I’m glad northern IL doesn’t patrol interstate construction zones; everyone who drives 70-80 through them does so safely. Back when 90 was being widened and was 45MPH, every now and then a state trooper would drive 44mph and flash his lights if anyone tried to edge past him just to create a giant traffic jam. How’s that safe?
This occurred in the construction zone I described above. I thank the traffic gods that I was working from home yesterday.
People keep playing Russian Roulette, eventually they get a nasty surprise.
@cornchip that behavior by the trooper is annoying and I suppose somewhat unsafe, but if you’re in a collision doing 45-50 you’ll be a lot better off than doing 70-80. Plus at the latter speeds you have way less reaction time to avoid collisions in the first place.
I drove to O’Hare a few times through the previous years construction (but from the same project) and they had a similar 3 narrow lane setup but with a posted limit at 45 like @cornchip describes but maybe 10 miles NW of O’Hare. I found it downright unsafe to drive less than 60 mph due to the wall-to-wall 60-70 mph traffic through there. Definitely glad IL wasn’t patrolling then, could have gotten ticketed for 15-20 over in construction. Either way, certainly wore on my nerves.
Ha, yeah driving less than 65 on 294 is asking to be run off the road, unless traffic is stopped.
If you tried to drive 45 I would half expect you to get pulled over for driving too slowly for conditions!
I get that for any of those freeways normally or even near very light construction, but this was in fact a narrowed construction zone with 45 mph speed limit and construction trucks periodically entering and stopping traffic.
Yeah I mostly drove the stretch from 80 to Ogden, rarely going north of the airport. So perhaps that’s right.
Though when they had the construction by Ogden it made a real mess of things for me too. Dead stops even at midnight as it went from 4 to 2 lanes.
I have to talk about my young stupidity. I hope you will not think less of me. But you are right if you do.
When I was younger I’d drive without a license. And while drinking. I used to drive a car that my then wife had. No insurance, no license. Drunk.
I’d be day drinking beer and take out the vehicle. My thing back then was to get on a road in Brooklyn and floor it. This is a pedestrian area, but a straight run. I knew the lights, so I could go for almost a mile at high speed before I hit a red light.
It was a rush. That’s no excuse. I am amazed that I never killed someone else or myself.
I post this as a partial answer to the thread title. Some people are just morons. Like me.
I find it incredibly disturbing that police around the world cannot enforce speed limits based on general safety because idiots think they know better. Or more accurately, people believe they should be able to drive whatever speed they feel like regardless of their experience and skills to do so, regardless of the weather. I’d bet actual money that upwards of 80% of them are nowhere near qualified to do so.
They drive in ways that professionals never would, because it’s dangerous and unnecessary. Yet the human brain is wired to normalize behavior that does not immediately make a negative impact, so after they get away with it a while it’s just what they do. And it’s fine… Until it isn’t.
As a young lad I drove for years for a living and to say that it’s a personal pet peeve of mine is a vast understatement.
What I find most interesting is that, while you happily broke all those other laws, you still had respect for a red light. :)
But hey, I’ve been there in my late teens: Drunk, driving, and drag racing on Main Street at unholy speeds. Thankfully, that phase of my life didn’t last long, and no one got hurt.
What got my attention was when I got to know a guy that I worked with for years. He seemed cool and owned a faster car than me, so I told him some of my adventures. He didn’t seem to enjoy them, and finally told me why: In the 1960’s (15 years before), he was drag racing one night on Main Street in his home town, just like me; drunk. Suddenly, an elderly couple of pedestrians appeared in the middle of the 4-lane street, trying to cross. His car hit them both squarely at very high speed. They were both killed instantly; the old guy was decapitated. Aside from the incredible guilt he carried for that, he also did several years prison time. He told that story in great detail. So great that it completely altered my behavior.
One night of really bad decisions, and two people were killed (and their relatives’ lives forever altered), and this dude’s life was fucked up from that moment on. He said that even 15 years on, he still visualized the incident several times every single day.
Amen.
Try driving HWY 5 in Northern Calif. Redding to Sacramento area. Speed limit is 70 to 75 MPH. A lot of drivers are just coming out of Oregon’s state wide HWY 5 MAX 65 MPH. Yesterday I was driving my RX350 on cruise control a 77 MPH with a guy in a PU Truck not 5’ behind me almost pushing me out of his way. He had ample opportunities to go around me. Suddenly there was a clearing in front of me so I sped up to get about 400 Ft in front of this guy staying 5 car lengths behind the vehicle in front of me. He finally caught up and did the same thing. UNREAL. If you leave even 2-1/2 car lengths some jack ass will shove himself right into this slot. It’s not a HWY it’s a race track. I have never experienced this kind of behavior before? HONESTLEY, I am 60 years plus with a truck driver license and never been in a auto accident other than a minor fender bender. This is crazy driving! It has the attitude of a “MAGA” rally… Almost every other day in the last year you hear on the local news about a major HWY 5 accident. “SAD”.
Welcome to the forum.
With regard to what you wrote, I think a lot of people just don’t understand the physics of vehicles moving at those speeds, and wildly underestimate how long it would take them to react to avoid a collision in case of something unexpected happening (or wildly overestimate the time they would actually have).
Alternatively: some people are just assholes.
There is also decidedly a positive correlation between the size of the passenger vehicle, and how likely they are to be a jerk. People driving their suburban tanks are the worst.
Well almost he worst. Big pickups (that have clearly never been used to haul things) with a smokestack and lift kit are the actual worst. The asshole to driver ratio approaches 1:1 for those.
And pickup trucks. At least here in Wisconsin.
Yeah, I consider these
To be a special category.
Google Search term? Asshole truck. It was the second image. Most of the rest are trucks double and triple parked. Sometimes the internet delivers
Perfect Photo Example Showing The Attitude Some of These Drivers Have!!
Well, to be honest, you get assholes driving literally any kind of vehicle and they can come in almost any age group or gender.
Sure, but the ratio does vary.
You don’t see that many driving an Insight compared to F-350’s