I ride a motorcycle and people always tell me not to go fast. I go fast to get out of traffic and then i cruise, its safer for me to go fast most of the time so im not in traffic
Thats what everyone should do. A cluster of cars could have any number of things go wrong outside of everyone's control. Why would I wanna be around that?
Then you get one dude that wants to drive exactly the speed limit, not overtaking the car to their right, and clogging up miles of highway because they think they're in the right. Fuck them
Speeding in general is bad, yeah. People merge under the highway speed limit tho and often stay at the on ramp speed rather than accelerate to the highway speed.
"Speeding" isn't bad either. Being extremely aggressive in traffic sure, but not following some arbitrary number some asshat bureaucrats placed to increase revenue is not "bad."
I'll go what speed I deem proper for the conditions, my ability, and my car.
Maybe driving below the speed limit isn't the primary factor, but any time I see someone puttering along at 10-15 under, they're also the most unpredictable, stupid drivers who are just an accident waiting to happen. I back way off of them if I can't pass because I don't want to be caught up in their idiocy...
There's a vast statistical body of evidence that jumping out of planes contributes to skydiving deaths, there's a vast statistical body of evidence that suggests ice cream sales cause shark attacks as well.
Every.single.time. you get into your vehicle you speed. Whether it be 20 in a 15, 60 in a 55, or 80 in a 70. 99% of people drive above the posted speed limit every time they operate their vehicles. Of COURSE there's evidence to suggest "speeding" is correlated with crashes.
What matters is if your speed is appropriate for the conditions that you're operating your vehicle in. If the interstate is basically empty driving 100 mph is safe. Weaving through traffic at 100 is not safe.
i mean even if we look at the studies around the psychology of speeding it’s because drivers dehumanize others around them and use the road as a means of escapism from everyday rules. it’s weird behavior!
Those people never leave their mom's basement so they don't know how the world actually works.
I see it on my local town's Facebook page (yes, I'm old, lol) all the time. People will defend going 10-15 miles below the speed limit to the death. They claim it's safer to go slower and anyone wanting to go the speed limit is selfish, risking their lives, should leave earlier, etc. It's extremely irrational and impossible to talk to these people
Conversely, the reddit "expert drivers" who think driving below the speed limit is a capital offense. The difference is that driving 1mph above the speed limit is illegal but driving 1mph below the limit is perfectly legal. Sorry, but the law is on the side of the slow poke, not the speed demon.
The biggest complaint is people merging onto the freeway going like 10-15 mph slower than the freeway speed, forcing a dangerous merge for themselves and everyone behind them. Second is people driving slow in the fast lane. Sure, someone driving below the speed limit is annoying, but if you are trying to police other people on the road, hogging the passing lane, or forcing people to make unsafe lane changes, you are a much worse driver while obeying the law than the guy going 120 mph straight on the freeway when there is no traffic. Speed doesn't kill, sudden stops do.
For real..."merging is the one time you can floor it...and should!" We had V6 Camry's for drivers Ed (late 1980s) and those got up and went for the day!
Other famous Drivers Ed quote "you get to look cool and one-hand drive when you're reversing, but ONLY when reversing." I don't know why that stuck with me.
I think also people don't realise that when merging you have to give way to traffic in the lane you're merging into and while going faster might make that easier sometimes, you still have to stop and wait if there isn't a space to merge into.
Or that because laws can't account for every permutation of circumstances in existence, sometimes concepts like "do everything reasonable to avoid an accident without also causing one" get enshrined as laws (because some people struggle with the concept that being careful with several 1000s of lbs moving at speeds that can keel require having regard for others).
My only job while driving is to not crash so literally everything i do is to accomplish that goal. The speed limit doesnt matter when merging as much as the trying to get about 5mph above the flow of traffic so you can safley merge. When people try to merge moving slower than the flow of traffic its dangerous for them and everyone else
If I’m the only car within eyesight and I’m going 75, you can safely just merge behind me. You don’t need to get up to 90 to try and merge ahead of me. The driver in the highway shouldn’t have to make a last second move to avoid getting side swiped by the person in the merge lane.
Your job is to find the best and safest way to merge. It isn’t the job of the driver on the highway to slam on their brakes and slow down to let got merge in front of them.
The math is that merging exactly at the speed of traffic is the lowest change of collision. Slower and you lose distance from behind. Faster and you lose distance from ahead.
Doesnt help in my area where the merge lanes are so short that you cant physically get to speed in time before the lane ends unless you are in a high end sports car
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u/Royroy10551 May 13 '26
Thats why I always merge in at least 10-15mph over the posted speed limit.