🚀 go-pugleaf

Mike McKimens wrote:
> 
> ...... Negatives - a generation of
> drivers that did not learn to drive comfortably/knowledgably at 70 mph, and a
> few new highways not designed to the old standards that people insist on
> driving FAR above their safe limit (case in point:  the Dallas North Tollway
> was extended through Plano toward Frisco - the lane widths and curve
> sharpness clearly deserve their 55 mph postings, but people are driving it at
> 70-75 anyway.)  

Perhaps the rest of the Tollway deserves it too.  I don't think even the
older portions of Tollway are/were speed-proof. I remember flipped 
mercs and other tragedies all the time on the lower half before the upper half
existed.  I think people speed(ed) then on it because there was
no enforcement whatsoever on the Tollway in those days.  After 2:00am it was
often deserted, and bad wrecks would sit on the fully-lit road for a half hour 
or more before someone saw it and called it in.  

> We are going to have to go back to THINKING about where, on
> what, and with whom we are driving - the 55 mph limit put us in a
> non-thinking stupor:  we quit considering the conditions in which we were
> driving.  55 was automatic - a posted 70 HAS to be tempered by weather and
> traffic conditions.  Phew.  Sorry about the rant & rave, but it felt good to
> get it out - maybe I should send this to CarTalk.
> 

Have you watched the obligatory high-school videos of car accidents
during driver's ed?  Nice "Mr. RELLIK", remember him? :-) Many made during 
the pre-55 era.  Our thought processes were probably the same, and the only 
reason the death toll was lower is cause fewer cars were on the road.

I am not really sure what your take is. 
Do you think kids should be trained in driver's ed to handle high speed?  
Do you think kids should be trained to drive the posted limits, even if
they have learners and hardships and so on with their limited experience,
youthful exhuberance, and so on?  

I still think about a really bad wreck that happened not far from 
my childhood home, where 4 teens met a concrete retainer at 40mph 
in a brand-new mustang just presented to the driver hours before.  
The driver was "unimpaired" by anything other than sheer excitement.  
Oh, they all died.  Sorry if that's really depressing.  At the other end I 
saw a 50+ year old man roll his sporty convertible in a ditch, and the blood
trickling down his face astonished me. Must have been some mid-life crisis
kind of thing. (He walked away.) Point is that drivers often don't "THINK", 
period, and some of our auto markets would be in trouble if they felt
that they needed to. The "non-thinking" stupor you talked about above
has been with us long before 55.

> Mike McKimens
> NOT representing my employer, but I think they would agree in this case.

p.s. if you have a computer and modem at home you wouldn't have to care 
about whether they agree or not, it's uplifting try it sometime