Joined: Aug 02, 2006
Posts: 494
Location: McLean, VA, USA
Posted:
Fri Dec 01, 2006 11:29 pm
Need for speed. One of the major forces moving the progress and one of the biggest addictions on this planet and around. You want to get from point A to point B as fast as possible. And you want to feel the joy of moving really fast, the joy of controlling the monster, even if you do not have any need to go from point A to point B. Those were the reasons automobile was invented in the first place. Those are the major reasons anyone buys the car. Those are the major goals for the majority of trips. Yet, if one goes too fast, one might never arrive. How fast is too fast, though?
This thing is big. No, it is huge. Worse, everyone has his own opinion on this. Even worse, official opinion on this does not seem to have any scientific (means thought through, logical, and supported by reproducible studies) grounds. Still, many people aggressively defend variations of the official opinion, and it just would not be there as official, if it has not been supported by a majority of people. So, I’m going to tell heretic things in this thread, and if somebody cannot tolerate any deviation from the official point of view, please do not read any further, you’d be disappointed. Just a disclaimer.
Official answer is simple – anything above speed limit is too fast, no matter what. Period, no questions asked. As soon as it can be proved your speed is above speed limit, you are wrong and guilty, and you get pulled over. As easy as that. Authorities claim they have more versatile answer, when they introduce clauses about adjusting your speed with the road conditions change, or about not going too slow in the left highway lane.
But did you ever see a cop pulling someone over for going just below speed limit on an icy road? Or a cop pulling over a retired teacher, who is driving 10 mph below limit in the left lane under ideal environment? I did not. And I do not believe in versatility of official answer, until I do see those kinds of things on the regular basis. About as frequent as regular speeding tickets.
Until then, we are on our own to try and figure out what is the maximum possible speed that is actually safe under given circumstances? And, given this maximum possible speed, how fast we actually want to drive right now?
By and large, there are three major variables to this safe speed equation – the driver, the car, and the road. BTW, this is why my forums are categorized this way. Let me talk about those variables in some detail.
The driver means everything related to driver – his knowledge, skills, experience, physical and mental shape, mood, focus on the task at hand, his judgment ability, his personality, etc.
The car means everything related to car – both in terms of design and shape, which allows or does not allow this particular car to drive at this particular speed. And this does not mean that car just can reach this speed, it means the car can maintain this speed with reasonable three-dimensional stability under given environment. It is not about engine at all (we have a joke in Russia: even a wardrobe can reach 200km/h if you let it slide down a big mountain), it is all about tires, suspension, steering, body stiffness - active safety in other words.
And the road means just that – road conditions, environment, everything outside the car that affects or might affect its movement and, therefore, influences our decision about safe speed. Driving on a fenced highway obviously dictates speed different from driving inside residential block, driving on an icy road during midnight snowstorm – different from driving on this same road on a warm, nice, and clear autumn noon, etc.
Our job as a driver is to constantly assess all those variables and decide what is the maximum safe speed for every one of them, and then to pick the lowest – this will give you the speed that is safe from all three points of view. In other words, the maximum speed a particular driver on particular moment in particular car on particular road part can safely drive. A professional racer on a new performance car on a nice warm day would drive about the speed of a pedestrian on a tight residential lane, because he just has almost no room to react if children suddenly run into the road in front of his car.
All this does not mean you have to drive exactly at the maximum safe speed. Most of the times an experienced driver will drive slower than this, in order to not to push himself, or his car, or environment to the limit, and to give himself some room for error. It usually depends on the current trip goal. If you were sightseeing, you probably would drive much slower, and if you were delivering your wife to the hospital, you probably would push it to the limit or even further, which is a mistake, BTW.
That russian joke was nice LOL . Its true . Speed not only depends on engine. Proper transmission,Tires etc is also necessary. Obtaining top speed is not at all an issue, maintaining speed and driving hard and safely is what matters.
I know...and when you do manage to overtake them, giving them an exasperated look, they stare back in anger wondering what on earth is wrong with YOU!!
Joined: Aug 02, 2006
Posts: 494
Location: McLean, VA, USA
Posted:
Thu Jan 21, 2010 8:20 am
Actually some of them honk and flip a bird LOL. Which clearly show that at least some of them do this onpurpose to hold others from driving faster. Oh well, karma will take care of them, we should not worry
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