🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <charles.day-0304970912480001@cday.gsfc.nasa.gov>, charles.day@gsfc.nasa.gov (Charles Day) says:
>
>In article <5hsb4v$7l8@boursy.news.erols.com>, Jim Titus
><jtitus.REMOVE.THIS.OBVIOUS.SPAMBLOCK@erols.com> wrote:
>
>> People are ticketed for speeding, they are not ticketed for 
>> any of the other problems we discuss. 

 If they're not even bothering to 
>ticket speeders, will they enforce good lane behaviour?
>

Ah, how to explain this?  Let me try.

Lane discipline is courtesy, and courtesy begets courtesy. Only an oaf,
a boor, a vigilante, a legaliste, a psychopath, an uninformed, untravelled
know-nothing triumphalist will refuse to yield to others when all yield to him.
But such people are few...For the rest,  lane discipline creates a
virtuous and ever widening circle of voluntary compliance. Drive in most
parts of Western Europe and see for yourself.

The other problem is of course the local cultural trait of spoiling a good idea
by taking it to excess ("more is better"). So if a speed limit is good, treating
it as a limiting speed (like light, faster than which nothing can/must travel)
rather than a flexible guideline is better.

And, If some speed differentials are bad, then no speed differentials are better.
So, the European risk of high speed differentials (slower car pulling into faster
traffic or faster car trying to merge into slower lane) is replaced by the US
risk of no speed differentials (several minutes and a mile to pass another 
car on an empty road as each grimly adheres to a limit, convinced of his
own superiority and virtue).

If low speeds are safe, lower are safer. So spend $5m of taxes to build a lane
mile of inherently high speed superhighway, and then underpost it. Then spend
more to enforce the limit, create bizarre driving habits unrecognisable in other
advanced motoring countries and conflicts between every driver. All on empty
roads!

Personal views, of course.

Nitin Kibe.