- #36
Moonbear
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Astronuc said:Well, they are necessary, particularly in populated areas. It's alright with a 10 mh (16 km/h) differential in vehicle speed, but much above that accidents are more likely.
It really depends. Some speed limits don't make a lot of sense...those are the ones that are somewhat arbitrary and you'll see vary state to state. For example, in NJ, the speed limit around school zones was 25 mph, which was plenty slow enough (and heavily enforced usually...you weren't going to go 30 or 35 mph without getting a ticket, especially if it was during the time when kids were arriving or being dismissed from school). But, the speed limit was the same all day long, because in reality, kids are around the school at least during daylight hours, either on the playground, some are "escaping" when they shouldn't be, some are there for afterschool activities, some are getting picked up early or dropped off late by their parents because they had a doctor's appointment, etc. When I moved out to the midwest, in both MI and OH, the speed limit was 20 mph. That got a bit painfully slow. Plus, in OH, they had yellow blinking lights, so the limit only changed from whatever the normal limit on the road was (which could have been 45 mph) down to 20 mph ONLY when the light was blinking, which was when schools were opening in the morning (kids arriving) or being dismissed in the afternoon. Despite children being in the area all day long, you could drive 45 mph past the school until it was time for dismissal! None of it made sense to me.
Then there are speed limits that make sense even if you don't see it at first. Again, when I lived in Cincinnati, one of the neighboring, more rural areas had a road that was usually pretty empty, just bordering a bunch of fields, but had a fairly slow speed limit after a long stretch of no marked speed limit. The teen drivers would get to that road and do 45 or 50 mph, or more, on it...and then hit the sharp turn at the end of a few gentle curves, so you don't really see it coming, but that's why the speed limit was posted and slow for that section of road. There were frequent serious accidents on that stretch of road, usually teen drivers, and all too often, fatal for someone in the car.