In the realm of ego orientated commenting, this one really stands out.
I do not want to put my life in your unregulated hands. I want you regulated to hell and back when you operate a tonne of steel at thirty metres per second heading in my general direction.
Actually: Can you, especially you warning26, catch a bus?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn
Parts of highway with unrestricted speed are not only possible, they're not particularly dangerous either.
From the speeding journalist's article:
>These roads weren’t anywhere near schools or towns, and have lots of curves and very little traffic.
This is hardly like the Autobahn (except for the schools and towns bit). The parts of the Autobahn with speed restrictions are exactly the parts that are most dangerous, meaning parts with curves, or hilly parts (as you cannot see what's going on on the other site of a hill). The unrestricted parts are basically straight lines. And the Autobahn very much only goes in one direction only (with the other direction physically barricaded off), so oncoming traffic is practically not an issue - except for the rather rare cases of "ghost drivers". You have no pedestrians or cyclists and no wildlife crossings (thanks to barricades); only vehicles which can do at least 60 km/h (~37 mph) are allowed. Trucks and other large vehicles, as well as vehicles with trailers do have speed limits. The Autobahn has a lot fewer crashes and fatalities than rural motorways in Germany, because of that.
As the poster you're responding remarked: "I want you regulated to hell and back when you operate a tonne of steel at thirty metres per second heading in my general direction." That's just not a thing on Autobahn.
The person who was responded to initially also advocated to design "slow roads" instead of having regulations. That's basically the opposite of the Autobahn, which was designed for fast travel. My guess would be that if you designed roads to be slow, a lot of people just wouldn't go slow, but cause crashes. We see that already on roads which just happen to be relatively "slow" without being specifically designed to be that.
Aside from that, German drivers got to have a lot more certified training by law (compared to the US), pass a lot more strict and comprehensive theoretical and practical exam (compare to the US) before getting a license, and cars have to be inspected every two years for road-suitability (including working safety features).
I wouldn't want some reckless driver coming at me on a curvey, rural road at 93 miles per hour, some 35 mph over the limit. Because that's literally what is is: reckless and dangerous, with disregard for anybody else who might be on the road. Jail time, however, seems too harsh, as there was no victim (this time). If I did the same on a German road as the journalist did on that Virginia road, I'd have to pay 600 EUR, have my license suspended for 2 months, and get 2 points in the register. Which I find rather fair and justified.
>I do not want to put my life in your unregulated hands.
It takes an impressive amount of cognitive dissonance to insult him and then drivel about "putting your life in unregulated hands" when the regulation in question is speed limits, a type of regulation to which compliance is low to the point of it almost being comical. If the regulation were something like standards of cleanliness for canned food or something else that's pretty much always adhered to you might have a point but it's not and you don't.
It's not the regulation that's keeping your naive self safe. Your life is pretty much already in unregulated hands because pretty much nobody is minding the regulation. It's that most people are reasonable and drive reasonably that keeps you as safe as you are. People are driving the speeds they drive because those speeds are reasonable to them. They are not whizzing by you at triple digit speeds because those speeds to not feel reasonable to them. It has nearly nothing to do with the number on the sign.
Edit: To be clear, the 45mph sign was not obvious at all. Most cars assumed it it was a 55 or 65 zone, and went at about 70. I drove the road two dozen times before noticing the speed limit dropped so far down. Going 45 on that stretch would have been dangerous.
Anyway, I can imagine a road that should be 75 in some other state being posted at 55, and also for going 15 mph over to be common in that state.
If an ambulance has to go that way, you'd want that to be able to drive fast.
Also, people can drive poorly on any type of road.
If you care about the time to get to an emergency room, get hospitals closer to people?
People can drive poorly on any road, but they'll do it more if the road guides them to misbehave.
So they could set up some arbitrary obstacles to slow people down prior to the natural contour of the terrain, or, you know, throw up a sign which indicates a safe speed for the upcoming section of highway.
It was a very specific road near where I grew up. Nice and flat. Looked like you could do any speed you wanted. People routinely did 55. Posted was 30.
Near one end of the road was a tree slowly pushing a tree root underneath the road. This followed into a sharp curve bordered by a second, ancient tree.
The neighborhood lost about one person every 6 months who got complacent driving that road faster than speed limit and then got decapitated when they hit that tree root, their car went airborne, rotated 90°, and the top half of the passenger space intersected the ancient tree down the road.
DOTs get no budget to reshape a bad road and do the best they can to try and keep us from killing ourselves out there.
Funny thing about governments by, for, and of the people.
The group that petitioned most consistently not to reshape the road were the people who lived in that neighborhood. They didn't want their main thoroughfare shut down and they didn't want people driving that road faster.
Eventually, two volunteer firefighters died when a fire truck flipped doing lights-and-sirens down that road. Then the county stepped in, declared eminent domain on the tree, and cut it down to remove the root and reshape the road.
Democracies don't always vote in everyone's best interest. Or plenty of Americans are comfortable with one vehicular death every six months. Many possible explanations.
