🚀 go-pugleaf

dco2393@NO_SPAMrit.edu (Dave) wrote:

>>trucks often can't manage more than 30 mph (in a 70 mph zone) up them.
>>Are they going to get tickets? No.  And they shouldn't; signs should
>>be posted warning people to expect slow moving trucks, just in case
>>anyone isn't thinking ahead, and that's that.  But a lot of people

>Oh of course trucks shouldn't be penalized.  That's not the issue.
>The issue is whether people (esp. older people) who drive on the
>highway should be penalized for driving excessively slow because they
>create a hazard.

Wait a sec.  You just said that the issue is whether people who drive
excessively slow, thus creating a hazard, should be penalized, then
you say trucks shouldn't.  How is a slow-moving truck less of a hazard
than a slow-moving passenger car?

As for 'older people', you could make a case that driving retests
should be required after a certain age.  However, you've surely seen
the other end of the spectrum--kids who drive entirely too fast and
recklessly.  I think I'd rather be endangered by slow-moving and
slow-reacting vehicles than fast-moving and panic-reacting ones.

>Of course, but is that what we're discussing here, or is that what
>we're discussing in 99.9% of the other threads in rec.autos.driving
>(One of the MANY groups that this is being crossposted to)

My point was one of priorities.  I hold the position that tailgaters
are a much bigger danger than slow-driving elderly people.

>But I think that excessively slow driving on the highway can be
>indicative of an inability to effectively operate a car.  Most of the
>time people who drive REALLY slow are older people who are probably
>making a lot of mistakes other than just driving slow.  I mean it's
>one thing for grandma to take the car out twice a week to go shopping
>and to church in her home town.  But it's another for people that are
>not  capable of reacting to emergency situations, or maintainting an
>acceptable velocity on the highway, or won't/can't turn their heads to
>see if it's safe to change lanes or turn onto a road, or drive 1/2 way
>into the lane going the other direction causing near misses with
>drivers who are driving in a very safe manner, driving on the highway.

There are a fair number of middle-aged and young people who can't
respond effectively to emergency situations, too.  I got broadsided by
a woman one time who, rather than take evasive action, took her hands
off the wheel, threw back her head and screamed.  I think older people
and slow drivers are being singled out here to an unfair degree.

>Usually excessively slow driving isn't the only thing that the person
>is doing wrong.  Like I said before, I have been cut off many times by
>older people who don't look before they change lanes.  These are the
>kind of people that fling open car doors without looking (I almost hit
>someone that did that once...and I was driving a very safe speed on a
>road that forms two lanes...luckily there was no one next to me).  But
>it's these older people that just don't pay attention to what's going
>on around them.  There should be driving tests every few years for
>older people...no question in my mind.  But a slow driving ticket
>would be a deterrant to people who aren't capable of handling highway
>driving from doing it anyway.

As said before, I think there are more pressing problems and better
solutions.
--
Jonathan K.