Quote:
Originally Posted by SailFree
7) The greatest dangers occur when traffic is forced to slow down. Keeping the traffic moving is the best safety principle. (See Maxwell Halsey's great book on highway safety printed back in the 1940s.)
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I wish at least this one rational point would be emphasized more at Police departments. About once a month somewhere in Houston, I'll be ripping along safely in "normal" Houston traffic (which means a 4+ lane highway, the speed limit is say 60, but real traffic speeds are commonly ranging up to 85-ish or so with lots of passing going on, and a few of us nuts doing well over that in the safer stretches)....
And then bam, I come into this traffic brick wall. There will be a pack of cars across all lanes about 20 cars deep doing 3 mph under the speed limit, and a cop sitting up at the front of the pack. People in the back mostly don't even realize the cop is up there, so they're all jockeying around for position and trying to get through it. It's a war zone, and the odds of accident in those packs goes way the hell up. Nobody at the front is willing to make the pass on the cop though. I'll usually eventually make it up front and pass the cop at 5-10 over. Never been pulled over for doing that (but frankly I'd love it if he did so I could give him a piece of my mind...), people are just scared.