Quote:
Originally Posted by One_Quick_Z
How about not speeding/driving like an idiot at all and that will save you from tickets
I can see speeding maybe 10mph over the limit on the highway but that is it.
DAN
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It's kinda narrow-minded to equate speeding with driving like an idiot. You can drive like an idiot at any speed, and you can drive very responsibly at any speed (given attention to conditions and an eye towards the probabilities of various possible "surprise" scenarios).
You have to remember that speed limits are set to cover not-so-optimal cases. They rated a particular stretch of road as 45mph because they felt that was a safe speed for all legal drivers, even the (unfortunately common) case of a relatively poorly-skilled driver in a top-heavy SUV with poorly-maintained brakes, etc. Think about it: if it's "safe" for a dump truck to be taking a given road at 60mph, would it not be equally safe for a smaller/lighter vehicle with vastly superior braking and suspension performance to go perhaps 80mph (or more, depending) on the same road?
Of course that's considering it from the "one car on the road alone" angle. Beyond that you have to consider the other traffic (e.g., even if your car can safely handle a given stretch at 120mph, it might be very imprudent to do so in medium-thick traffic averaging 75mph). You have to consider how you'll respond to sudden failures and unexpected actions on the part of others, which is why driving at the limit of the car's capability in a non-track scenario is generally a bad idea. You have to have some extra grip and margin of error left for the unpredictable. And you have to be good at monitoring conditions way ahead of you on the road and planning your actions accordingly (and slowing down when you don't have enough data, such as coming up on a tall hill that blinds your view of the road on the other side).
But it is possible for a rational person to drive safely at speeds that are unrelated to the posted limit. Blanket statements like "10mph over the limit is ok, but more is not ok" are just as bad as the original blanket speed limits. They have nothing to do with actual safety at a particular speed in a particular scenario.