EZRider

Granted your presentation was a bit long it carries serious substance. I can see this "Uniform Traffic Control Devices" abused in many of the cases for financial gains especially by smaller cash strapped towns. On the other hand I can see it saving lives. However it's apparent to me there's more to lose than gain concerning this issue. If you need signatures count mine in.

Aleks951

Ron - thanks for taking the time to give us the entire lesson. Although the post is long it contains good background and information that I think would be important to many of us. I also agree on the kudos on your resolve to fight this issue.

If people don't inform the rest of us what they have learned then we may never know what the government is trying to impose on us.

Please post the information others have requested. I'd also like to learn more about what is happening.

Best of luck and I hope you(we) can beat this one.

Scootin159

Cliff notes for the lazy

(You may want to append this to your initial post, or maybe put it at the begining of it)

1) Current law says states must do a scientific study on a road analyzing 'natural' driving speeds & scientifically 'safe' speeds before declaring a speed limit

2) Very few speed limit signs are technically legal in current state of the law

3) Lawmakers are trying to revise law to allow arbitrary speed limits to be set

4) Law could be easily exploited into setting rediculous speed limits in efforts to raise funds....AND lower speed limits may be MORE hazardous.

Scootin159

I am a strong supporter that speed limits cause more accidents than they prevent. I'm a strong proponent of posting "reccomended speed ranges", i.e. "typical crusing speed", yet not persecuting those who break posted speeds (unless said speeding is reckless). Basically let people spend more time watching the road & driving to the 'feel' of traffic than watching their speedometer and worrying about cops.

A good example of this is downtown Rochester. Don't know how many of you are familiar with the setup, but a major interstate (rt 490) gets heavy traffic during the day, and has a normal speed limit of 55 through the city, and a typical rush hour pace of ~70mph. There is one short section though where the speed limit drops to 40mph through the city. Typically traffic maintains the ~70mph cruising speed & everything is fine. Every so often I've seen incidents where someone (often a School bus or other 'official' vehicle) will try to slow down for the speed limit, and essentially backs up traffic for MILES as traffic tries to get around this single car. As all this lane changing is going on trying to get around this single individual, worrying more about the speed limit than traffic flow, there is a LOT of chances of incidents (and often causes a lot of fender-benders).

Ron_H

Scootin:

Thank you for your succint translation of the points covered.

Re: your second post, I know a German guy who states that there are not such traffic jams in Germany because of 2 practices there. No speed limits on the autobahns mean traffic finds its own pace and disperses rapidly if it becomes congested, and if someone passes on the right, and a cop sees it he will pull the guy over and can and will jerk his license on the spot. No left lane hogs are tolerated.

Peckster:

What would you like to know?

Scootin159

GREAT! That's exactly how it should be! You have no idea how annoyed I get with those two issues:

1) people crusing in the left lane with an empty right lane.
2) people passing on the right.

I've been known to call in people every time I see them do that if I happen to have my cell phone handy, and a passenger to use it for me.