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Comment by huytersd | Hacker News Reader

45mph? Are you kidding me? So they can jam up all freeways?

I don't know why you're being downvoted. Hell, the freeways in the Bay Area are already clogged up by morons like the ones going 55 mph in the express lane (which baffles me, as you have to pay, a lot during rush hour, to use the lane) while people try to pass them on the right. I'm amazed when I get to go the posted speed limit on the 101 between the peninsula and the city.

Is this common? I've never seen anyone going 55 in the express lane in the 15 years I've been here. What freeway is this on? I feel like people get tailgated for going the limit in the fast lane, so 10 under would really stand out.

I see it (and worse) every day on the southbound 101 between the airport/Millbrae and 3rd ave exits, and on the northbound side between the 92 bridge onramp all the way up to the airport. They do get tailgated. They just don't care.

There are a lot of people who drive every day, yet go on the freeway less than once per month.

In which country?

The US?

I didn't even drive until I was 27. I'm in my 40s now, and have friends my age who still don't drive.

While the car reigns supreme in most of the US, there are still parts where it's possible to get away without one.

The US, if you are in literally any part other than right next to a freeway that you have to use to get to work because it's too far.

Literally all of them.

Do you really think that nobody works where they live? Who do you think works at all of the local shops in your town? Everybody drives in from a different city to staff your town while everyone who lives there drives out to staff another city?

I live in one of the top metro areas in the US. My commute to work is 15 minutes at 25-45MPH through residential areas.

You just don't take it on the freeway, you use regular streets. I assume that's the point of having a 45 moh max, so you can go the speed limit on the vast majority of urban streets you would be traverse.

realistically, a 1000 lb vehicle that only goes 45 mph vehicle should _never_ be on the freeway in the first place. someone watching Netflix while half asleep in their cybertruck will murder them.

maybe this light-weight category isn't allowed on freeways? I think that would be a perfectly reasonable compromise.

I mean if freeways adjust to have minimum speeds of e.g 55mph instead of the current 45 (and even that's only in some states), it would solve this by constraining such a car to cities and backroads.

In my state it's illegal to drive any vehicle on a highway where it can't exceed the speed limit by 5 mph.

I assume there's some exception (probably involving the orange slow vehicle warning triangles) for things like tractors.

You can’t really get anywhere in most of America if you stick to the backroads.

80% of the US lives in urban areas, in urban areas you can practically by definition.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/urban-ru...

Urban areas in the US by definition means not just the downtown but all the surrounding suburbs and rural buffers. You definitely need the freeway to get downtown in most cases.

I could totally do this in Seattle. Heck, most of the time my routing software avoids the freeway anyways, in favor of 25-40 mph roads. It’s a sore point though: we just have a couple of north south freeways and one east west one. Well, it’s better than nearby Vancouver BC at least.

Dude, you absolutely don't. There are plenty of places in the US where you can take public transit, walk, and bike to get everywhere that you need to.

Just because you live in a miserable, car-bound, suburban hellscape doesn't mean that everyone else has to.

What? I think I might be defining back roads differently than you are.

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