Comments on: Go Slow to Go Fast

By: George

George — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 23:04:19 +0000

Tom refers to the rice in the funnel analogy in the artical. I would like to amend it. The faster the vehicle is traveling the longer the ‘grain of rice’ becomes because the average [sane] driver needs more open lane at higher speeds. Therefore the faster the average speed the less capacity the highway has available.

Optimizing throughput average speed by lowering speed limits makes sense. I can forsee the use of todays technogly to ‘look way down the road’ and slow the vehicle long before it speeds into the congestion.

Then the next step is to let a computer drive as we average humans are ill equipped to do so.

By: Opus the Poet

Opus the Poet — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 23:31:35 +0000

Your Slate article appeared in the back page of my local “paper of record” the Dallas Morning News this Sunday.

By: Robert

Robert — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 18:28:02 +0000

That’s all well and good until…..one of those speeding motor vehicles encounters me traveling 12 mph on my bicycle or my 3.2 mph while walking.

p.s. I’d try to do my part to close that speed differential but the 1/5 of a horsepower that I produce can only generate so much speed.

By: Richard Masoner

Richard Masoner — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 22:42:59 +0000

California Highway Patrol also runs pace cars on mountain highways during inclement weather.

By: Laurens de Jong

Laurens de Jong — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 15:52:45 +0000

I shared this with my former Dutch compatriates, who quickly pointed out that what the Colorado police was doing is called blokrijden over there. Apparently, it’s become routine practice, first in Belgium, but also in the Netherlands. Here’s a YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gzkwwT80OY. The blokrijden doesn’t happen until almost the end of the video, though.

By: Ed

Ed — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 22:29:12 +0000

I think that was the main reason Prof Washington found a safety benefit in a study of speed cameras on a highway here in Scottdale AZ, see “adot study on loop 101″
http://azbikelaw.org/blog/arizona-to-end-highway-photo-enforcement/
The legislature has since ended all photo enforcement on state highways.

p.s. AAHSTO, the S = State (not surface).

By: gpsman

gpsman — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 15:04:36 +0000

“…if we could only cull the weak gazelles in our furiously charging migration—we could stamp out congestion.”

This hints at my untestable theory of why so many otherwise reasonable people turn into complete assholes behind the wheel. They allow themselves to revert to our primordial instincts; slow = weak.