BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

New 140K Mercedes had a 'faulty' speedometer? Riiiiight.

new $218,528.73 mercedes according to the latest exchange rates.

I really like their system for calculating the fines, and the fact that it's a daily payment, so each day, he'd have to think about how he broke the law. a more effective "sit in the corner and think about what you've done"

I love how they disguise their speed cameras as giant blocks of cheese on the median. As though there were non-camera enclosing giant blocks of cheese on the median normally. That and also what RF said

@cburch New 140K Mercedes had a 'faulty' speedometer? Riiiiight.

And he doesn't notice that the landscape was travelling past at almost 300 ft/sec?

As cburch says, Riiiiight.

This is the same as going 87 on Bigelow (2.5x35)

or the early stretch of 28.

The city could make money on a new jerk tax.

i think they would call it the Jag Tax

"We have no record of anyone being caught traveling faster in the country,"

Dangerous? - yes

Bragging rights? - absolutely

In Switzerland, speeding fines are calculated using a formula that takes into consideration on the income of the motorist and the severity of the speed.

Now there's an idea. But of course we couldn't possibly do that here. It makes too much sense.

I'd be happy if we could just get speeding cameras in place. British Columbia put up a wholly automated system - camera snaps the shot, goes to a computer, plate gets figured out, ticket processed and printed, registered owner gets a ticket in the mail. First guy to get a ticket was the house representative that authored the bill putting the system in place (he was a really good sport about it).

In South Korea they put cameras up on curves or places with high accident rates, then *mark the pavement* where you could get caught if you're speeding. They make it super easy - just go the speed limit over the painted arrows, and nobody gets ticketed. Of course the signs are in Korean...

We could disguise ours as terrible towels, heinze pickles, pierogies, parrots, and other Pittsburghese tchotchkies. Or be artsy and disguise them as sculptures. There's any manner of interesting public works opportunities.

Why don't we have these? The technology is old. The need is there. The revenue is valuable. What's missing?

Speeding cameras are highly inaccurate--they are the last thing I'd want to deal with. Looking at precedents in other states, they are also fairly easy to fight.

Further more, 186mph is nothing. During the Gumball Rally a few years ago, a guy in a Koenigsegg CCX was caught doing over 240mph in a 75. Smokey Nagata, who founded a large Japanese tning company called Top Secret was pulled over doing over 200mph in the UkK.

Although these speeds are RIDICULOUS, I would rather see law enforcement focus on people rolling stop signs, stopping at the end of highway on ramps and not using turn signals, than speeders (at least on highways).

For you non gear heads, the vehicle in question:

The holder of the worlds faster speeding infraction:

And if that Mercedes looks familiar, the design took cues from the famous 300SL:

Mmmm 300SL.

Koenigsegg is cool, several of their top speed production cars run on bio diesel.

I am not a fan of catching speeders for sake of breaking speed laws. Speeding itself is not inherently dangerous, driving dangerously is: cutting people off, unsafe lane changes, unsignaled turns, not yielding to pedestrians, tailgating, "tapping" cyclists, etc. None of that requires exceeding the speed limit.

Even at that, it's very relative. Driving a steady 25 the length of S. Craig St. is probably far more dangerous than, say, 75 on any interstate highway, maybe even 85.

Back to what I said in an earlier post, so long as you are not passing any other vehicle more than 15 mph faster than they are traveling, there shouldn't be a problem. Driving 185, OTOH, does seem a tad extreme.

Speeding lowers the amount of time you have to react. Limits should be set to permit sufficient reaction time to foreseeable hazards. Naturally, some people will need more time, some less, to avoid that child chasing a ball or the car ahead with a blowout. So traffic engineers pick a limit that should be good enough, even for the driver with the slowest reflexes.

People with faster reflexes could safely drive over the speed limit under some circumstances. But the people who think they've got excellent reflexes and can safely speed are often wrong. And having different speeds for different drivers has obvious problems. So we get limits are appropriate collectively, not always individually.

On cameras:

Certainly some speed camera systems will mess up sometimes. But that's no reason to avoid the technology entirely. Just make sure the system is designed so its occasional errors can be corrected. For instance, position a camera to take a pair of timestamped photos and send them to each speeder. It should be easy enough for him to look at the times, measure the distance the vehicle has traveled between the photos, and figure the speed from that, and that's pretty definitive. But an automated system relying entirely on the accuracy of one radar gun is probably insufficiently reliable.

Speed limits are also an indication of the capacity of the road. For every 10mph a vehicle is traveling, a 10ft distance in front of it is required to stop. So for a speed limit of 70mph, you're expected to require 70ft to stop. The bigger the road, the higher the number, which allows you to follow up on that reaction time Steven mentioned.

A block of cheese in swizzyland... my vote is for a set of shoulder pads, a #43 jersey and a tuft of polamalu hair for a well crafted speed camera disguise.

The outlying cameras should get kevin greene hair and #91 jersey.

The faster you go, the less of a chance there is of getting into an accident. For instance, if you drive 50mph on the highway, to travel 50 miles takes an hour. If you go 100mph, well you're halving the chance of being in an accident. This is why airplane travel is so much more safe than travel by automobile: airplanes go much faster than cars do ....

Darn difficult to hit a bicycle with an airplane...

Jason- next time you are walking slowly on a really crowded sidewalk, count the number of collisions you have for a minute. Then run the same stretch as fast as you can for a minute and count collisions.

@robjdlc For you non gear heads, the vehicle in question:

You know, if my bike were a car, it would look just like that.

@stu Even at that, it's very relative. Driving a steady 25 the length of S. Craig St. is probably far more dangerous than, say, 75 on any interstate highway, maybe even 85.

Partly depends on how you define "danger"

-Risk of an accident? You are certainly right. Very few fender benders on interstates.

-Risk of the driver dying? Craig street is likely safer.

Truck drivers make a huge thing about how their rate of accidents per million miles is lower than for cars. Alas! The pattern doesn't hold for FATAL accidents.