On most US highways (i.e. multi-lane limited access roads), it's customary to leave a path in the left 'passing lane' for any traffic that wants/needs to go faster than you. If cars match speeds across lanes, it impedes faster traffic.
The speed limit itself is a separate convention and regulation. In some places you can be cited for obstructing traffic by going the speed limit in the passing lane if you are matching the speed of cars to your right, effectively blocking the road.
> (b) An operator of a vehicle on a roadway moving more slowly than the normal speed of other vehicles at the time and place under the existing conditions shall drive in the right-hand lane available for vehicles, or as close as practicable to the
right-hand curb or edge of the roadway, unless the operator is:
> (1) passing another vehicle; or
> (2) preparing for a left turn at an intersection or into a private road or driveway.
Note this law specifically mentions "normal speed of other vehicles at the time and place" and doesn't directly mention speed limits. So by the text of this law, if you're driving the speed limit and hanging out in the left lane while the normal speed at that time is like 10 over you're technically breaking this law.
We have specific signage for highways where this is supposed to be the law.
Sometimes I an appreciate wanting to cruise in the middle lane, because ADAS level 2 systems common on cars today is far more comfortable when it does not have to deal with regular merging traffic. But aside from that, I really don't like it when people camp in the middle lane because they tend to form a pretty tight line and manage to effectively turn a three-lane highway into two single-lane highways -- hard to get through from one side to the other.
Sorry, I didn't fully explain the idiom: "centre lane" refers to the right-most (what in the US would be left-most) "fast" lane - the one closest to the centre of the highway as a whole.
To your point, I think the middle lane of a three-lane road is, ideally, the correct travel lane. Cruising there at the prevailing speed leaves one lane more lightly traveled for entering and exiting, and the other for passing. Predominantly using that lane minimizes lane changes, which are the most dangerous driving moments. You're right, though, that the strategy breaks down as traffic gets heavier, and gets ruined entirely when (as under discussion in this thread) people gum up the supposed "fast lane".
> If cars match speeds across lanes, it impedes faster traffic.
I think this undersells it a little. It does not just impede faster traffic, when the lanes are pacing each other it makes navigating harder -- simply switching lanes is more difficult. The highway moves so much more efficiently with a small but steady difference in speed between each lane.
> Results: A 5-mph increase in the maximum state speed limit was associated with an 8.5% increase in fatality rates on interstates/freeways and a 2.8% increase on other roads. In total during the 25-year study period, there were an estimated 36,760 more traffic fatalities than would have been expected if maximum speed limits had not increased—13,638 on interstates/freeways and 23,122 on other roads.
That doesn't make sense to me. If you want to change lanes, and worst case scenario you're right next to someone, go 2mph slower for 20 seconds and they'll be shifted by 60 feet. I'm sure you can plan your lane changes on a freeway 20 seconds in advance.
It is the dynamics. When lanes are pacing each other the gaps all tighten up. So sure, you can slow down a bit to find the gap behind you, except that gap is not big enough to fit in. So you turn on your signal and wait for someone polite enough to let you in, meanwhile the guy behind you is riding you like a pony because you are no longer keeping up with traffic.
When traffic isn't balled up so tight, you can plan for a lane change in advance and accomplish it without having to slow down traffic. Everything flows better.
> it is never too late to lobby against these things.
Putting aside the real possibility that the ability to lobby against certain things is already actively under attack, it isn't speech alone that is being addressed, it's political and cultural momentum.
Would you call it a fallacy that making incremental rather than sudden movement in a specific direction makes it politically easier to accomplish?
I appreciate the sentiment, but this doesn't really seem to put itself in the context of the state of play at the federal level. Namely, pro-privacy states have existing legislation they want to be the 'floor' of privacy protections, and anti-privacy states want to use a federal bill to preempt those laws, making the federal law the ceiling that they can lower in one fell swoop. There are real risks to a federal law that preempts state legislation.
Is this actually a broad trend, or more just your personal experience? There is very little that could get me to move back to the suburbs, but this kind of thing is compelling.
Could you elaborate on this? Are you saying that datacenter water usage is not a significant community issue? Or that such community issues should be irrelevant to VC conversations?
I'm not following you. The concern isn't that they somehow destroy the water, it's the consumption of processed water that has a limited supply. Are you saying a gallon of data center water use has less impact on supply than other uses? Recaptured water from evaporative cooling needs to be reprocessed just like any other water source, right?
Lets put this in perspective. A continuous 1 gigawatt draw is enough energy to boil off 1.3 million liters per hour. Assuming a generous 350 liters per person per day that's the equivalent of 90k people.
If you don't actually boil it and instead return only lukewarm water you're looking at something like 15x more (I don't know the exact factor) due to how large the heat of vaporization is.
How exactly are they supposed to return (ballpark) 1 million people worth of water to the utility company? Let's again put this in perspective. The entire Seattle metropolitan area hosts ~4.1 million people. The entire state of Florida is only 23.5 million. This is an absurd amount of water we're taking about here.
