Posted on 12/04/2004 2:53:56 PM PST by SmithL
I guess that's why the manual says not to use cruise control in heavy traffic..which I don't. Therefore, as far as I'm concerned, there is no problem with my usage of cruise control.
I don't care what the manual says Brian. If CC is used at high speed on the open highway, your reaction/response time is extended and even more time critical, taking you a longer distance to react. Period, no debate.
Tire blowout, mechanical failure, deer running directly through your direction of travel, a vehicle pulling out of a dirt road you didn't see, and didn't know existed. Glad you asked.
How would cruise control slow down one's reaction time to either, given that they use a safe following distance and pay attention to signs indicating that on-ramps are coming up?
I think you have your answers.
Watching the submarine races?
Fine. I'm going to come right out and state that I don't think it matters in the situations where I use it. Reaction time isn't that important on a limited access highway with light traffic.
OOOOOK Brian.
"Tire blowout"
I use decent tires, keep them properly inflated, and replace them before they're worn out. That seems to have kept the incidence of tire blowout on my cars to zero.
"mechanical failure"
I'm well aware of the mechanical condition of my vehicles, and I keep them in good repair. That also seems to greatly reduce the incidence of mechanical failure.
"deer running directly through your direction of travel"
I'll give you this one, with the exception that most of the deer accidents I know of involved the deer running right into the side of the vehicle. The driver never saw the deer until it was in the side window.
"a vehicle pulling out of a dirt road you didn't see, and didn't know existed."
Limited access highways, by definition, do not have "dirt roads you didn't see and didn't know existed".
It simply isn't. You can keep throwing out statistically-unlikely scenarios in an attempt to prove your point.
The low accident rate of limited access highways tells a different story.
A legitimate point.
My favorite is idiots who come to a complete halt on an entrance ramp.
AAARRRGGGHHH.
I have a different perspective on speeding since a friend of mine was killed by a speeding semi three years ago this December 17 - here in Nashville.
I have recent story about my own encounter with speed. On November 23, I took my four year old son to Academy Sports, mainly to give my wife a little break. On the way home we had to stop at the merge from I-65 to I-440. The traffic was completely backed up, I was in the far right lane, I had no choice, but I always feel exposed when I stop like that on the interstate.
Sure enough I saw a car in my rear view mirror approaching me at a very high rate of speed. The joker must have been going 85 (this was at 6 pm on a week night). He got closer, and all I had time to do was grip the wheel and wonder if we would survive the collision. I did not even have time to pray.
At the last possible instant he found an opening in the other lane and swerved past us.
It took me about two hours to calm down.
My boy was almost murdered. Why? Because some a$$h@le wanted to speed through town.
Please think about the innocent lives you might take when you decide to speed.
Joe, I am not directing this at you personally, but I have seen too many dead bodies on the highway. You probably have as well. Arriving a minute or two earlier is not worth anyone's death.
Down by Opryworld the speed limit is whatever they think it is. Cops low on their quotas gravitate there for easy pickings (and I can't say I blame them).
Defensive driving is the rule for those in Middle Tennessee wanting to see their next birthday. I'm constantly amazed at the ignorance of physics and outright idiocy- people speeding through dense fog, weaving in front of trucks with little room to maneuver, tailgaiting at high speeds and, worst of all, not knowing what that little stick on the steering column is for.
I'm especially upset with the people who shouldn't be here at all- they're fond of plastering logos over their rear view and making up the rules as they drive (not to mention taking up parking spaces). Lucky for them the cops abhor dealing with them because of the extra paperwork and political flack. When the law has no choice but deal with them (post accident) it's usually at the detriment of some hapless citizen.
"Sure enough I saw a car in my rear view mirror approaching me at a very high rate of speed. The joker must have been going 85 (this was at 6 pm on a week night)."
It's gotten to the point where if I have to slow down and stop on the interstate, I turn the hazard flashers on till I know the person behind me is going to stop. In one case I left them on until we started moving at normal speeds again.
Around here on I95 it's pretty common to be passed by some lane-weaver going 90+ MPH. I always make a point to look at the tags of the vehicles doing it, Maryland and New York tags seem to be the most common.
In one case, I was in the middle lane, to be passed on the right by a New York driver in a Lincoln Navigator going what must have been 100MPH, only to find him two minutes later going 5MPH below the speed limit (60MPH) in the left lane.
I guess that one voted for Hillary!
"I can't drive 55....."
I have been on the Bahn between Frankfurt and Bern/Basel in an MB 560SEC at about 140 or so in the rain and had a Renault Twin-Turbo rally car come up behind me with lights flashing and blow by like I was standing still....and later a 959 blew by as well....late 80s.
Those were the days.
I got a 928S4 (Ruf) up to about 175-180 with my then preggers wife asleep beside me on the Bahn tween Munich and Stuttgart very early one morning....felt like she was gonna go airborne.
Driving in Germany is a blast.
Driving in Nashville with Nashville drivers and rock walls everywhere is more dangerous.
Yes, it was. No doubt about it.
Good for you brian. Glad to hear it.
I'm at about 1,600,000. About 1/3 of those miles were accumulated in 6 different countries.
Sammy Hagar told me (while encountering him at a Nashville establishment) that every time he's been to traffic court since that video he's always been let off (usually on the condition of providing autographs for the judge's family and friends). How cool is that? Once he realized he was pushing luck too far he improved his driving habits, though (I think) his song had almost as much influece toward raising the speed limits as the lady mentioned in the above post.
That's a very good idea.
I will add it to my defensive driving arsenal.
Its been several years since I've been to the beautiful state of Tennessee, but I have been to the state of West Virginia a lot lately. The national sport there is tailgating, no matter what speed the one being tail gated is traveling. The way to tick off a West Virginian is to pull over and let him go past. Another way is to move to the right lane on a four lane. I think its some law that saint Robert Ku Klux got passed or something that you have to tailgate.
Whenever the issue of speed limits arises, someone will always bring up the Autobahnen. It's not really a valid argument of several reasons.
One is that the United States is a much, much larger country. It isn't economically feasible to expect that the huge swaths of interstates the US must maintain could be kept in the proper repair for high speed driving. German "interstate" highways are VERY carefully maintained to a high level and were built to exacting standards and thick roadbed to begin with. There may be a few sections of the original 1930's still in use around Berlin, not sure on that.
Second, all cars and trucks must take and pass a yearly safety inspection that is, as one might imagine, VERY thorough and meticulous. Europeans have a reputation for precision and thoroughness in this sort of thing. Equipment wise, I found the brakes and tires to be superior - coming to a "panic stop" at 150 mph will make one appreciate the safety standards they enforce.
Finally, prospective motorists must take and pass a rigorous and expensive drivers training program Fahrschule -($1500 to $2000) which includes city driving, autobahn, night driving, etc. There is a decided responsibility placed on motorists to not impede the flow of traffic as well as not doing anything unsafe. Drivers are fined for running out of fuel - stalled cars on the sides of roadways are a definite hazard.
Basically our roads, cars, and drivers are in no shape at all for high speed driving.
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