott
Haaretz says the White House is denying the WaPo story about a cease fire.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ohio Mom
@Another Scott: Phooey.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Starfish: That started during the pandemic when the streets were empty of everyone but the assholes.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Matt McIrvin: A nice, orderly rotarybis a beautiful thing.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Baud:
My maserati does 185
wjca
For fairly long bits of I-5 in McCarthy territory (AKA “middle-of-motherfucking-nowhere California”) the posted limit is 75. Of course most of the traffic, including the big-rigs (speed limit 55 and always has been), is doing 80.
Tom Levenson
@Citizen Alan: I think the idea of a limiter is a nonstarter. But I think the British use of speed cameras would work. Put ‘em up at fairly tight intervals, and, as the Brits do, give advance warning that they’re there—then fine and give points for every documented violation.
Wouldn’t take long for chronic speeders to lose their licenses and the rest of us to straighten up and fly right.
Tom Levenson
@Baud: And should! (Says eager e-bike convert.)
zzyzx
My 4th generation Prius can go 115. Empty I-70 in the middle of nowhere at 7 AM in Utah with a long straight downhill. It was hard to stay under 100.
Fastest I ever drove was on the Autobahn. My car had a limiter of 240 km/hr (about 150 mph) and I wanted to see if I could hit it. I got to 236. People were passing me. Everyone drives so sanely there that it wasn’t even scary.
Kayla Rudbek
Today it was my turn to work on home renovations. I have now removed about 95% of the wallpaper from the powder room and replaced the switch plates and doorknob with a proper handle. Some of the wallpaper was peeling off, and some I had to steam off with a handheld clothing steamer. I think that I managed to get a paper cut on my right index finger, which is interfering with knitting.
So now I have to fix the holes from tearing out the toilet paper holder and then decide on what to do in terms of painting and peel-and-stick tile. I have concluded that it would be a major pain to put the tiles/stickers where the wallpaper was, so I may just put them right above the molding that was separating the painted sections from the wallpaper. And the previous owner put wallpaper on the switch plates and painted the toggles and plugs.
I had bought the tile stickers from Amazon thinking that I would use them to cover up the floor, but I am not sure that they would be durable enough. And the floor surface is so small that I think it would be a waste to buy a whole box of the Lucida tiles we used for the kitchen. Maybe we will have leftover tiles from the kitchen.
And I want to replace the faucet as well (already purchased, just need to get it in)
Sister Golden Bear
@mrmoshpotato: Nickelback, and if you exceed 100 mph, the Disney Ride Song That Must Not Be Named starts page.
TriassicSands
Mar-a-Lago
ETA: He was being interviewed for a job in the next Trump administration. I think it was for Secretary of Defense.
sdhays
@Matt McIrvin: They’re especially awful to people unfamiliar with the area. In urban areas, the signage often doesn’t warn you your exit is on the left until you’re almost there, so if you don’t already know it’s on the left, you’ve got a very tense scramble in busy, impatient traffic to across multiple lanes.
GPS has made this better, but it still sucks.
Another Scott
@catclub: I read the same story long ago – was it Stewart? I can’t find it now, of course. The details I remember (possibly faultily) are:
A few F1 drivers got in an old FIAT or something. The famous driver started the car and stalled it. He got it going again, then the passenger turned off the ignition and everyone laughed. The famous driver got it going again and quickly figured out how to shift it smoothly in spite of the shape it was in. Everyone noticed, but took it in stride, because of course he was one of the greatest drivers in the world…
Cheers,
Scott.
Timill
@Ohio Mom: Googling suggests the ceasefire is a real thing, but they’re still haggling over the terms, so it’s not agreed yet.
sab
Las Vegas has unusually horrible drivers. One big reason is the speed limits are really high. Because “freedom” they haven’t reduced speed limits as the valley filled up. So they have 45 mph in congested commericial areas that used to be ranches or open desert, which in any normal city would be 25 or 30 mph.
I lived there four years and saw a fatal accident almost every month. Before that I had seen maybe three in my whole life.
And then, they have hardly any trauma centers in their hospitals.
rikyrah
Callie is cute😍
sdhays
@Citizen Alan: In Hong Kong, there are little minibuses that service less trafficked routes (routes that, basically, would be medium demand in most American cities). They have a display that shows the minibus’ speed, and if it goes over a certain threshold, it literally does start beeping.
The displays and alarms were mandated because the minibuses are operated by smaller operators with lower margins and I think they got paid by the number of runs they could make or something, so the incentive to speed was high.
