Minor things that bother you

[J N Winkler]

g = GM/r²

[kirbykart]

A road-related one in my immediate area:

A minor thing that bothers me is that the Township of Napoli (pronounced nuh-POLE-eye because us New Yorkers know how to pronounce an Italian word better than Italians) has put a 45 mph speed limit on all rural roads, when all the surrounding townships have the default 55. Napoli is completely rural, having zero incorporated communities, and if you stretch it you could say it has one unincorporated community. So I really don't understand why they did this, and I hate it.

[MultiMillionMiler]

Try Long Island. Both major straight and flat highways have 55 mph speed limits, despite the state allowing for 65 mph. Traffic is always going 75-80 mph and today I was on Sunrise Expressway cruising at 75 mph at night, and a state police car just eased by me going at least 80 without lights on. Even the cops think it's ridiculous. The joke is that the minimum speed is like 40-45 (with the 55 speed limit) and construction zones drop it to 45. So there is a stretch that recently had a minimum speed 40 sign with a work zone 45 sign, within a few hundred feet LOL

[Bruce]

Sounds like quite a few roads need to be reengineered for safer speeds. Changing limits does nothing if the road still makes it that easy to speed.

[formulanone]

Try Long Island. Both major straight and flat highways have 55 mph speed limits, despite the state allowing for 65 mph. Traffic is always going 75-80 mph and today I was on Sunrise Expressway cruising at 75 mph at night, and a state police car just eased by me going at least 80 without lights on. Even the cops think it's ridiculous. The joke is that the minimum speed is like 40-45 (with the 55 speed limit) and construction zones drop it to 45. So there is a stretch that recently had a minimum speed 40 sign with a work zone 45 sign, within a few hundred feet LOL

I get the idea that traffic engineers suggested 55 for the complications all the way to Van Wyck and then someone tuned out suggestions for the remaining stretch to Riverhead.

Maintaining 55 on I-495 from Riverhead to Jericho was a challenge I couldn't accept. Luckily, only two vehicles were trying it.

[MultiMillionMiler]

Sounds like quite a few roads need to be reengineered for safer speeds. Changing limits does nothing if the road still makes it that easy to speed.

What would the point of that be? Are you saying deliberately downgrade the road so cars go slower? If the road can safely handle those speeds then the limit should be raised, not the other way around?

[MultiMillionMiler]

Try Long Island. Both major straight and flat highways have 55 mph speed limits, despite the state allowing for 65 mph. Traffic is always going 75-80 mph and today I was on Sunrise Expressway cruising at 75 mph at night, and a state police car just eased by me going at least 80 without lights on. Even the cops think it's ridiculous. The joke is that the minimum speed is like 40-45 (with the 55 speed limit) and construction zones drop it to 45. So there is a stretch that recently had a minimum speed 40 sign with a work zone 45 sign, within a few hundred feet LOL

I get the idea that traffic engineers suggested 55 for the complications all the way to Van Wyck and then someone tuned out suggestions for the remaining stretch to Riverhead.

Maintaining 55 on I-495 from Riverhead to Jericho was a challenge I couldn't accept. Luckily, only two vehicles were trying it.

Sunrise Hwy
https://maps.app.goo.gl/36cJuPNXp8AHwEU19

Yeah, imagine saying this road can't handle 65 or 75. Long Island speed limits are professional troll job. And the traffic levels googlemaps is displaying here aren't even accurate. They are hardly ever that high.

[kphoger]

Awkward possessive grammatical constructions.

Here's an example:

Our church has a few small groups (small-ish groups that regularly meet together in homes for a study, discussion, games, dinner, whatever).  I'm a teacher in one of those small groups.  In our group, there's a guy who has two sons part-time on the weekends, plus another son he recently and unexpectedly got full custody of (I think).  Yesterday, he invited me and my boys over to his apartment.  The six kids played on the Xbox, while he and I talked about all sorts of stuff and played a couple rounds of Uno.  To sum up the events, I could say...

We went over to the apartment of one of the members of one of our church's small groups.

But that's obviously not the most natural-sounding sentence.  So instead, maybe...

We went over to one of our church's small group's member's apartment.

That makes it sound like our church only has one small group, which isn't true.  There's not a great solution that takes into account all of the nuances–especially not one that is verbally clear (consider that 's sounds just like s' when spoken).

[GaryV]

A recent minor annoyance, in some threads on this site, I don't get a slider bar on the right side of the screen. I have to manually scroll up or down. Only some threads. Huh.

[CoreySamson]

Sounds like quite a few roads need to be reengineered for safer speeds. Changing limits does nothing if the road still makes it that easy to speed.

What would the point of that be? Are you saying deliberately downgrade the road so cars go slower? If the road can safely handle those speeds then the limit should be raised, not the other way around?

