Speed limits
I've now spent my first prolonged time on the road. All of yesterday and half of today i drove from home (Steigen) to Trondheim along E6, the main traffic artery along Norway. That's about 850 km. One thing i've learnt is that there is a general consensus on the road that speed limits are there to be broken.
Why is it so that when the speed limit is 80 km/h, and i drive 80 km/h, i allways get a long cue behind me wich roars past me every time there is a stretch? I try to be persistant, and not go over the speed limit. But somtimes it feels like i allmost have to, because people are driving past me dangerously or sticking on my rear bumper. Sure i'm in the right, and the others are taking liberties they don't have when braking the rules. And i don't want to use more gasoline just to follow a general consensus on doing wrong. I have enough time! But this is a problem. Why is it like this?
posted by Thor-Rune @ 20:42
2 Comments
2 Comments:
I find that if you get someone close behind you, go even slower. They'll have to overtake you. Also by going slower you increase the distance between you and the car in front, so if there's a sudden braking, you can brake more slowly and safely so the guy behind you doesn't end up crashing into you.
What sort of quality is the road? I'm guessing it's a fairly decent two-lane road, by the sound of it, in which case, part of the reason people may be itching to go faster is simply because the road's speed limit is set too low. The 85th percentile is generally the recommended way for authorities to set speed limits, but these days, they're often set artificially low, which results in driver frustration as they end up going less than what they think is an appropriate speed. For instance, on some wide single carriageways in the UK, 60mph (~96km/h) is the national speed limit, but the odd road will have a 50mph limit (80km/h) for whatever reason the local authority decided. If there's nothing visibly "bad" about the road, this will frustrate drivers, and some of those drivers will inevitably break the speed limit. The same could be said of motorway speed limits in Britain, where a fairly significant number of car drivers will exceed the 70mph speed limit regularly, with a good number of drivers tending to do 75-80mph, and a minority doing more.
My personal view on such matters is that I will stick to the speed limit on single carriageways, or to reduced speed limits on dual carriageways/motorways. I may exceed the national speed limit on dual carriageways or motorways if conditions are safe, but in those cases, lots of traffic is often going faster than me anyway. It can be annoying when you are trying to stick to the limit when you have people coming up behind you and the like, but generally, if they're really in a rush and you are going at the proper speed limit, they will try to overtake when they have time. Born Acorn's suggestion of slowing down isn't particularly a good idea though, as that will just cause the drivers behind to become more frustrated, and could lead to an increase in accidents.
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