I’m talking specifically about obeying the speed limit, doing a full stop at stop signs, etc. After receiving a speeding ticket for doing 53 in a 50, As an experiment I went a full day obeying all traffic laws 100% and it caused so much road rage. For example, there is a 2 lane road near me with a speed limit of 50 (where I got the ticket), traffic usually moves at about 60/65. There was a huge line of cars behind me and nowhere to pull over. As soon as an opening came up on the shoulder I was about to pull over and one of the cars behind me blew past me on the on the right blaring their horn. Then another truck passed me at the next opportunity and brake checked me. Both of these cars proceeded to run a red light about 1/4 mile ahead of me endangering others. By far the worst part of driving on this 2 lane road was the 25 mph work zone which is completely ignored by everyone else. It effectively resulted in me doing 25 mph in a “60” which is very dangerous.
Having needed to spend the entire day pulling over at every opportunity to let people pass I inevitably picked up a drill bit and got a flat tire.
Even matters as simple as stopping completely at a stop sign for 1 second cause immediate anger and dangerous behavior from other drivers.
What on earth are we expected to do? All I want is to avoid speeding tickets and drive safely.
Speed limits are one of the many transportation issues that have been researched with findings that the US has ignored and the EU has implemented.
Drivers go at the speed they’re comfortable with regardless of any posted speed limits. They dont work. What does work is road design to make it uncomfortable to go faster. Narrower lanes, less vision on intersections, raised crosswalks, among other things.
I have a hard time reconciling that with my observations in Europe:
- People travel significantly faster than in the U.S., for example on the autobahn
- Taxi drivers routinely do things I consider crazy in order to get around old European cities, like driving up on sidewalks, passing on narrow two-lane roads
- There are a lot of narrow mountain roads and people seem to drive way too fast to be safe
I’ve never felt like European drivers were “more safe”.
The only differences I can think of that are positive for Europe:
- Less drunk driving
- Traffic circles instead of stop signs
The two differences you listed improve traffic flow and safety massively!
Driver education is often more strict depending on country (I’m thinking Scandinavian countries and Germany), unsurprisingly this makes a big difference.
Traveling faster is a bit of a moot point. If people drive faster and rate of incidents and road toll are lower, surely that proves that travel speed isn’t the problem in the US.
But really, the drink driving culture in America is terrifying. The state of Texas has a similar population to Australia (where I’m from), 9,560 people died on the road in Q1 2022 in texas. Australia had just under 2000 FOR THE WHOLE YEAR! Both places have similar speed limits that are considerably slower than Europe, so I don’t think it would be honest to try and say the low speed limits cause deaths. My best guess would be that drink driving is enforced at 0.05 in Australia compared to 0.08 in Texas. On top of this, Texas only enforces if officers have a cause for lawful detainment, which is a high threshold to cross compared to random breath tests common where I’m from.
Its the same drivers everywhere. Road design is the difference, and europe has a lot of traffic calming road design.
I would disagree that its the same drivers everywhere. In places like germany it is far more difficult and more expensive to obtain and keep a drivers license. Here in the US the DMV basically just checks for a pulse and you get one. A DL in the US is the primary form of identification, everyone is expected to have one. There are clearly lots of people still on the road who have absolutely no business sharing the road with others who haven’t had their licenses taken away.
I dont know about how widespread it is, but yeah EU has been doing what Im talking about https://www.pps.org/article/livememtraffic
Speed radars+ removing driver licences if too many infractions?
Not perfect, but a step in the right direction
We absolutely need a points system in this country. Dui, lose your license AND your car for a month. Hit a pedestrian, come see us in 5 years.
I know these harsh consequences can be even harder in the US than Europe, but as someone who has never been able to drive I know it’s not a life ender to lose the privilege for a short time. It’s worth the grief to get people taking it more seriously.
European here. You Americans sure do love stop signs! And I did a full stop. Every time. People honked and looked at me like I was a criminal weird 😢
I have never been honked at for stopping at a posted stop sign. Maybe that’s how they do it in some other regions of the US, but that’s not how it works in the Pacific Northwest. Are you certain you weren’t honked at for doing something else and just mis-associated it with stopping at a stop sign? Was it a 4 way stop and you didn’t go when it was appropriately your time to go?
WTF are you talking about, I e stopped at every stop sign for 30 years. This is all in your head. And complete fiction.
Exactly. Especially this complaint about stop signs. That’s not something that a normal motorist would encounter during a normal day of driving. If you ever happen to encounter a stop sign, as rare as they are, and feel that you then can’t spend a minute to make a proper stop there then the real problem certainly must be in your mind.
I think it depends largely on where you live. There’s a reason it’s called the “California Stop.” And arpund Boston, the shoulder is a completely additional, auxiliary lane, which so. many. people. use.
There’s a funny video where a group of people got on the Atlanta 285 loop, spread out across all lanes, and did the speed limit for a few miles. They had a camera set up on an overpass to watch the procession come around a curve. They say they did it to show how stupid the speed limit on the loop was, and I’m sure it was infuriating for the miles of cars backed up behind them, but… yeah. It showed few people there obeyed the speed limit. I don’t know if this is the original; I don’t remember it being edited by a spastic gerbil, but that’s what I could find before I lost interest.
Getting a ticket for going 3 over is silly. That part does seem contrived, and if contested OP could easily get that thrown out. I suspect either OP was being a douche in some other way, and the cop put something down to harrass them, or they dropped a “0” in the retelling.
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Realize that a lot of traffic laws are more or less designed to make everyone a criminal. That leaves it up to the cop to decide who they like to pull over.
Sprinkle in a little racism and bam! This is America.
One time when I lived in Utah, I literally got pulled over for driving the speed limit. Literally. The cop told me that I needed to go with the flow of traffic instead. He didn’t give me a ticket, but it was still an annoying interruption to my day, and I assume it gave him a power boner of some sort.
But another time, living in the same area, I got pulled over by a different cop for going with the flow of traffic, because speeding isn’t justified even when everyone else on the road is.
As another comment said, you’re fucked if you do and fucked if you don’t. Although, I do prefer the alternative of going with the flow of traffic to avoid road rage incidents as you’ve pointed out.
I think I would have demanded a ticket in your case. I would have really liked to see how that played out in court.
That’s when you ask for a name and badge number and report them. They’re not allowed to pull you over for nothing.