I think deliberately downgrading the road is one of the only effective ways to lower a speed limit and have it be obeyed properly. IMO, every road has an "ideal speed," i.e, a speed that drivers on that road gravitate toward going. In your example, MMM, the "ideal speed" might be 70 mph, which would be an accurate 85th percentile speed for that highway you're describing. Drivers automatically assume certain road conditions (say, wide straight lanes) to be indicative of a certain speed that they feel comfortable going. The only ways to make them want to go slower is to either make enforcement of the limit extremely harsh or to make the road feel less comfortable to go that fast on, which means downgrading it. In general, it seems that if the speed limit decreases on a road but the conditions of the road don't change, then drivers will completely ignore it.

Case in point:

Last year I was driving I-45 between Houston and Dallas. This section of I-45, based on my observations, seems to have an ideal speed somewhere between 70 and 75 mph. About halfway in between the two cities, I came across a construction zone, which had an associated speed limit decrease from 75 to 60. So I put the cruise on 60 (my personal driving style is to go as fast as the speed limit will let me, because I know the day I decide to start speeding will be the day I get a ticket with my luck), and drove, expecting some kind of lane drop or something like that. But no such work ever appeared, just a lot of cones in the median (perhaps preparing for future work). The kicker here is that the conditions of the road never changed, and all of a sudden I was getting passed by the cars that I had passed earlier, even the drivers that were going much slower than me. Since the "ideal speed" of the road did not change, the drivers did not change their speed, even though the limit decreased massively. As such, I think downgrading a road in order to maintain a lower limit is perfectly fine, since it is the only way drivers will notice and lower their speed.

TL;DR:
- Every road has an "ideal speed" that drivers feel comfortable going, regardless of the posted limit. As such, the only way to change an "ideal speed" is to change the road conditions in some way.

[MultiMillionMiler]

But doesn't all that say that the speed limit shouldn't have been dropped to begin with? You're saying worsen the road conditions so the lower limit makes more sense, but why not just keep the limit as it is in the first place? The fact of the matter is a road would less safe with worsened conditions. If all the drivers are feeling comfortable with 75, that probably means the road can handle 75. Doesn't it make more sense to have a higher speed limit on a higher quality road, than a lower quality road with a lower limit?

[CoreySamson]

But doesn't all that say that the speed limit shouldn't have been dropped to begin with? You're saying worsen the road conditions so the lower limit makes more sense, but why not just keep the limit as it is in the first place? The fact of the matter is a road would less safe with worsened conditions. If all the drivers are feeling comfortable with 75, that probably means the road can handle 75. Doesn't it make more sense to have a higher speed limit on a higher quality road, than a lower quality road with a lower limit?

Well, yes. I believe that the speed limit should generally match the quality of the road. After all, if there is a massive discrepancy between the limit and the actual speed being traveled by drivers, then the speed difference between the speeders and rule-followers becomes dangerous. With a higher limit, the rule-followers who would like to go faster (like me) more generally match the speed of those who are going the "ideal speed," making the road safer. So you are right that changing the ideal speed to be arbitrarily low would not be the best solution if all the drivers are going a safe, faster speed. I'm not proposing that we change road conditions to be bad and substandard just so we can lower speed limits. I'm just pointing out that if a speed limit were to be changed, the most effective way to enforce that change is to change the road conditions to match.

[JoePCool14]

But how would that be done? It would also make it even more dangerous for people who don't base their travel speeds on road conditions. Whereas someone going 80 on a 70 mph designed road may result in nothing happening. If the road was somehow downgraded for 60 mph, now 80 mph would be much more dangerous.

Narrower lanes and tighter corners. Create more conflict (parking, intersections, crosswalks - obviously, this doesn't really apply to freeways). Not every lane is created equal. If towns want to have a road with a lower speed limit, they should engineer the road with a design speed of 30 or 35, not 45 or 50. It's bad design to over-design a road in terms of design speed, in my opinion.

[CoreySamson]

But how would that be done? It would also make it even more dangerous for people who don't base their travel speeds on road conditions. Whereas someone going 80 on a 70 mph designed road may result in nothing happening. If the road was somehow downgraded for 60 mph, now 80 mph would be much more dangerous.

If a road were all of a sudden downgraded to 60 mph with no other changes, yeah, that would be dangerous because no one going the "ideal speed" would obey it at all. But say, if the lanes were narrowed or the shoulders removed, then drivers going 80 mph in that scenario would likely lose some of the comfort that they would've had with wider lanes and shoulders, and would likely go at least a little slower as a result. I realize no measure can really be taken to stop chronic speeders from going way over the limit regardless of road conditions, but they make up a tiny percentage of overall drivers.

