A couple days ago i was driving to work in the morning, getting on the interstate and a driver in the lane next to me started coming over into the lane I was driving in. No turn signal, no blindspot check, no attention paid to the flow of traffic in the lane the driver was moving into, just the front of my 95 Civic and the driver's side of their suv almost trying to occupy the same space. I noticed the suv creeping over the lane line & started slowing down immediately and then very abruptly got on my brakes to avoid the collision, and for the first time in longer than I can remember... I honked my horn. Not a little 1/4 second honk to say "HEY!" I pushed my little horn button on my steering wheel and held it for 5ish seconds letting the little almost cute beep sound that civic horns make ring out long enough to say "HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY!!!!!" and maybe "hey! dumbass! YOU ALMOST JUST RAN INTO ME!!!" I didn't extend a middle finger to the other driver or drive aggressively after this incident happened, i did look at the driver when i passed to give them the you-are-an-idiot-face and i just kept driving.
If i were on my bike, i would've been dead. Or would've yelled really loud and grabbed my brake levers as hard as i could and maybe avoided the collision. Of course on the bicycle I wouldn't have been traveling 60ish mph either, so this situation and the time to react to it would've been much different. Which brings me to something I'd like to rant about briefly:
Do faster speed limits really help traffic congestion problems?
I don't think fast speed limits are an answer to anything. While riding my bicycle at 15ish to 18ish miles per hour on the busier parts of Virginia Beach Blvd, i see the same cars for mile stretches of my commute. Because although they are traveling faster than I am on my bicycle, they are not getting further down the road faster than I am. Which is thought provoking to me! Why is this? I do get a little jump start here and there on a red light (yes, I'll admit it here and elsewhere, sometimes I'll blow through a light if i can clearly see that there are NO CARS COMING FROM ANY DIRECTION), and as i approach the back of a line of cars stopped at a red light I pass them on the right until I get to the front to wait or until they start moving and I safely tuck back into the line as it gets moving again. But I'm still not moving fast. So this tells me that maybe the faster speed limit isn't helping, all it's doing is allowing cars to accelerate to a faster speed before stopping at the next light. What's the point?!?!?! If you're moving faster, you can certainly get through the intersection faster, and you might make it through the intersection before the yellow light changes to red, but is this really helping the congestion? I'll completely remove the obvious problem that there are TOO MANY FUCKING PEOPLE in this world and TOO MANY PEOPLE DRIVING on the roads, and just focus on the current situation of moving the people that ARE traveling on the roads. So... what do we do? Lower speed limits. Make traffic lights respond to traffic sensors instead of timers (I've sat for minutes at red lights in downtown Norfolk TOO MANY TIMES AT 4AM WITH NO OTHER CARS IN SIGHT!!!) and plan traffic infrastructures with safety in mind, not just "How can we move the most cars beyond this point in the least amount of time?" I'm by no means, an engineer, but i do like to crunch numbers and some might say I think outside the box, but the current traffic systems don't seem to be working towards more safety, less fatalities, and more bicycles and pedestrians moving around in populated areas and shopping areas. It seems to me that if the traffic on Virginia Beach Blvd or Lynnhaven Rd or Rosemont Rd or were moving slower, there wouldn't be a need for as many traffic lights. Maybe replace a couple with stop signs as the slower traffic would be easier to merge into, and drivers would still get where they're going in the same amount of time with less accidents and less traffic fatalities because the slower your vehicle (car, van, motorcycle, HRT bus or BICYCLE) is traveling the more time you have to react to the everyday unpredictable happenings on the road ahead of you (like a cycler traveling in the lane you're traveling in, or a cop who has someone pulled over in the lane you're traveling in, or a car that died in the roadway). How many times have you been driving or riding a bike or on a bus or whatever and seen a traffic accident and then 100 feet further down the interstate or road, you see another one? How do you think THAT happened?!?!?! Someone was looking at the wreckage on the side of the road and didn't pay enough attention to the traffic and then didn't have enough time to react to the happenings on the road ahead and BAMMMM!!!!!!! ANOTHER ACCIDENT! I know the insurance companies love it, cause they can now raise your rates because there are more accidents in the zip code and/or city that your vehicle is garaged/parked in, but it sucks for everyone else on the road!!! My point is that no matter what's going on up ahead, you can always react to it better with more time, how do you create more time? YOU SLOW THE FUCK DOWN!!! I've had conversations about speed limits with quite a few friends and I've heard lots of different ideas, some people feel like i do, others think there shouldn't be ANY speed limits because the government shouldn't dictate to us how fast or how slow we can travel. I get it. I don't want the government telling me how to "live" either, but as human animals we live in "communities" usually referred to as "cities" or "counties" and on a larger scale "states" and "nation states" and for the common good of these communities, there needs to be some basic rules so people don't fuck things up for everyone else. And traffic rules are a very basic thing to keep order and maintain the common good of our "communities" on all of these levels. For bicycles to be able to travel safely on any road, there needs to be speed limits. For people to be able to safely walk anywhere in an area that cars are moving, there needs to be speed limits. For drivers to share the roads with other drivers safely, there needs to be speed limits. To make all of these methods of travel on our roads safer, they should be slower.
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