Safe driving is hardly a matter of speed compliance. It is noticing potentially tricky conditions 150 yards ahead and slowing down, or that you are blocking someone's merge and speeding up. It is slowing down in slick conditions, or in rain and congestion.
And I often find myself on empty highways in the early morning. With good tires and brakes, and a rested driver, why _shouldn't_ I go 100 miles an hour? Especially since I am off the gas well before anything that looks slightly sketchy.
Cruise control has made most drivers far stupider, as they surrender speed to the car and stop making the subtle adjustments to maintain or create buffers needed to be safe. Worse, they camp out in the left hand lane simply to avoid the necessity of those adjustments to accomodate merging traffic.
In theory, "autonomous" vehicles could drive faster and maintain those same buffers better than any set of human drivers. In practice, I expect those autonomies to be programmed to fit the preferences of a bunch of safety nannies and police departments determined to maintain ticketing revenues.
How are we supposed to separate the responsible, safe 100mph drivers from the irresponsible and unsafe ones? In most part of the US, practically everyone has a car and has to drive on the highway, so the cheapest, simplest solution is to set a limit that applies to everyone. I'm not convinced it's a particularly burdensome requirement, either. The faster you're going, the more the dangers increase, and I know too many people who, unlike you, are not safe drivers at high speed to be in favor of making it more accepted for them to drive 100mph in most places (though I have no problem with the 80mph, or potentially higher in the future, speed limits in certain parts of middle-of-nowhere Texas).
The rules can be quite burdensome. New York to Montreal is about 7 hours at regulated speed, over a well-maintained, straight highway through thinly populated territory, with very little traffic for those leaving at 5am. A good driver, in a proper car, with good weather, can easily and safely make the trip in less than 4 hours. That same driver will be well below the speed limit in bad conditions.
I recently saw a half-dozen police cars on that trip, all in a 200 mile stretch, on a fine early Saturday morning. They weren't out to ensure the safety of the traffic.
The essence of safety is situational judgment. And traffic law is already a matter of discretionary enforcement, on US highways police routinely ignore speeds up to 10mph over the limit. That discretion should be further deployed to spot and cite unsafe drivers: weavers, passing-lane congesters, bad-weather speeders, right-lane passers. But there is more work and less revenue in that, isn't there?
When you got your driver's license, you agreed to obey traffic regulations. Not some of the rules, some of the time, not only when you agree with the rules about what's safe, not unless you're in a hurry.
I'm not trying to say all the rules are right. Some of them should be changed (and consistent enforcement is a great first step toward that). But this idea that you have some right to not have them enforced because you find them inconvenient is absurd.
Say, when you decided to write in English, you agreed to obey the rules of grammar, which state that every sentence should have a subject, an object and a verb. Constructions such as "Not some of the rules . . . " etc break that rule.
And when you decided to pick a fight with me, you agreed to not put words in my mouth. Suggestions that I assert some right to not have the laws enforced upon me, when I made no such statement, or any statement of any kind about my rights, break that rule.
I'm not saying all these rules are right. But this idea (that is, that while lecturing others, you have some right to break those rules because you them inconvenient) is absurd.
> But this idea (that is, that while lecturing others, you have some right to break those rules because you them inconvenient) is absurd.
Heh. Protip: When criticizing style as a point of argument, make sure you don't accidentally a word.
I'd actually recommend against criticizing style at all, unless someone's paying you to do it for them. It's hard to do in good faith. But thanks for the help, anyway.
Any reader will know what I mean, which for my style here is enough, because I am not the one arguing for compliance.
And I'm not criticizing style "in good faith" but to make a point: the spirit of a rule is more important than its letter. Your agreement is obvious in the annotated violations of common rules of usage and argument.
I don't really care about your grammar. But putting words in my mouth irritated me enough to craft a snarky response.
You use "agreed" in a very slippery way. Agreement implies consent, but few consented to be governed by the rule "accept the rule or be fined if you choose to drive. And by the way, you get to pay for the roads either way you choose."
I say "few" because I'm sure there are some people who like this setup. Like maybe you for example.
I don't get it... is someone forcing you to drive on public roads? Was your driving examiner holding a gun to your head while you parallel parked? Does a State Trooper come to your door every two years and march you down to the DMV to renew under protest?
You have the same right to the roads as anyone else. You pass the test, you follow the rules, you're free to drive. Not wanting to follow the rules doesn't exempt you from them. Ever. I mean in what part of your life is that how it works?
(And pretending you don't benefit from public roads because you don't drive on them is crazy too. Where does your food come from? Your mail? Leave aside the craziness of the idea that you shouldn't have to pay taxes for things which don't directly affect you, which completely misses the point of taxation... An issue for another time, perhaps.)
Sorry, I don't have time to put in the requisite political theory, but in short, what gives the "public" the right to claim the entire continent, or indeed if you look at the issue correctly, THE ENTIRE PLANET unto their driving rules?
If you are genuinely curious then read some political theory. Such as John Locke's second treatise on government, and "For Individual Rights" (see Amazon).
I went to college, thanks. If you sincerely believe that government shouldn't have the ability to own or regulate the use of public lands, we're unlikely to have a productive conversation.
Colleges do not teach political theories contrary to the current mythology of our age, on the contrary, they pimp the theories favorable to the government they exist under.
And I often find myself on empty highways in the early morning. With good tires and brakes, and a rested driver, why _shouldn't_ I go 100 miles an hour? Especially since I am off the gas well before anything that looks slightly sketchy.
Cruise control has made most drivers far stupider, as they surrender speed to the car and stop making the subtle adjustments to maintain or create buffers needed to be safe. Worse, they camp out in the left hand lane simply to avoid the necessity of those adjustments to accomodate merging traffic.
In theory, "autonomous" vehicles could drive faster and maintain those same buffers better than any set of human drivers. In practice, I expect those autonomies to be programmed to fit the preferences of a bunch of safety nannies and police departments determined to maintain ticketing revenues.