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

"Mortimer" <me@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:MLOdnXLWqIaCohXVnZ2dnUVZ8tSdnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 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.
>

Since we drive on the other side of the road in the US,  we keep right,
and 
no passing on the right, but on expressways this is SELDOM enforced.

> 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.
>

In the US it's also rare, but the idiots don't know how to get off and/or 
merge nice.  I have to get over one lane usually around a junction to miss

the sudden parcel of vehicles going 10-20 below the limit getting off and 
getting on.  Some of the older on ramps are poorly engineered and not long

enough for a decent car to get up to traffic speed, even if you GUN it.

> 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.
>

The restrictons on truck tractors pulling semi trailers (articulated 
lorries) vary from state to state, which is why no one has a 'governor' 
holding them down.

Illinois limits all trucks over 8,000 lbs, all vehicles towing trailers,
and 
all recreational vehicles to 55 miles per hour. (That's an improvement. 
Until 1973, they used to be restricted to 50 / 60  / 65 in that order.)

Over in Kentucky the single speed limit on most open Interstate roads is
70 
mph.  In Indiana it's 65.  In Wisconsin it's 65.
> 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.
>

We've had to improve the power on some of our larger straight trucks and 
truck-tractors.  There's so much traffic in places out west, that if they 
had to work down to 15 mph to crest a hill, there would be a huge line of 
cars behind waiting to pass.  And yes there are hills that bad over here. 
Go drive the I-75 east of Chattenooga some time, but mind the brakes, 
they'll get hot going east.  And watch your temp gauge going west, it's a 
long uphill grade, even some cars have issues with it.

Charles the Curmudgeon.