Timill
@Another Scott: A tale from ‘Motor Sport’ magazine back in the 70s. As I recall, Charles Richardson (full time journo and semi-pro racer) had been out to Stuttgart for the launch of the 928S.
As he was leaving, he was met by a Porsche PR person: “Your flight home has been cancelled. However, we have you on a flight leaving Frankfurt in 90 minutes. Here are the keys to the 911RS outside; please leave it in the underground car park.”
You can tell this was a long time ago; he caught his flight…
TriassicSands
No way! We all know Joe is way too old to broker any deals. I mean he must be at least 123, right? I think I read that in the NY Times.
It’s probably the work of Hunter Biden. His international syndicate is pretty much running the world. Every bad guy on the planet works for Hunter’s Nefarious Enterprises, Inc.
kalakal
@Matt McIrvin: There’s one in Tampa that gets me, you come out of the airport onto the Veteran’s Expressway, then you’ve got about a mile to get all the way across to the left through fast, heavy traffic, to get off the expressway in order to get to the Courtney Campbell causeway. Great learning experience for tourists, espescially those of us who drive on the left
Jackie
@Leto: Wow! In some ways it seems a lot longer than five years ago. Every time you post I still marvel you survived that horrific accident and still do a quick YAY you survived and are here posting!😊
sdhays
@SpaceUnit: Ah, the Chevy Citation. A car so shitty it would start to rattle like it was going to come apart if got near 70.
My parents had one when I was very little – it’s the first car I remember (and a major reason, fair or not, that I can’t imagine ever owning a GM car) – and they like to tell the tale of driving in the Smoky Mountains and flooring it on an incline, and still decelerating…
Dangerman
Easily the most dangerous stretch of Highway I’ve had the pleasure of driving is in that MOMN neighborhood; that is the stretch of 41 from the 46 interchange (RIP James Dean) to I5 and Kettleman City. 75 earns you fingers when your ass is getting passed. Oddly, even though I’ve driven that stretch scores of times, I’ve never seen anyone pulled over (and can’t recall every hearing of any accidents).
Just once, I’d like to take a Nevera out for a test drive but the name gives it away. Nevera gonna happen (and probably can’t fit anyway).
My record (nothing to be proud about) was leaving Irvine at 2a, stopping for breakfast in Barstow, and still making Vegas by 6am. Long time ago, much (much) better wheels.
BR
A Steve Kornacki meme for those following the OpenAI saga:
https://mastodon.social/@MattHodges/111435150270224960
RaflW
I know this will seem very, very big-brother, but with modern GPS, there’s no reason that a governor/limiter couldn’t be something like 20 mph over the area speed limit.
There probably isn’t a valid reason for someone to do 95 in western Nebraska where the speed limit is 75, but there is definitely no valid emergency, special reason for any car to be able to go more than 20 (or maybe 15) over urban street limits. (I feel that way about cop cars, too. High speed chases are rarely really worth the risks to the public.)
My phone isn’t perfect at it yet, but most of the time if I have the GPS on, it knows the limit and tells me about my profilgate 3+ or 5+ on freeways (done in part to avoid feeling like I’ll be run over from behind).
Captain C
When I lived in Arizona I experienced something there on the semi-regular that I’ve hardly experienced anywhere else. Sometimes, I’d be driving down a fairly empty freeway, doing 70 or so in the right lane (in a 65, if was 55, I’d be doing 60), so not snailing along, and as I approached an exit, someone would come flying up behind me in my lane, go around me, and zip down the exit, saving themselves approximately a second or two.
I always kind of wanted to follow them where they were going, and if they asked why, tell them, “well, you were in such a hurry, I figured you must be headed to a truly awesome place, and I just wanted to see what it was.” However, given the lack of humor of such drivers and the possibility in Arizona of them being both heavily armed and twitchy, I never seriously considered putting this plan into action.
sdhays
@BR: WTF is going on over there?
rikyrah
@Baud:
.😂😂😂
Timill
@RaflW: Needs careful design: you don’t want a car doing 80 in the RH lane drifting towards the hard shoulder and the limiter suddenly deciding it’s on the 20 limit frontage road…
RaflW
Also, we noticed that in New Zealand recently, where we understand enforcement is strict (and we saw quite a few pull-overs), people were ON the speed limit. Or below. Once I got used to it, it was great. Covered about 3,400 kms in rental cars. Yeah, I’m a crazed American when it comes to driving. Mind you, this was over 16 days.