This seems to be a recent anti-science meme to dismiss studies that use mouse models. I'm sure there is an interesting line of discussion about the strengths and limits of those models, but that's probably a complex, nuanced thread to pull, not something you blow off with a hand-waving internet comment.
To some degree the other posts are just pointing out the misleading "assumed protagonist" of the title (which doesn't mention mice) but I was surprised to see that the majority of posts boiled down to "eek! mice!"
I wish I could filter the word mice or mouse out of hn comments because as you say every single one are low effort gotcha's that I will never get my time back from.
It is like these armchair scientists don't understand that the actual scientists know the limits of the model system better than they do.
It's not anti-science, it's anti-science-journalism-hype.
Science depends on accurately reporting facts, being clear about the limits of your findings, and seeking explanations that survive scrutiny. Science journalism has other priorities that are often in conflict with those of science.
>"I've been ticketed here twice, and it's ridiculous because they it's just not fair," one driver said who didn't want to be identified. The person that does the determination when you ran the light, it's just a random. Whoever they want to pick, pick you to say, okay, you're gonna pay the ticket."
This is the opposite of my understanding of red light cameras. I always considered the supposed impartial application of the traffic law as the main benefit.
I suspect this is some light with chronically-bad timing that gets run by tons of people every day. The camera is taking a photo with a bunch of vehicles in the frame and it's ticketing the one that had the license plate unobstructed, even if a few of the vehicles in the frame technically entered the intersection when the light was yellow.
Sometimes lights are just so poorly implemented, and drivers pass through them so often, it feels like whoever designed the intersection was actively goading drivers into running the light.
My hometown got busted making yellow lights shorter than the legally required duration, then hitting drivers with tickets for running a red light they couldn't have safely and reasonably avoided.
There are standards for this kind of thing, like if a light is on a road with a speed limit of X, then a yellow light has to last Y seconds. Imagine a yellow light that lasted .5s: you'd have to stand on your brakes and risk causing a rear end collision from the car behind you to even have a chance of not getting fined. That's the opposite of safety. My place wasn't that bad, but a defendant successfully demonstrated that the yellow light he was tricked by was illegally short, and a judge basically threw out all the tickets from it and others.
I mention this as just one example of specific light setups that suck. I bet you're right, and this is just a money grab from the local gov't.
In same states they also mark the intersection start where the curb ends and not at the crosswalk starts, so you think since you passed the crosswalk under yellow you are safe to proceed but you have not yet entered the intersection.
Is this the case where instead of admitting to it, the municipality attempted to have the complainant prosecuted for practicing engineering without a licence?
In my city they synchronized the light so that each one turns red just as the pack of cars is reaching it. To be clear the obvious implication I'm making is that they did this to increase the chance someone would run the light and increase revenue.
This does mean that if you're in the front of the pack and go about 15 over the speed limit, you won't "catch" the red light.
When you're not in the front of the pack it can be frustrating trying to travel just 3 or 4 miles with the red lights not even a full half mile from each other. Even late at night if you follow the speed limit, you are penalized. You will sit at every red light and look at the vast stretch of nothingness that has the right of way.
If they didn't do this to generate red light revenue, they could have done this to generate more revenue from the gas tax they collect by making people start & stop more often, and from sitting in traffic longer. But I suppose both things could be true. And no, I won't accept any other plausible explanations (/s, but holy heck is government awful here).
I haven't run into those (I mostly drive in rural areas--in fact, there's no stoplight in my county) -- but I do run into some lights that just change in the middle of the night, for no reason, and then take a really long time to change back to green, despite not even a single car being present / going through.
If someone is using your car they cant legally give you a ticket. If the picture taken doesnt clearly show you theoretically it needs to be dropped but of course thats not how it works in reality
Seems silly. Just attach the ticket to the car itself and then the registered owner can handle obtaining payment from whoever was driving the car.
If the registered owner wants to claim that someone stole their car or was operating it without permission then there can be some very hefty punishment for making false statements if it can be proved that it was actually the owner in the car.
I believe the issue is that moving violations often give you points on your license. If it was just a fine I think they could put it on the car, but because the of the potential loss of a license they need to actually have evidence of a person committing the violation.
I suppose they could also put the points on the car and impound it after it accrues enough points to have a drivers license suspended. Hard to drive if you don’t have a car.
In North America, from what I understand, the issue is that the authorities need to verify your identity in order to ticket you and traffic cameras don’t do that whereas a police officer does.
I agree the automated systems are impartial, but they cannot ID you without it becoming super invasive.
In Europe and places with more omnipresent cameras, the laws are such that they can ticket you without needing to ID. The car gets the ticket so to speak.
It depends on whether the ticket is considered a criminal or civil matter in the US.
For a criminal case, yes, they need to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt" - which would require that you are positively identified as the driver.
