(Brent P)
But the limits - especially in urban-suburban areas - are often NOT sensible ... they're political. Seems that everyone wants the limit to be 20 MPH right past THEIR house, but faster clout and wind up getting their way.
In any case, you're never going to get much agreement as to what the limit on any given stretch of road SHOULD be. As such, a large percentage will always think it's insanely slow and speed - a large enough percentage to affect the next elections. This scares the crap out of sitting politicians. They desperately want to get RE-elected and a large peeed-off group can ruin their majorities.
The cure for gridlock is automated vehicles - that travel about 40 MPH in perfectly-spaced harmony. Gridlock isn't so much caused by the NUMBER of vehicles but the number of vehicles AND the way people drive. You know how traffic moves in 'waves' and 'bunches'. When there's space, folks hit the gas until they wind up jammed behind the next wad of cars. Then they hit the brakes. This causes 'ripples' along the traffic stream and pretty soon the various 'ripples' get out of sync and NOBODY moves.
The technology for self-driving cars - at least in semi- controlled environments like a city freeway - is just about ready. Five years perhaps ...
The problem isn't the speed per-se, it's the VARIATION in speeds. Mix vehicles traveling between 45 mph and 120 mph on the same two or three lanes and there's gonna be big trouble. The speed limit normalizes the speed of the traffic flow, reasonably so anyhow. Most people drive between 60 and 80 - a mere 20mph variance. Even thus there are rather a lot of wrecks caused by rear-ending slower vehicles or traffic trying to swerve over to pbutt slower vehicles and the odd jackbutt who THINKS he knows how to drive 100+.
Not true. If the limit on the 1200 block of 17th street still annoys, lots of people are going to speed and if you zap 'em for it they're gonna be peeed in droves, even if it's not QUITE a big-enough drove to get the limit changed. The presence of a free-for-all-way somewhere outside of town won't fix this.
Hey, there are MONEY and CONTROL issues involved here too. Tickets generate revenue and the pols also want to impress upon the citizens that the cops are always there, guns in hand, watching over their shoulders.