Tasmanians were less mindful of speed limits, btw. And drove bigger vehicles. Ironically, I got involuntarily ‘upgraded’ to an absurd 7 pax Toyota Highlander in Hobart (called Kluger there. Maybe that sounds swell to an Aussie ear, but it seemed a strange name to me). At least I’d warmed up to driving left in a small Mitsubishi in N.Z. first.
rikyrah
@BR:
PresidentBiden will never get positive credit from those clowns
SpaceUnit
@sdhays:
Yeah, it was like the shittiest car ever. Surprisingly it would jump off the line like a jackrabbit. It would have probably beaten a Corvette in a 100 yd dash. Because I think it was made mostly of cardboard, paint and aluminum foil and weighed maybe 500 lbs.
RaflW
@Timill: Oh, it would definitely need some parameters and fail-safes all that.
BF’s previous iPhone was forever telling us to make turns or merge back onto the highway (even tho we were clocking 65 mph already) because it seemed long-term miscalibrated by at least 20 feet.
sdimond
@Alison Rose: The speed limit on SH130 south of Austin down to I10 in Texas is 85. Through the Austin area the speed limit is 80.
Alison Rose
@sdhays: One of best friends in high school had a Citation as her first car. It was burgundy on the outside, tan on the inside, and I swear, she could drive it on a road made of marble and it would still rattle enough to make a half-full coffee cup spill over. But we loved it anyway!
Odie Hugh Manatee
Way back too fucking long ago I actually saw Sammy Hagar on the tour for this song. T/A on stage and all. The Little Red Rocker rocked it. Regarding shitty drivers I have to say that sometimes I regret having taken Drivers Ed in high school since I know how to drive and most people do not. Making a left turn onto a 4 lane where you need the right lane after the turn? Turn, take the inside lane and then move right while signalling your intent. The moron takes the turn and goes wide, cutting off the person opposite them that was starting to make a legal right turn on red and then trying to slingshot around your right side while you just about take out their car because of their boneheaded rush to cut around you.
I have developed amusing ways of frustrating bad drivers like slowing down as a driver rolls past a stop sign on a side street while waiting for me to pass by. My goal is to try and get them to actually come to a stop and they rarely ever do. It’s like some game for them to never have to come to a stop and it’s funny to see them roll out over the crosswalk and into the intersection as they keep moving while they wait for you to pass by. Tonight one vehicle rolled out and blocked the outside lane and I wasn’t close to passing by yet. Then they just sat there as I drove by, blocking the lane…lol!
Yesterday I went to pull out of a parking lot and an asshole came around my right side, cut off a car pulling into the lot and then cut in front of me. I was moving the whole time but not fast enough for this punk in his fart can equipped Subaru. I ended up following him past his home that he drove by in an attempt to fool me as I was heading to ours. I know the fool and the next time I see the kid at the store I’m going to go up and have a nice conversation with him about small towns and not pissing off your neighbors.
Especially when they are friends with your boss. To end this… fuck shitty drivers.
StringOnAStick
@Alison Rose: I did the exact same thing but at age 18 and with my parent’s ridiculous land barge with a 455 c.c engine, like anyone needs that for anything; it was my dad ‘s middle aged fantasy car. Smart thing to have with a house full of teens. What I noticed is big American cars (then) could go that fast but had horrible handling characteristics and my fun to drive Fiat had the ability to be carefully controlled but not much power. Later on a good friend was riding with a guy conducting the same “experiment”, crashed and my friend fractured his neck. He was lucky to only spend 3 months in a halo to stabilize his cervical spine and against all odds, no paralysis. Lucky.
We have a friend who bought a Musk mobile 3 years ago. Given how aggressively he has always sped, I figured he’d be dead by now. Instead he uses the autopilot to get him home when he drinks too much. Neither is optimal; he was just visiting us and I realised he can’t go a day without drinking. Sad to see.
StringOnAStick
@Hungry Joe: You are a man after my own heart; can you teach this class to my husband? I was a passenger in a head on, icy road crash 45 years ago that came within a sliver of ending me, and I still have PTSD from it. Every 6-12 months we have the “your speeding absolutely terrified me, I can’t take it anymore” talk. It’s good for a while but eventually I’m back to having to swallow my heart and stressed to the max, and all for a behaviour that has no rational reason to do. Makes me insane.
StringOnAStick
@Villago Delenda Est: If you’re a weirdo then I’m one right there with you. I make it a point to be nice to every service worker, every worker I encounter when I try to be grateful and happy for their help. All anyone wants is to treated with respect and that’s not too much to ask.
Alison Rose
@StringOnAStick: LOL I was in a Saturn. But dang, that car was a smooth ride in triple digits!
