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[scourge728]

Question, does going slower save gas? If so then there is a reason other than weather to go slow, also in towns with barely any sidewalks, drivers need to go slow to avoid pedestrians and bike riders

This is solved by being aware and being mindful. Scanning the road ahead at all times. Simply driving under the speed limit in case you may need to avoid something is basically being willfully blind until something is right in front of you, AND being disrespectful of everyone else on the road who a) is driving the speed limit and b) is paying attention. Speed limits are in theory calculated based on where you're driving. Residential speed limits are that way because it's determined that's the fastest maintainable speed you can hold while still having adequate time to react to things around you. Commercial street speed limits are likewise calculated the same. If someone on a bike is cutting across 4 lanes of traffic, that is their bad, the normal conditions do not predict that kind of behavior. We have crosswalks and stop lights for them.

Driving under the posted speed limit is like waiting at a stop sign 3x as long as you need to, just to be EXTRA sure nothing is coming, despite the fact you can clearly see nothing is coming. That is nervous driving, not prudence. Prudence is driving the posted speed limit and staying aware of your surroundings at all times.

I think the reality is that, as a country that drives everywhere, we like to put our brains on autopilot when we get in our cars, especially for daily routines like going to work and coming home. We naturally drive a speed that our brains feel equipped to handle, that is completely divorced from the actual speed limit. That is what happens when you're not being mindful when you drive: automatic processes take over.

It makes me wish for the fully automated driving of the future. I used to rebel against the idea of giving up control behind the wheel. But when so many motherfuckers drive "their style" instead of the actual way you're supposed to drive, fuck it. Let's absolve anyone of having to do any real thinking or pay attention behind the wheel, as long as everyone ends up driving the same way. I'm just so sick of that one special snowflake, whether they're distracted driving or WORSE, a frightened driver, completely jamming up the works and then belligerently telling others its their right to fuck up everyone's commute. It's enough to make a body say "if you're that scared of driving then take the bus. Otherwise L2DRIVE."

Come on man, literally anything I do is "nervous ___".

Also: As a response to

This is the same zoning council that has already somehow managed to industrialize probably 160 acres of wetland on the other corner of the intersection, which has already added a ton of traffic since they added quite a few office buildings.

I still don't understand why people would WANT to build on wetlands, I'm not an expert on any of the... well really anything at all, but it seems to me there would be tons of extra costs involved in getting the ground on such a thing sturdy enough for buildings or even the machines to make the buildings (which are quite heavy AFAIK), and then factoring in the risk of flooding from the water that made the land a wetland not going away...

[Enemy post]

I think it's because many cities are founded near water, which often means wetlands. The negatives of being on a swamp are offset by the benefits from the water.

[Dunamisdeos]

I believe it is offset by the absurd cheapness of the land. Also, people will pay piles of extra money for houses that have wetlands view with duckies and sunsets and tall grass. Often comes with lagoons for boating and fishing.

Basically rich people want to build vanity projects over them, and also they are ridiculously critical to the environment. That is why you can get fined half a goddam million dollars in NJ for fucking with the duckies. I remember reading about that, I forget what actually happened. It's like 20k a day for being in violation of anything until you correct it or GTFO of duckietown.

[scourge728]

Ah, it's rich people ruining everything again, got it

[scriver]

Question, does going slower save gas? If so then there is a reason other than weather to go slow, also in towns with barely any sidewalks, drivers need to go slow to avoid pedestrians and bike riders

This is solved by being aware and being mindful. Scanning the road ahead at all times. Simply driving under the speed limit in case you may need to avoid something is basically being willfully blind until something is right in front of you, AND being disrespectful of everyone else on the road who a) is driving the speed limit and b) is paying attention. Speed limits are in theory calculated based on where you're driving. Residential speed limits are that way because it's determined that's the fastest maintainable speed you can hold while still having adequate time to react to things around you. Commercial street speed limits are likewise calculated the same. If someone on a bike is cutting across 4 lanes of traffic, that is their bad, the normal conditions do not predict that kind of behavior. We have crosswalks and stop lights for them.

