Originally Posted by
maxine
Yeah, I've always been bothered by this logical inconsistency. I will freely admit to busting the speed limits on interstates and limited access highways on a pretty regular basis...
But I am absolutely inflexible about never speeding in neighborhoods, not ever, and not even a little bit. If it says 25, I'm going 25, and the guy behind me can tailgate and honk to his heart's content. The risk of some little kid darting out, or something else unexpected happening, is just too high. Two nights ago, driving home in the dark on the little roads in my neighborhood, twice I was barely able to see people who were out for a stroll, wearing dark clothing. If I had been careening around the turns at 10-15 mph over the speed limit, I could have easily hit and seriously injured one of them. Which, penalty-wise, should be a whole different ball of wax from, say, doing 65 on an empty Route 100 at 11:30 p.m. on a weeknight.
I agree 100% that this would be a more ideal yet liberal way to view speeding or maybe a tolerance based on the percentage of the speed limit (say 10-20%) but instead we have a tolerance that is approaching 15mph (changing 25mph to 40mph and changing a 80% chance of survival for a pedestrian to a 20% chance of survival ) anywhere and everywhere. What happened to the 5mph grace I grew up with, which was only there because of inaccuracies of measuring equipment. Now that we have more accurate measuring devices the tolerance has gone up to 10-15mph???
Intermixing standards for limited access highways with residential and other streets where pedestrians and bicyclists are present has never been good for society.