bombus wrote:
There's a difference between cruising safely and cruising comfortably IMHO. mpaton2004, just to confirm, are you saying that you believe that most drivers could never cruise comfortably at 100mph, even when conditions were perfect and nothing was otherwise going wrong, and leaving aside potential safety issues if something was to go wrong (e.g. stopping distances, blowouts etc)? Do you believe that they simply don't have the skill to handle a vehicle properly at 100mph on a good, empty motorway?
Since he never bothered to answer ... I'll volunteer!
The average American driver lacks the skill to cruise at 100MpH in any manner. I find this disgraceful.
There are a number of causes - ever encroaching nanny culture, the fact that the term 'driver education' is probably the best example of an American oxymoron, road design that is increasingly infected by traffic calming ... if I spend more time thinking about the causes, I'll get very upset.
Some other things unnerve me about the average American driver (when it comes to driving well, we're a bunch of American'ts):
1) does not wish to possess this level of skill, even it it were for free, yet is willing to spend several thousand dollars on safety features and technologies in an attempt to make up for his lack of skill
2) does not wish others to possess this skill either - whatever the real motive for this urge, it is hidden by a) saying things like 'imagine the carnage if such an accident happened at such a speed', 'who wants / needs to drive that fast', 'teaching people to drive that well is, in itself, dangerous', and other such tripe ... and b) designing traffic enforcement with a tendency to punish those who excercise their abilities over those who behave as the rest of the herd
3) an increasing number prefer being able to multitask while driving (feel free to lay much of the blame on the torque converter / automatic transmission)
To provide a piece of counterpoint, the ability to drive well at speeds above 65MpH becomes easier to find the further one gets from a major city, which highlights corollaries regarding driving speeds, population densities, and traffic densities.