[MultiMillionMiler]

But all that would just make driving in general more dangerous, which is the exact opposite of the prupose of speed limits. If speeding is dangerous, why make a road more conducive to crashes such as by deliberately making it curvy or making the lanes narrower? Isn't that logic a little like "let's swerve into the left lane at 40 mph to cut off a 70 mph driver to show how dangerous it is" when in fact you would be the danger in that case. I understand not creating a wide road in the first place if the speed limit is planned to be low, but to downgrade an existing wide road so it matches an artificially low speed limit is self-contradictory and lessens safety. Shoulders should be wide so there's room between stopped vehicles and moving ones, regardless of speed. Same for lanes. Basic road qualities are common sense for all aspects of driving, those shouldn't be lowered just for the sake if psychologically manipulating drivers into going certain speeds. One flawed reasoning behind very low limits for example is that if they raised them, then drivers would go even faster, which is flawed for 2 reasons:

1. People don't only go 5-10 over when the speed limit is low. In Long Island, people go way over 55 (75-85). Where the speed limit is 65, like upstate, people only go 75-80. The lower the limit, the further people go over it.

2. If the speed limit were raised to say 65, and people still went 75, long island roads are meant to handle 75, so 65 is still reasonable in that respect.

[hotdogPi]

I'm actually with MMM here. If it's safe to go 80, raise the speed limit to 75 instead of lowering the design standard to match the speed limit.

If towns want to have a road with a lower speed limit,

then they should not get their way. Doing so interrupts the overall traffic flow of the entire network and creates more congestion.

[CoreySamson]

I'm with you guys too. If a limit can safely raised, then by all means it should be raised.

[MultiMillionMiler]

I'm actually with MMM here. If it's safe to go 80, raise the speed limit to 75 instead of lowering the design standard to match the speed limit.

If towns want to have a road with a lower speed limit,

then they should not get their way. Doing so interrupts the overall traffic flow of the entire network and creates more congestion.

Exactly. If a road in a town happens to designed to handle 50, it doesn't have to be 30 just because the towns default limit is 30. NYC has a similar thing where no limit can be over 50 within city confines. They should be based on the road.

[Big John]

Speed limits should be based on the 85th percentile speed.

[MultiMillionMiler]

Even the 85th percentile though is inaccurate because that would be based on how traffic is flowing on a road with a speed limit in place. They would have to remove a speed limit for a day, measure traffic flow that way to get the 85. Not sure why 85 is better than 80 or 90.

[formulanone]

Awkward possessive grammatical constructions.

Here's an example:

Our church has a few small groups (small-ish groups that regularly meet together in homes for a study, discussion, games, dinner, whatever).  I'm a teacher in one of those small groups.  In our group, there's a guy who has two sons part-time on the weekends, plus another son he recently and unexpectedly got full custody of (I think).  Yesterday, he invited me and my boys over to his apartment.  The six kids played on the Xbox, while he and I talked about all sorts of stuff and played a couple rounds of Uno.  To sum up the events, I could say...

We went over to the apartment of one of the members of one of our church's small groups.

But that's obviously not the most natural-sounding sentence.  So instead, maybe...

We went over to one of our church's small group's member's apartment.

That makes it sound like our church only has one small group, which isn't true.  There's not a great solution that takes into account all of the nuances–especially not one that is verbally clear (consider that 's sounds just like s' when spoken).

I'm not the best at grammar, but I think the rule of thumb is to avoid more than one possessive in a sentence, and reword it so that the most naturally-sounding part is the only apostrophe-S in use.

I would just leave out the "small group" part because it's over-classifying; saying it's a fellow church member is probably enough? If such precision is needed, and the group is indeed small enough, you could then just mention to whom the apartment belongs to...but that depends on the context.

Warning: I also have a habit of being either too blunt or unnecessarily wordy.

[J N Winkler]

Strunk and White often speak of overprecision.  In context, is it necessary to specify that the individual visited is a member of a small group?  If not, then "visited a fellow church member's apartment" tends to scan better.

[kphoger]

Strunk and White often speak of overprecision.  In context, is it necessary to specify that the individual visited is a member of a small group?  If not, then "visited a fellow church member's apartment" tends to scan better.

Of course.  But what if I really want to convey that much specificity?  For example, if my wife were telling her mother about it–who lives out of town, but already knows quite a bit about our small group from previous conversations, yet doesn't know anything about this particular member.  Just saying "fellow church member" wouldn't let her know that it's someone we already know well from small group, and that's a bit of information she might want to include in the conversation.

Simply leaving information out isn't my idea of a good solution.

[Scott5114]

In my experience, if you're having trouble finding a way to make a sentence not sound awkward, you're probably cramming too much information into one sentence. ("Yeah, right, Scott of all people is here saying you should use shorter sentences," everyone familiar with my post history is thinking to themselves. I'm in this photo and I don't like it.) The right solution, then, is to break it into two (or more!) sentences.

We went over to Flossie's apartment. She's a member of one of our church's small groups.

[DenverBrian]

We went over to the apartment of one the small group members from our church.