Driving under the posted speed limit is like waiting at a stop sign 3x as long as you need to, just to be EXTRA sure nothing is coming, despite the fact you can clearly see nothing is coming. That is nervous driving, not prudence. Prudence is driving the posted speed limit and staying aware of your surroundings at all times.

I think the reality is that, as a country that drives everywhere, we like to put our brains on autopilot when we get in our cars, especially for daily routines like going to work and coming home. We naturally drive a speed that our brains feel equipped to handle, that is completely divorced from the actual speed limit. That is what happens when you're not being mindful when you drive: automatic processes take over.

It makes me wish for the fully automated driving of the future. I used to rebel against the idea of giving up control behind the wheel. But when so many motherfuckers drive "their style" instead of the actual way you're supposed to drive, fuck it. Let's absolve anyone of having to do any real thinking or pay attention behind the wheel, as long as everyone ends up driving the same way. I'm just so sick of that one special snowflake, whether they're distracted driving or WORSE, a frightened driver, completely jamming up the works and then belligerently telling others its their right to fuck up everyone's commute. It's enough to make a body say "if you're that scared of driving then take the bus. Otherwise L2DRIVE."

Nah, it's actually the other way around. People who drive below the limit are most often better drivers who pay more attention to their surroundings and circumstances. They're not driving slower because they're "checking twitter", "eating breakfast", "putting on make-up" or whatever other ridiculous accusations and stereotypes you can attach to them -- splitting your focus usually makes you go faster, not slower, because you can no longer pay the same amount of attention to what is happening.

People who insist that you have to drive as fast as you're allowed at all times "because the speed limits are calculated on what's most efficient while safe so we should all go them" are people who just want to put their drivemind on auto-pilot and not pay attention to what's happening around them. This is how people drive when they're not scanning ahead and looking for issues before they're up on them.

In addition, of you can't stand going slightly below the speed limit, then you're likely a highly stressed driver, which doesn't exactly give you much better odds of being a decent driver. You should probably add more time to your commute so you can stress less during it.

Basically, you accuse them of being inconsiderate and telling people to fuck off, but you're the one who wants to them to drive to your style and disregard their own, just the same as what you're accusing them off. Except your style is also the less efficient and safe one, the one of a wild-eyed, stressed out road rager who wants to drive in their own road bubble and not pay attention to anything and not have to acquiesce to anyone, and who is likely overestimating by far their own ability to drive well. And if that upsets you, then just remember that it's based on the same same basis as by which you condemn other drivers of being "cowardly and distracted drivers". Well, except the part about overestimating your ability. That one is statistically probable.

Remember, the speed limit is a roof, not a floor. Its not "how your supposed to drive", it's not a suggested speed, it's the absolute limit how fast you're allowed to go under the best of circumstances. If you can't understand that, then you are better off taking the bus.

[SalmonGod]

Instead of yelling at each other about driving sensibilities, how about we pressure employers to be less stuffy about punctuality.  Variability on a commute coupled with an employer who treats electronic clock-in 1 second late the same as 30 minutes late means you either aim to be a little bit early and drive aggressively as soon as something goes wrong (like a slow driver), or to be super responsible ultra faultless shiny adult person who never does a bad thing like speeding you might be forced to aim to be at work 30 minutes early every day.  And then plenty of employers will forbid you from clocking in early on top of that.  Shorter work days and generally less economic pressure/inequality would help a heck of a lot, too.  Everybody has more time and has to work less jobs = less reason to be in a hurry.