Ruckus
@MagdaInBlack:
What you are talking about is trumpatizing, which is worse than traumatizing. It involves having SFB involved in any way, shape or form in any part of anyone’s life. It’s on the level of the plague, it makes some intensely crazy because they think they like being infected by trumpplague when in fact it removes all logical thought from their being.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Alison Rose: I had a Saturn – a 5-speed SC2 (photo). I didn’t know they could go that fast! I was going to buy a Jeep, because their style is timeless, but the handling was stiff. Got in a Saturn and it was so smooth, easy and responsive, it felt like a dream. Plus you could get 30 MPG on the highway.
Martin
My e-bike is speed limited to 28MPH for safety. It would be extremely difficult for me to kill another person on my bike, but regulators decided that it was just too dangerous for me to go faster.
Every day there’s at least one car that goes down the street next to my house approaching 100MPH. Apparently that’s not dangerous at all.
Martin
Also, taking a persons license is mostly pointless. About 10% of all motorists are unlicensed or on a suspended license in the US.
Martin
Why should it be more than 0 mph over the speed limit? Isn’t that the point of the speed limit?
StringOnAStick
@Martin: Speeding ebikes have become an issue in our community, so much so that the city now forbids their use unless the rider is 16+. This summer a 14 year old ebike rider was killed while speeding in a roundabout; he was doing the usual “now I’m a car , but now I’m not” game that is extremely nerve wracking for everyone using the intersection
wjca
Speed limits get set for a variety of reasons. In some places, it has to do with things like the density of pedestrians, cross traffic, etc. Especially the presence of children, e.g. around schools.
In other places, it has to do with road geometry and conditions. But these (at least here in California) are based on the maximum speed you can safely navigate in bad weather conditions. A relatively sharp curve may be limited to 30 MPH because that is the top safe speed when the road is wet. When the road is dry, 45 might be perfectly fine.
With technology these days, it might well be possible to shift those speed limits depending on conditions. Switch the speed limit signs accordingly, and even adjust the (notional) speed limiter in cars. But I’m not aware of anyone rolling out the technology (I’m guessing race tracks might be early adopters), let alone tweaking the legal system to accomodate it.
Martin
@StringOnAStick: Did the cyclist die by being hit by a car? Because only one cyclist in my city in the last 5 years died by not being hit by a car – and that cyclist is believed to have suffered a heart attack and then struck a parked car.
Martin
@wjca: No, California ordnances set speed limits based on the 85% rule, same as almost everywhere in America. Regardless of the road geometry, pedestrians, etc. the speed limit is set via speed survey and the vehicles that are surveyed are ranked and the speed of the 85% vehicle is taken and then rounded up by 5MPH. If the road was engineered for 35MPH and the 85th percentile car does 51, then the speed limit must, by law, be set at 55. Safety has no bearing in speed limit setting, because state laws almost everywhere didn’t trust cities to cite ‘safety’ to create speed traps to generate ticket revenue.
AB43 that just went into effect changes this in two important ways. 1) the speed is rounded down from the 85%, which is why you are seeing cities lowering road speeds by 5MPH on a wide number of roads. But they need to do a new survey first. Surveys are required every 5 years and 2) Cities will be able to lower speeds further based on safety, frequency of accidents, danger to pedestrians, etc. but those rules haven’t been written yet and are expected in early 2024.
But none of your answers explain why cars shouldn’t be speed regulated to the actual speed limit. So again, why shouldn’t it be capped at the actual speed limit – the maximum legal speed? Every argument I’ve ever seen is you need to speed in order to stay safe around people speeding even more. But doesn’t this solve that problem as well?
Another approach is what is done in many other countries is that they engineer the road down to the desired speed so that motorists don’t want to exceed the limit – because they perceive it to be dangerous to do so. Trees are moved right to the edge of the road. Speed bumps are used. 1 lane chokepoints force drivers to negotiate oncoming traffic. A recent study here in the US shows that 9′ wide lanes have a third fewer accidents than 12′ wide ones because motorists are sufficiently protective of damaging their car on the narrow lane that they slow down and pay closer attention.
Martin
@wjca: Oh, and almost all forms of motor racing have speed limiters either for the pit lane or for on-course yellow flags in the name of safety. So even the people who drive cars for a living, wear helmets, roll cages, etc. have no in-vehicle phones or other distractions have an in-vehicle speed limiter for safety.
LeMans has two – a 60 KPH limiter (37 MPH) for the pit lane and and an 80 KPH limiter (50MPH) on circuit during slow zones. These are cars that regularly top 200MPH during the race.
brantl
@SpaceUnit: Good, I haven’t heard any idiot’s brain explode in weeks.
brantl
@SteveinPHX: He’s a genuine nutbag.
eschneider
@Doug R: Cars weren’t regulated to 85mph, but for a time, _speedometers_ were.
