I don't know how it is in the rest of the world but where I live if you head into town between 7:00 am and 9:00 am on the way to work EVERYBODY goes 70 kmh per hr and it's a 50 zone. It's 3 lanes each way with a big wide boulevard between. Quite safe actually. A lot of times you're safer going at a speed that's comfortable to you because you attention is all on your driving. Start going slower (ie: the speed limit) and your mind wanders onto other things and you can become distracted. Sometimes I wonder if the theory of speed limits isn't that everybody can be driving along in a semi distracted state and when all of a sudden they realize they're out of focus and getting sloppy it doesn't matter because everyone else is usually going too slow to cause a problem.
I live 3 blocks from an elementary school and one evening I left home and came upon an accident scene. A 13 yr. old girl was unconscious on the road, she'd been struck at the crosswalk. There was a special event on and it was dark. I read later that she died and every time I go by there ( several time a day 8 years later) I think of her. One morning I was approaching the crosswalk and from 100 yards away I saw some adults at the crosswalk. I kept scanning the school parking lot, the entrance and exit to it, the crosswalk ahead, the sidewalks, my mirrors etc and noticed the adults were seeming to be looking at me but they were still too far away to focus on so I kept scanning around. As I always think of the girl who died and her family I'm not siting back in my seat, I'm sitting up and just constantly scanning things. I eventually noticed the adults were police officers in rain gear so I looked at the speedo and I was going 25kmh in a 20kmh school zone so now I took my foot off the gas but I didn't want to stare at my speedo to make sure I was only going 20 kmh I wanted to keep scanning for kids. When I got really close I could see the female cop was pissed and wanted to stop me. The older male cop who'd locked eyes with me a few times now was not watching my truck going 25 kmh but was looking through my windshield watching what I was doing all the while since I'd come into view, put his arm on the female cop and they let me go by. I figure because he was experienced enough to see I was driving very attentively paying very close attention to everything that really mattered. I always knew that for the speed I was going I could stop fast enough for anything that might come into my path within my clear line of vision. Had I been sitting back in my seat lost in thought and gyrating to the music on the radio I would have gotten a ticket for sure. I think we've all been let off the hook once or twice by a good traffic cop who through his experience and observations realized that although we may have been going over the limit we were still driving quite safely.
It's a fine line and it's easy to cross.
I live 3 blocks from an elementary school and one evening I left home and came upon an accident scene. A 13 yr. old girl was unconscious on the road, she'd been struck at the crosswalk. There was a special event on and it was dark. I read later that she died and every time I go by there ( several time a day 8 years later) I think of her. One morning I was approaching the crosswalk and from 100 yards away I saw some adults at the crosswalk. I kept scanning the school parking lot, the entrance and exit to it, the crosswalk ahead, the sidewalks, my mirrors etc and noticed the adults were seeming to be looking at me but they were still too far away to focus on so I kept scanning around. As I always think of the girl who died and her family I'm not siting back in my seat, I'm sitting up and just constantly scanning things. I eventually noticed the adults were police officers in rain gear so I looked at the speedo and I was going 25kmh in a 20kmh school zone so now I took my foot off the gas but I didn't want to stare at my speedo to make sure I was only going 20 kmh I wanted to keep scanning for kids. When I got really close I could see the female cop was pissed and wanted to stop me. The older male cop who'd locked eyes with me a few times now was not watching my truck going 25 kmh but was looking through my windshield watching what I was doing all the while since I'd come into view, put his arm on the female cop and they let me go by. I figure because he was experienced enough to see I was driving very attentively paying very close attention to everything that really mattered. I always knew that for the speed I was going I could stop fast enough for anything that might come into my path within my clear line of vision. Had I been sitting back in my seat lost in thought and gyrating to the music on the radio I would have gotten a ticket for sure. I think we've all been let off the hook once or twice by a good traffic cop who through his experience and observations realized that although we may have been going over the limit we were still driving quite safely.
It's a fine line and it's easy to cross.
