Drivers stunned by new speeding law. ⇒
9 November 2007, late morning
How do you not notice you're going 150km/h. That's pretty damn fast.
This is a post from my link log: If you click the title of this post you will be taken the web page I am discussing.
Believe it or not, it’s easy to speed when you’re on a highway like the 407. I’ve caught myself going 140k without realizing that I was gaining speed, just going with the flow of traffic.
One solution: Don’t make cars that can go 300k. Make cars for the general public whose top speed is 140k…problem solved.
by radmila on November 9 2007, 12:06 pm #
From someone who used to drive really really (really) fast all the time, I don’t buy into the whole “I didn’t even notice how fast I was going” excuse.
The thing that concerns me is that a lot of people on the road really aren’t good enough at driving to drive as fast as they do, which many of them seem unwilling to recognize. If you don’t know how fast you’re going, then that’s all the more reason for you not to go that fast.
Given that momentum increases exponentially with speed, and ability to react decreases drastically with speed (unless you always drive excessively fast, in which case your ability to react is probably worse at slow speeds), I think taking someone’s car away, leaving them stranded and slapping them with a giant fine is a great way to teach them not to takes risks they should already know not to take.
To illustrate how much sense excessive speeding makes, let’s take a look at the example of the guy in the article who was driving to church. If the church was 20km from his house, and 15km of the trip was highway driving and 5km of the trip was city driving, it takes him 11 minutes to get there going 150km/h on the highway and 11.9 minutes to get there going 130km/h on the highway. Pretty inexcusable if you ask me.
As mentioned above, I used to drive very fast, and probably quite wrecklessly, but I have spent a great deal of time thinking about the impact I have on those around me when I drive like that. The seconds or minutes saved, the feeling of control or simply being the fastest isn’t worth the increased risk of taking a life. While the new law may be publicized as a way to punish street racers, I strongly support it for completely different reasons.
by rishi on November 9 2007, 1:12 pm #
150km/h… uhhh… that’s how fast, in real units of distance? /American
by Ben on November 9 2007, 1:57 pm #
Should be 93 miles an hour, whatever that means.
by Ramanan on November 9 2007, 2:05 pm #
That’s really, really fast not to notice. Seriously, there’s no way to accidentally go that fast. I live in one of the craziest driver states in the country (I think we get rated as the worst by everyone else – there’s a reason they call us Massholes), and I can tell you that at 93mph, no one would be passing you.
by Ben on November 9 2007, 2:14 pm #
Radmila’s right about the 407, people are used to unconsciously going ‘with the flow of traffic’ and the flow on the 407 is usually up over 140. It can be hard to tell because there isn’t much in the way of markers (trees, buildings, slow cars) that would give away your relative speed.
by Ananthan on November 9 2007, 8:07 pm #
Since when did people stop using the speedometer to gauge how fast they were going? Do you also rely on your surroundings to determine if you need more gas?
by rishi on November 10 2007, 2:28 am #
No, of course not, what a silly and irrelevent question. Your speed relative to the cars around you is important. Someone going drastically faster or slower than the flow of traffic presents a greater concern than a case of everyone going with the general flow, even if it’s 140.
During driver training courses, as well as motorcycle training, the instructors tell you to go with the flow of traffic – though with the caveat that it must be safe. Motorcycles often have iffy speedos and they actually say just use common sense and the cars around you to judge speed, it’s a legitimate way to drive and not everyone keeps the needle pinned at 100 while they putter around annoying everyone around them.
Has Fantino got his helicopters yet? Or was it an airplane now? Wasn’t that the point of all this fearmongering? How many people have died from street racing in the last decade again?
by Ananthan on November 11 2007, 12:31 pm #