Or if we want to talk about the environmental impact of vehicle efficiency, maybe we can do a fuckton to lessen unnecessary stops by making smarter street lights, or replacing millions of stop signs in low traffic intersections with ample visibility with yield signs.  Etc.  Constant starting/stopping burns way more fuel and emissions than suboptimal speed efficiency.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

But personally, I think speed limits are pretty often quite fucked.  In my area, I've seen several instances of roads that never had an accident on them before being widened from 2 lanes to 4, all tree and brush cover cleared a good distance from the sides, the speed limit REDUCED by 10 mph, and cops posted there all day every day for the next couple years afterwards.  I genuinely think that much of the time they have little to do with optimizing safety.  Even without the corruption, they're a really primitive guideline, because safe speed will vary so much by time of day, weather, vehicle, etc.  Excepting situations of poor visibility and/or danger of something/someone moving onto the road unexpectedly, being safe on the road is more about maintaining distance from other vehicles above all else, and to not drive in a way that is disruptive to the flow of those around you second.  A little speeding when you get the opportunity to get ahead of and away from a crowd is totally reasonable and worth it in my book, and I will absolutely do so especially when I'm on my motorcycle.  It's really strongly proven with research that one of the best things you can do legislatively for motorcycle safety is to allow lane splitting at stop lights so that bikes can move up to the front of the line and blast the heck away from everyone on green to get their safe space.

Also, the stuff about speeding not improving your travel time is total junk, imo.  For about 10 years, my daily commute was through the commercial area of a small city on main st.  I drove the same set of stop lights literally thousands of times.  My commute would be either 10 minutes or 25.  The lights were timed so that if you didn't get up to speed quickly and go at least exactly the speed limit, you would get stopped by every. single. light. and it would be a 25 minute drive.  If I didn't get stuck behind people and could accelerate at a decent pace up to 5 over the speed limit as soon as the light turned green, I would be stopped by no further lights and get to work in as little as 10 minutes.  And I swear this is the norm all over Indiana.

I've been driving for 20 years now in one of the most sprawled cities in the country.  I have hundreds of thousands of miles under my belt, including tens of thousands driving Uber and getting into some very difficult situations there.  I've had 4 accidents.  All 3 in a car were during my first two years of driving when I followed the driver's ed advice and drove exactly the speed limit or less all the time.  I was more worried about my speed than I was about how I was positioning myself relative to the people around me and what they were wanting to do, and I kept getting hit as a result.  The 4th, my only accident in the past 18 years, was getting rear-ended on my motorcycle because the guy behind me was having trouble finding some place and didn't see that I was slowing down to turn, with my blinker on.  I wish I had sped more to get more distance from him prior to turning.

[wierd]

As we've seen here Weird's "no fuck you, I can go as slow as I want, nobody should be able to go faster than me, I'm the only one who gets to decide things" is the normal mode of thinking, so you don't really have the option to have people going different speeds.

This is very accusational, and needlessly so.

That is most certainly NOT what I stated.  I stated that there are reasons why people may be driving slower than the absolute top posted speed limit, and listed a few of what they might be.  I guarantee you, having the person in front of you spin out of control because their tires exploded from your tailgating them is going to ruin your commute much more than having to go 5mph under the posted limit, where their road vibration is more tolerable.

This is especially true if there are two same-direction lanes, and they are in the slow one-- like I stated.  Then instead of tailgating them, raging about how they refuse to go 5mph OVER the limit to suit your sensibilities over your and their safety, you could, you know-- Just pass them like a sensible person.

[sluissa]

But the drivers are paying the construction companies through taxes to do the construction work, and I’m pretty certain that they’ll pass any cost of compensation on to their clients ‘cause there ain’t no private company in the world that’s going to absorb a cost they can pass on to their clients.

This is construction that is turning an empty field into a residental+retail center.  This is not something being paid for by my taxes.  The city council in question is basically looking at the sweet property tax revenue, completely ignoring the fact that they are adding 300 residential units plus a hotel and a bunch of retail to an already notoriously crowded set of intersections.

This is the same zoning council that has already somehow managed to industrialize probably 160 acres of wetland on the other corner of the intersection, which has already added a ton of traffic since they added quite a few office buildings.

