Re: On Topic? Cars, anyway: 55 MPH speed limit...

"Leftie" <No@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:qFThk.3436$gg.1404@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Brent P wrote:
>    This is how we got into the current situation: being told to crowd
into 
> the right-hand lane to make more room for speeders. On a 3 lane highway 
> with off-ramps on the right, the right lane should be for those going 
> below the limit, including those exiting or entering from ramps. The 
> center lane should be for cruising at the limit or so, and the left lane

> for passing and emergency vehicles. This allows for the optimum flow of 
> traffic and for maximum safety. But that's just too sensible for this 
> dumbass country...

Interesting how different countries have different rules about this. In
the 
UK, the "keep left" and "no undertaking" rules on motorways are drummed
into 
every new driver and the police will stop people (if they have nothing
more 
urgent to attend to) to enforce this.

You still get people crawling along at 50-60 in the Lane 2 on a deserted 
motorway late at night: it's very annoying to be driving quite correctly
in 
Lane 1 and have to move over two lanes to pass the slow vehicle and then 
move back two lanes to where you were.

Mind you in the UK, it's fairly rare for Lane 1 to be for the exclusive
use 
of traffic leaving the motorway at a junction - this is only done at a 
minority of very busy junctions and is very well signposted in advance so 
people going straight on can move over into Lane 2 and don't get shunted
off 
at the junction.

I'm not sure what other countries' laws are about undertaking (ie
overtaking 
on the opposite side to the driver's side).

As a matter of interest, in the USA are large articulated trucks (heavy 
goods vehicles - HGVs - in UK parlance) legally restricted to a lower
limit 
than other vehicles? In the UK they are mechanically restricted to 56 mph 
(ie 80 km/hr) which can lead to the dreaded "lorry leapfrog" as truck 1 
doing 56 comes up behind truck 2 doing 55 (due to tolerances in the
settings 
of the speed limiters) and decides to overtake it at a differential speed
of 
1 mph. Consequently all the traffic behind it in Lane 2 is suddenly
reduced 
to 56 for the several miles that it takes for truck 1 to complete its 
manoevre. Lo and behold, a few miles further on they'll come to a hill and

truck 2 (which happens to have a more powerful engine and therefore isn't 
slowed as much by the gradient) will overtake truck 1, taking forever and
a 
day - and so it goes on. In a car, you might tem****arily exceed the speed 
limit to make sure you got past quickly, but HGVs don't have that option.

On a road with at least 3 lanes, there is at least an extra lane for cars
to 
get past, but on two-lane roads you are stuck :-(

There's an infamous 2-lane road (the A34) that carries all the HGVs that 
have come from mainland Europe north from Southampton Docks to the
Midlands 
(eg Birmingham) and there are sections which have gentle hills [*] as they

go over a ridge. When I used to come that way to work, it was rare to get 
above 55 for the 20 miles that I drive on it, because every time I
overtook 
a lorry, another sodding one would pull out in front of me. The road
really 
does need to be upgraded to 3 lanes - or else the law needs to be changed
to 
ban HGVs from overtaking unless they can complete the manouevre within a
few 
seconds.

[*] Well, they are gentle to a car which can maintain 70-80 up them but
they 
force underpowered HGVs down to around 40.