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Re: Speed limits v actual spd



In article <3v8va0$ck2@news-e1a.megaweb.com>,
KENNY MORSE <kennystar@megaweb.com> wrote:
>
>ACTUAL SPEEDS.......EXACTLY.
>
>In the zones here in California where the speed limit is 55, the 
>flow of traffic is somewhere between 65-75.
>
>In the areas where they RAISED THE SPEED LIMIT to 65,
>the average flow of traffic is 75->90.  If you're going to say
>that no matter what the zone, people will go at least 10mph
>+ over the sign, I'll say RIGHT.  I KNOW THAT! My classes
>are FILLED with that.

Sorry, but this doesn't stand up to logic, Kenny. The 65 mph zones
are all different areas than the 55 areas. I just drove from LA to
Seattle yesterday and dropped my speed 10 mph when in city areas
because the traffic density (i.e. the comfortable speed for me) 
required it. It was not a coincidence that these were generally the 55
mph zones. This is NOT what the Tignor & Warren study monitored,
however. They changed the speed limits o identical stretches of
road to get the same speed by the drivers. Obviously a 25-mph
residential street is going to have people driving a lot
slower than a 65 mph interstate. But if the limit on the residential
street were changed to 65 mph, would people go 80 on it? I doubt
it.

(of course, an isolated 65 mph residential street would probably
attract drag racers, the comparison isn't completely valid.)

>Yes...they say their speed.  The facts are THE BEST ones...the real
>people doing real behavior.  They don't just represent the ones who
>got caught....they represent us as a whole.

No, they don't represent me. Who elected them? They're real people
who got caught doing real behavior that got them caught. People
who got caught are much more likely to have been doing something
that attracted the attention of the cop who caught them.

-- 
Adam Villani
addam@cco.caltech.edu
http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~addam
"I was in this prematurely air-conditioned supermarket..."


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