For a civil case, they only need to prove by a "preponderance of the evidence" - which is a much lower standard.
This is why tickets from red-light cameras in many states are zero-point citations. You're still charged a fine, but there's no finding of guilt attached to the offense, which keeps it away from being considered a criminal matter. (This is the same way parking tickets work.)
Many US states have switched to that approach. The ticket goes to the registered owner of the vehicle and no penalty points are attached. It's treated more like a parking citation than a traditional moving violation.
What does "North America" have to do with Florida?
I'm in Canada and they issue you a fine without any ID. It goes straight to the registered car owner. Simple as.
The issue is that currently in FL there are points / demerits issued for violations, and these can cause the loss of a license, increases to insurance, etc. This is not a problem if an officer can ID you directly.
Florida is in North America is it not? With laws influenced by the history and cultural constraints of the continent?
We have fairly divergent laws at this point but ultimately we both inherited the majority of our legal system from colonial tuned English common law, not forgetting French civil law in places. So I would expect some level of commonalities, especially given that I barely see speed cameras in S. Ontario yet I’ve been pulled over before.
IIRC in both England and Connecticut your passenger can be drinking a road beer in the car, but definitely not here in Ontario.
In Brazil, you can identify who was driving the car and they will get charged with the fine and get the points on their licence. You can do it all using an app on your phone. It's really simple.
I don't know what happens if the other person denies it though.
Systems don’t necessarily react based on the legal situation. A red light camera that’s improperly installed, poorly maintained, etc could essentially act randomly from a drivers perspective.
Which is why they are supposed to have a sworn officer review the camera footage. I have certainly had a camera flash me while waiting to turn right on red, still outside the intersection. They never sent me a ticket however since I had clearly not done anything illegal.
... which is why they are supposed to be regularly calibrated by an independent third party - with tickets automatically being void if law enforcement can't prove that it was functioning properly.
This person is not articulating it well but I think they are complaining that the person identified as the driver is random. Presumably the camera can impartially identify a car running a light, but not necessarily who is driving.
"I've been ticketed here twice, and it's ridiculous because they - it's just not fair. The person that - [let me start over] - the determination when you ran the light [of who is responsible], it's just a random whoever they want to pick ... [they] pick you to say, okay, you're gonna pay the ticket."
Obviously it's not actually random, it just defaults to the vehicle's owner, but with a generous reading I think you can interpret the quote this way based on the context of the article.
I think it's kind of irresponsible and lazy for the publication to use a verbatim verbal quote like this, when it isn't from someone notable who really needs to be quoted. If you don't understand what they're saying then don't put it in the article, and if you do understand then put in a sentence explaining what they're saying.
Everywhere I've been, the owner of the car gets the ticket, and it's up to them to figure out if they were driving, or if not them, collect from whomever they loaned the car to.
No camera I've ever seen tries to figure out who the driver is.
The logic is, it's your car, you're responsible for loaning it/owning it, so you get the fine. Don't like that? Don't loan your car out.
The trade off is no points are deducted from a driver's license. It's a pure fine, because they can't prove you were driving.
So the person just seems to be speaking gibberish to me.
edit:
More context...
The same logic applies for parking tickets. No one cares who parked the car, the car's owner gets the ticket... not the person who parked it. While I dislike red light cameras, the logic holds.
> … the owner of the car gets the ticket, and it's up to them to figure out if they were driving, …
That's exactly what makes it unconstitutional here in the US. The Constitution specifically requires that they have evidence of who committed the crime _before_ charging someone with it. If you do it the other way around then you are making an assumption about who is guilty in advance of the evidence.
It is a crime in Florida, because if it goes unpaid it is converted into a real ticket for a moving violation written by a police officer. This results in criminal penalties, such as losing your license.
> are you suggesting parking tickets don't exist in the US?
No, but parking tickets don’t have the same problem because they are governed by a different law that was written better. Specifically, it states that the owner of the car is liable if the car is found to be parked illegally and must pay a fine. This makes it truly a civil matter.
Meanwhile the law against running red lights says that the _driver_ commits a misdemeanor if they pass through a signalized intersection while the light is red. See the difference? The tickets that result from the red–light camera are being assigned to the owner of the car, not the driver, but it’s the driver who committed the crime. The owner is then forced to prove their innocence, which makes it unconstitutional. Our constitution requires that the government must first prove using actual evidence who committed the crime and only then can they proceed to the step of writing a ticket or arresting someone.
I've never gotten an automated ticket so I don't know what is normal. It doesn't seem insane to give it to the vehicle owner, but I can certainly understand feeling indignant about getting a ticket for something you didn't do, especially if it's a new process.
That somebody got nailed twice suggests to me that they are at least making borderline yellow-light decisions, if not running the red outright. I doubt they actually know anything about how tickets are handed out, claiming it's just some guy handing them out at random is flagrant cope.
By this logic we could also say that LinkedIn scans your home network.
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