I covered this topic in April but I'm going to post on it again.
One of my greatest pet peeves whilst driving is slow drivers. That doesn't mean I like to speed, it means I like to make progress as traffic allows, and sometimes, traffic is idiots. If I were in law enforcement, I'd make sure that speed limits weren't "limits" but indicated the speed you're supposed to drive. How many times have you been stuck behind someone who's doing 17mph or 18mph in a 30 zone? Or in England, stuck behind someone doing 39mph on a single-lane A road? (60mph)? I'll tell you why they're doing it - for two reasons, both of which are wrong.
Firstly, they think it's safe and it patently isn't. Traffic in crossing streets will be expecting them to be doing the limit or close to it - not half of it - and that results in errors of judgement about closing speed and distance, and that leads to accidents. In addition, when people like me and everyone else get behind someone like this, we become impatient, which makes us prone to doing stupid things in order to get past and - you know - drive at the speed limit and make some progress. The worst case I've seen of this was driving up to the skiing resorts last winter when one of the uphill drivers was going so slowly that even the ski busses were overtaking him, in snow, going uphill, crossing double yellow lines to do it.
Secondly, they think it somehow saves them money. It doesn't. Modern cars are designed to be fuel efficient at two key speeds - around 30mph and around 57mph. If you're going too slow or too quick, you'll be either labouring the engine or pushing more air out of the way, both of which cost you gas mileage.
So to the police - instead of going after the easy prey and ticketing people for speeding (which by the way isn't dangerous and doesn't cause anything like the number of accidents you claim), why don't you address the more hazardous problem of people driving too slowly?
Happy independence day to my friends here in the colonies :)
