Motor vehicle and traffic laws in the U.S. have been antiquated for generations, and in desperate need of extensive overhaul.
Slothful lane blockage, whether by parking, or improper lane selection, is rude and dangerous.
Motor vehicle speed laws embarrass us as a culture.
Some of these speed limits were set over half a century ago. Back then there were cars with 2 wheel drum brakes on the road, rolling on bias ply tires.
Today many cars have 4 wheel power disc brakes, on radial tires. Stopping distances have been cut roughly in half.
And yet the speed limits on some highways are exactly the same as they were over a half a century ago.
It's so bad that the public has voted with out feet. I drove from Northern New York to North Carolina, and took I-95 for much of the way. There are long stretches of I-95 where the posted speed limit is 70 MPH. There as elsewhere, it's common to find the flow of traffic (FOT) 10 MPH over the posted speed limit. So I had to do 80 MPH or better, just to keep up with traffic.
EXCELLENT !!
Many modern cars can handle that quite easily. Do not infer what I did not imply. It's not like we sneaked around doing something naughty, and by dint of pure luck escaped law enforcement detection. That's a round trip that's thousands of miles. I encountered many speed traps in various States along the way. I saw plenty of police cars, but never once saw any flashing lights.
I'm not pretending there are no bad guys out there. But ridiculous antiquated motor vehicle and traffic laws make criminals of virtually all of us.
I once read an account of an "Eskimo" culture that had only one law: "No trouble-making."
I think that's a fairly useful standard. Candidly, if I'm sawing wood at 3:AM, and some nurse making her way home after an 18 hour shift technically runs a stop sign, because s/he can see there isn't another car on the road for miles, I would not lose any sleep over it.
As TK #1 acknowledges, inconsiderate driving is a major problem. But if I'm taking Rt. 17 to Rockland County and a guy in a $quarter $million $dollar Porsche passes me doing 90 MPH, in a car German engineers designed for cruising on the Autobahn at 240 KPH, why should I care, as long as it's not done recklessly?
This car, my car can easily cruise at 80+ MPH.
PS
From where I live, it's 10 miles to the nearest store. The highway speed limit is 55 MPH. But I'm a safer driver at 70 MPH than at 55 MPH. At 55 MPH, it's so ploddingly slow and boring, I find myself multi-taking; cleaning out the glove box, sorting my mail, or whatever else is at hand.
At 70 MPH, the view out the windshield becomes "interesting", and can hold my undivided attention.
