this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2024
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I'll be real, I really like the 55mph county highways compared to the 65mph interstate. At 55mph you're closer to the sweet spot for fuel efficiency (for most vehicles around 45mph is the most fuel efficient speed) so you get noticably better gas milage. The 70mph interstates are generally a bit scary because going 75-80 to keep up with traffic just feels too fast and I can feel how much harder it is to control my vehicle compared to going less than 70, plus the engine works noticably harder against the wind to maintain speed.
I also witnessed a crash where a vehicle was going 80ish in a 55 zone on a beltline. They lost control while passing a vehicle, hit the barrier then careened accross three lanes of traffic pinning another vehicle against the opposite barrier. Nobody died and it appeared everyone was largely uninjured (thanks modern crash safety standards!) but the woman in the pinned vehicle was trapped. Point is, going slower they would not have lost control, or if they did they would not have crashed as badly doing so
This very much depends on your vehicle.
Going 25+ over the speed limit on a road not designed for it is completely different than going 80 on a highway/interstate designed and built for that speed.
Fuel efficiencies aside it doesn't sound like you have a whole lot of confidence and/or experience behind the wheel (or you have a really really shitty car, your car should be able to handle 70-80 with ease), you should work on that.
You are scared to drive 70 mph? It sounds like you need more training and/or experience driving.
I mean, that's a velocity you can easily die at. I don't feel like that's an unreasonable emotion...
If you aren't comfortable driving at highway speeds then you should stay off the highway until you obtain the training and/or experience to feel confident. It's a rather mundane activity for most people.
Oh I'm fully capable of doing it. I've handled a 100 mile each direction super commute before and I'm currently considering supercommuting again because my grandmother needs some help with day to day tasks and lives a bit away from me. But what I can do vs what I like to do are 2 very different things, and I'm simply voicing that I do not like high speed limits on roads.
The fact is the severity of a crash increases exponentially with speed (and your margin for error as a driver decreases similarly) and humans aren't great at driving cars, so as a human who generally wants to continue living, that's the fear in the back of my head on those high speed bits of highway where some drivers are very insistant on going far beyond the posted speed limit.
Oh and lowering speed limits is good for gas milage and therefore better for emissions. So there plenty of societal good to come from lowering speed limits in general
I mean, in certain ways I agree with you, but it's rather mundane for most people, because they completely dissociate from the very real dangers that are just factually there. While your rule of thumb works in many cases, personally I never felt comfortable between all the people undercutting safe breaking distance, even when I had lots of routine.