Dependable Erection

Monday, April 30, 2007

Speaking of speeders

The N&O is working on a piece on speeding in the Triangle. The focus would appear to be on how speeding tickets are actually prosecuted by the state. It's hard to tell from the limited context whether they're going to be looking for regional variations, effects of racial profiling, number of speeding tickets that are bargained down to non-points violations, etc.

The comments sure are interesting, though, and many seem to reinforce my theory that drivers believe that being behind the wheel and having the need to be in other places than wwhere they currently are, somehow gives them a privilege to ignore the surrounding world. Changing that culture is, in my mind, key to fundamentally altering our automobile-centric environment.

In many more than the obvious ways.

1 Comments:

  • Thanks for the link. I left a message speaking of how I returned from from a wedding in Virgina yesterday and managed to get 47 mpg on the 320 mile trip home. Having a hybrid helped, but I got much better mileage than usual, because I made a point of never exceeding 64 MPH unless I had to pass someone. I suspect that had I averaged 70-75 MPH, my mileage would've been 40-42 mpg. My point was that you can be driving a total gas guzzler and still save fuel by slowing down. I estimated that the ratio of cars that passed me to cars that I passed was about 10:1.

    I know one of your big concerns is speeding around neighborhoods; me, too. But I hope they look at both safety and environment/fuel consumption in their piece.

    By Blogger toastie, at 3:11 PM  

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