The arbitrary speed limits are often because many city planners still use the 80th percentile rule. Basically, they do a traffic study, then set the limit at what 80% of people are comfortable driving at. So that means 20% will naturally feel like they can go faster. And as they reach the 99th percentile, they’ll feel like they can go much faster.
The issue with this 80th percentile thing is that it has very little grounding in traffic safety or reality; Many roads are needlessly wide and give drivers an unrealistic sense of safety. They’ll feel like they can go 40 or 50MPH, when it’s really a street that is cutting through a neighborhood and is frequented by children playing, bike riders, etc…
While i dont necessarily agree with you, it is not my point. I am not saying we should limit the speed according to local speed limit, just that there is no reason ever for an individual car to go above 150kmh (or whatever the highest allowed speed in a country+15% is)
Speed limits are set according to a number of factor from noise, local crash history, density of pedestrians, threshold of the safety equipments (such as rails) , willingness of the governing body to review it, etc
While some are not good, I would definetly argue that not all the reasons can be assessed from the driver perspective.
I agree that there’s rarely a good reason to speed. However, most speed limits are fairly arbitrary. Some are too fast, some are too slow.
The arbitrary speed limits are often because many city planners still use the 80th percentile rule. Basically, they do a traffic study, then set the limit at what 80% of people are comfortable driving at. So that means 20% will naturally feel like they can go faster. And as they reach the 99th percentile, they’ll feel like they can go much faster.
The issue with this 80th percentile thing is that it has very little grounding in traffic safety or reality; Many roads are needlessly wide and give drivers an unrealistic sense of safety. They’ll feel like they can go 40 or 50MPH, when it’s really a street that is cutting through a neighborhood and is frequented by children playing, bike riders, etc…
While i dont necessarily agree with you, it is not my point. I am not saying we should limit the speed according to local speed limit, just that there is no reason ever for an individual car to go above 150kmh (or whatever the highest allowed speed in a country+15% is)
Speed limits are set according to a number of factor from noise, local crash history, density of pedestrians, threshold of the safety equipments (such as rails) , willingness of the governing body to review it, etc While some are not good, I would definetly argue that not all the reasons can be assessed from the driver perspective.
And the individual driver is not the arbiter of that. Just because someone feels the speed limits are wrong doesn’t justify speeding