Date:         Wed, 13 Jul 94 09:41:29 CDT
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         Joel Walker <JWALKER@ua1vm.ua.edu>
Subject:      Re: high speeds

On Wed, 13 Jul 94 09:36:57 CDT William R. Kennedy, NJIT CIAT, 201-596-5648 said:
>Relatedly, does it seem to anyone else that East Coast speeds are rising, on
>average.  We went up to Saratoga and back this weekend, and the speed du jour
>seemed to be 78 or so.

well, it sure seems so in the southeast (IMFAO). over the last five years,
the 'average' speed between here and Birmingham has gone up at least 10mph
and between B'ham and Montgomery, it's gone up maybe 15-20mph (to nearly 80).
even locally, the 55 mph zone of I-59/20 that runs through town is up over
65 in NON-peak times.

so what's the deal? police budget cuts? not enough patrol cars? too much
time chasing drug dealers? or is everyone just getting so habitualized by
it?

whatever the cause, it's leading toward a real problem: speed differential.
if the old folks (like me) who are plodding along at speed limit (or lower!)
are running along in front of the Young and Restless (like you guys :)
then there's a real opportunity for a serious accident. as long as everyone
is moving at pretty much the same speed (maybe 5-10 mph differences), then
everything works pretty good, regardless of the numerical speed.

but when you put one or two slow-pokes (or one or two Cannonballers) into
the crowd, you can really mess things up.

sigh. the worse part is that i can feel myself becoming one of the slow-pokes.
joel