sqwkvfr
Baseball junkie
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2003
- Posts
- 1,673
You're 100% correct. It's called the 85th percentile speed.dmspilot00 said:There wouldn't be a problem if speed limits weren't set so artificially low, which they almost always are. When speed limits are set, they determine an average safe speed, and make a prediction of what speed most people will drive at, and then set the speed limit much lower. One reason for this is so that they will make more money off of speeding tickets.
And no, people will not automatically drive faster if the speed limit is raised. Raising speed limits 10 mph causes an increase in average speed of only 3-4mph. In addition, accident rates sometimes decrease when the speed limit is increased.
The problem is that people want speed limits raised everywhere except in front of their house.
Local politics has far too much influence over most traffic engineering decisions. We used to put stop signs in the middle of nowhere just to "slow down" traffic in front of Joe Blowhard's house.
...after a few years of this, you've got a big traffic mess because traffic engineering was based on who did the most complaining, not sensible traffic engineering.