A lot of places do charge "impact fees" to developers because of all the infrastructure the local government will have to pay for. Thing is though, the developers and the local politicians are often friends (if they're not just the same people) and either exempt their friends/themselves from those impact fees or play down the effect the development of the area is going to have on infrastructure requirements so the fees are much less than they should be. Not even to get into how those impact fees are actually spent on upgrades for the affected area (or not at all in some cases).

As corrupt as national politics is, it ain't got nothing on some areas of local politics in that department.

Anecdotally, an office park recently went in around here.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 Apparently no planning was done for this, it was put down at the end of a long two lane road far outside of town with no public transport going there. 4000 new workers (and growing) all trying to cram themselves in/leave during rush hour. Residential areas were approved hoping to put the workers closer to the jobs, but the number of houses/apartments built was only enough for maybe a quarter of the current workers. And of course those workers have kids, so now you've got to build a new school in the area, as well as provide buses for the kids to get to the school. All of this trying to get down down this same two lane road. So now you've got rush hour traffic trying to get into work while students are being picked up for school. A new road into the area is being built, but it only helps if you're coming from even farther outside the city or else it adds another 15-20 miles to the commute, although some people do actually choose that over the 45+ minutes of stop and go traffic to get in the more direct way. To their credit, at least they realize it's a problem and are attempting to do things, it just seems like they have no idea what the problem is or how to fix it. But hey, more jobs to the area, growth at all costs, right?

[SalmonGod]

Thing is though, the developers and the local politicians are often friends (if they're not just the same people) and either exempt their friends/themselves from those impact fees or play down the effect the development of the area is going to have on infrastructure requirements so the fees are much less than they should be.

Or let them off the hook when at fault for the death of a worker.

When an Amazon worker was killed by a forklift in a Plainfield warehouse in 2017, the state of Indiana’s investigator found the company was at fault. The state cited Amazon for four major safety violations and fined it $28,000.

But an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found that, as Gov. Eric Holcomb sought to lure Amazon’s HQ2 to Indiana, state labor officials quietly absolved Amazon of responsibility. After Amazon appealed, they deleted every fine that had been levied and accepted the company’s argument — that the Amazon worker was to blame.

The investigator on the case, John Stallone, had arrived at the warehouse a day after 59-year-old Phillip Lee Terry was crushed to death. He was so troubled by the pushback he was getting from higher-ups that he secretly recorded his boss, Indiana OSHA Director Julie Alexander, as she counseled the company on how to lessen the fine.

[Loud Whispers]

It seems a human life isn't even worth $28,000

[Iduno]

I still don't understand why people would WANT to build on wetlands, I'm not an expert on any of the... well really anything at all, but it seems to me there would be tons of extra costs involved in getting the ground on such a thing sturdy enough for buildings or even the machines to make the buildings (which are quite heavy AFAIK), and then factoring in the risk of flooding from the water that made the land a wetland not going away...

The developer doesn't live there. Do you know how common it is for a developer to pay to have flood zones re-done with their data, build there, sell everything and leave, and have the place flood shortly thereafter? They don't care. They got the money, and no liability.

[Reelya]

I still don't understand why people would WANT to build on wetlands, I'm not an expert on any of the... well really anything at all, but it seems to me there would be tons of extra costs involved in getting the ground on such a thing sturdy enough for buildings or even the machines to make the buildings (which are quite heavy AFAIK), and then factoring in the risk of flooding from the water that made the land a wetland not going away...

"National Wetlands Coalition"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Wetlands_Coalition

The National Wetlands Coalition, founded in 1989, has opposed U.S. wetlands policy, saying "the federal government, while seeking to protect wetlands, casts a wide net and imposes burdensome and ineffective regulations on private property that does not function as or provide the ecosystem benefits of high-value wetlands". Time Magazine called it "a big-biz coalition against wetlands".

Just be aware that there are groups such as the "National Wetlands Coalition" for whom their entire policy is basically summed up as "fuck wetlands, amirite?" It was actually funded by oil companies as a front group to oppose environmental protections of wetlands. The phrase of protecting "high value wetlands" is the key here. Basically, this phrase only referred to a tiny portion of wetland areas that lack any oil, natural gas and coal. You can keep those bits - they didn't want them.

