Re: A4 yuppie scum in Boston

[Aleksander Mierzwa <alex@matrix.pl>]

At 08:42 99-04-15 EDT, Ssgacc@aol.com wrote:

> It's the SPEED DIFFERENTIAL that kills, not necessarily the outright speed 
>itself. when you're traveling at 2x the posted limit on any major highway 
>with other traffic, you're asking for trouble.
[...]
>I am not trying to endorse high speed driving, but it works for me and a few 
>others I meet on the road.  If an unskilled or unsafe driver wants to
"race", 
>or someone just wants to go faster (rare) I willingly and readily let them 
>go.  I have driven some of the most scared, anti-speed auto passengers and 
>even they grudgingly admitted that except that they KNEW what the speed was 
>they felt safe.

IMHO the key factor here is not the speed differential itself, but whether
other motorists actually EXPECT others to drive at much higher speeds.
For example in Poland we have are from 90kph on ordinary roads to 130kph on
the very few motorways, however, most drivers do not obey the limits in
general which is a very well known fact. When driving on a multi-lane road
with 110kph limit most people EXPECT to be regularly passed by cars doing
in excess of 160kph (not to be hypocrite here, yes, sometimes a certain
black 5KT is one of those cars :-) ) and therefore tend to stay in the
right lane, watch the rear view mirrors etc. On German Autobahn sometimes
the speed difference is also huge (a truck doing 80kph and an S8 doing
_well_ over 200, for example), yet for the very same reason (people in
slower cars expect to be approached by faster traffic and vice versa) they
are generally safe.
>From what I've read on this list, in USA there's lot of people who either
think that everybody out there always obeys speed limits or simply don't
give a d*mn about others on the road. If this is really the case, I would
be hesitant to drive really fast on the American motorways, since while
driving at 100mph I'd never know when I will be cut off by someone doing
45mph and not watching his/her mirrors.

Aleksander Mierzwa
Warsaw, Poland
mailto:alex@matrix.pl
87 Audi 5000CS turbo (mine)
88 Renault Medallion wagon (mom's)
91 mountain bike (just in case both cars break at the same time :-)