Matt McIrvin
@Martin:
No, because it would be 20 years before all the cars without governors would be off the road, unless you confiscate them all or require that they be immediately modified, which would be politically impossible.
Matt McIrvin
@RaflW: I have definitely experienced the situation more than once where the speed limit data in Google Maps or whatever is just wrong–I suppose putting a limiter in the car would require the database to be very accurate. But if it was actually limiting cars, I imagine there would be immediate pushback.
When I bought my last car, one of the cars I test-drove (and nearly bought–it was a great car) was a Toyota Corolla hybrid whose whole dash display was LCD screens, and it actually displayed the local speed limit (or what it thought was the local speed limit) on the speedometer. So the tech to keep track of that obviously exists.
Chief Oshkosh
@Starfish:
Having this be a problem only at night would be a big step forward. :)
Princess
Have none of you ever been in a situation on the road in which you needed to accelerate briefly above the speed limit to get out of a dangerous situation? I think what you’re proposing would kill a lot of people.
TerryC
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: I have a personal thing about never, ever speeding on surface streets. I do a great job at that. But once on the freeway I am up to 85 or faster – at once. Can’t help myself. So I stopped freeway driving about 7 years ago when I started having grandkids. At 76 I am too old to be driving so fast, even though my reflexes and all are still great.
Paul in KY
@Hungry Joe: What about if you drive 30 mph over the limit? Some time saving there…
Paul in KY
@SpaceUnit: I always thought that was a nice clean car style. Mechanically it might have been shit, but for the time was a nice looking car (the Citation).
Paul in KY
@kalakal: Speeding up and slowing down also uses more gas.
Paul in KY
@NotMax: Probably because of the tendency for rollover accidents for the SUVs with higher centers of gravity. A rollover accident is 2nd worst (after a head-on collision)
wjca
The trouble I’m having with that is, there are (rural) roads around here where the speed limit is 55. But they have curvey bits where the limit drops, sometimes to 20. In wet weather, that’s definitely all the faster I would take them. But in dry conditions? I, and everybody else, routinely takes them at 30-35. No problem.
Also, every street by an elementary school has a 25 limit. No matter how safe it is for the cars themselves to travel faster.
So I’m thinking the limit setting is a bit more complex than you are suggesting.
Chris T.
@Alison Rose: No doubt dead thread, but:
It’s currently 80 in parts of Utah (middle of nowhere on I-15 for instance).
Montana has or had “unlimited” daytime “speed limits” in parts, and a team of professional (Autobahn?) drivers were once stopped for going over a “reasonable and prudent” speed at something like 140 mph, all in a relatively small cluster. I understand they escaped with a warning of the form “Okay, we believe you can handle it, but we’re worried you’ll inspire those who can’t.”
The autobahns in Germany have no official limit (in places anyway), but a “recommended maximum” of about 80 mph or 130 km/h. Apparently the actual average speeds on the unlimited sections are about 88 mph.
I’ve driven cars that were electronically limited at 125 mph and have taken one of them up to that point (safely, mind you, provided the tires held up, which they did, and the track was clear, which it was). It felt remarkably stable and controlled even at that speed. I had another much older American car in the 1970-1980s that got wobbly at 60 mph, as in, you could feel it trying to drift and the steering got a bit vague even then. So a lot depends on the design and maintenance state of the vehicle.
As to the original point, it seems that there’s discussion (exactly where I’m not sure) about using location-based speed limit detection to automatically limit car speeds. My current vehicle has the location-based detection, as well as speed-limit-sign-reading tech, but I’d worry a little about this because it sometimes gets the results terribly wrong, thinking that at 25 mph road is a 60 mph freeway (that’s with 20 feet) or—worse—thinking a 60 mph freeway is a 25 mph road. It misreads some signs sometimes; the location-adjustment usually corrects this before the next sign, providing it picks the right location of course.
Overall, I’m of the opinion that this might need a few more years to cook before “automatic limiting” is ready for prime time…
(Note: if you intend to go over 130 mph, you’ll need better-than-H-rated tires. H-rated are supposed to be able to sustain 133 mph, but keeping it at 125 or lower is probably wise.)
Chris T.
@RaflW: NZ needs small vehicles because of all the narrow roads! 😀
(Tazzie has some smaller tracks as well but in general you can have a big truck-y vehicle stick out over the track there. That’s a lot less true in NZ.)
Paul in KY
@Chris T.: Texas has one that is 75 for a portion of Interstate. Have also seen one in NC where you are coming off a really big mountain.