Rather than anyone "wants to build on wetlands" it's more likely that oil-backed fake campaigns will push your right to build on wetlands as a way to "reduce housing costs" along with any other "wedge issue" they can think up that's got some tenuous claim that the "wetlands must go". So, they'll use issues such as having "room to build needed houses" as an excuse to remove wetlands protections then they'll just jump in with the claims for oil drilling and fracking, leaving the area even more uninhabitable to both man and beast.

[nenjin]

Basically, you accuse them of being inconsiderate and telling people to fuck off, but you're the one who wants to them to drive to your style and disregard their own, just the same as what you're accusing them off. Except your style is also the less efficient and safe one, the one of a wild-eyed, stressed out road rager who wants to drive in their own road bubble and not pay attention to anything and not have to acquiesce to anyone, and who is likely overestimating by far their own ability to drive well. And if that upsets you, then just remember that it's based on the same same basis as by which you condemn other drivers of being "cowardly and distracted drivers". Well, except the part about overestimating your ability. That one is statistically probable.

This is absurd. I didn't invent the speed limit. It isn't "my style", it's the goddamn rules of the road we're taught from high school on. My style is less efficient and unsafe because I drive the posted speed limit? What kind self-serving nonsense is that? Sounds like the justification for someone who wants to drive their way no matter what, because they're intimidated by the simple act of driving and can't meet the basic bar of "drive the posted speed limit when it's safe and reasonable to do so."

Plenty of accommodations are made for traffic, weather, vehicle condition and a half dozen other things. When there is no one in front of you and you're driving below the posted speed limit, you're the asshole in the eyes of every single person behind you wondering why the entire lane of traffic has slowed down for no reason other than one person's inability to maintain the constant, posted speed.

I live in a town of predominantly older people, and it does not take rocket science to understand the effect their driving habits have on the rest of people on the road.

People who insist that you have to drive as fast as you're allowed at all times "because the speed limits are calculated on what's most efficient while safe so we should all go them" are people who just want to put their drivemind on auto-pilot and not pay attention to what's happening around them. This is how people drive when they're not scanning ahead and looking for issues before they're up on them.

Facts utterly not in evidence.

But do go on about how following the law and being conscientious of other drivers on the road and how my driving affects them means I'm less efficient and more dangerous than some oblivious nervous nancy who is willing to hit their brakes for absolutely nothing. Driving without consideration to anyone else on the road, whether you're speeding or going under the speed limit for no reason, makes you the asshole. Traffic is a flow system, and the fact people still don't get this is why driving sucks.

[scriver]

I repeat: The speed limit is a roof, not a floor. The rule isn't "drive at this speed", it's "drive below this speed". So no, you didn't make the rules. It seems to me you don't even understand them.

And no, it's not self serving. I rarely drive below the speed limit unless I have to (because I live in winterland) or somebody ahead of me does. The difference is that I just don't go bonkers when somebody does like some self-obsessed, petulant child going on rants about how they're everything that's bad about drivers. I read the situation and show understanding and respect, you know, like a good driver does. Traffic is a flow system, but I don't think you're aware of what that means (hint: it doesn't mean "everyone is an asshole unless they do exactly like me").

[nenjin]

I repeat: The speed limit is a roof, not a floor. The rule isn't "drive at this speed", it's "drive below this speed". So no, you didn't make the rules. It seems to me you don't even understand them.

The rule is "don't impede the flow of traffic." By driving the speed limit.

The difference is that I just don't go bonkers when somebody does like some self-obsessed, petulant child going on rants about how they're everything that's bad about drivers.

I don't care what you think about my rant, it's a rant, that's its point. You've clearly been triggered, but I'm not going to apologize because I've got opinions about people who fuck up my commute on a regular basis for no discernible reason. I pass them when this happens and get back to driving like an adult instead of a vegetable with hands.