A Meditation On The Speed Limit

I used to be skeptical of ramp metering until the day I drove several miles below the speed limit to 'celebrate' the anniversary of a ticket I'd received. Instead of driving 14 MPH over the limit, I drove 14 MPH under the limit (legally that time) as a form of radical civil obedience* . As expected, this caused quite a bit of unnecessary congestion. It actually turned out to be harder to sustain a backup* * once I entered the metered areas. The reason? Metering limits the number of idiots on the road at a given time. I.e., my attempt at being intentionally stupid was mitigated because the meters prevented the road from nearing saturation. The little bit of wiggle room on the road made it relatively straight-forward to just route around me. So yes, in one sense meters merely move the wait from one point to another but they also remove some of the interactive effects of human stupidity. * [VIDEO] "I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effectual as their strict construction." -- President Ulysses S. Grant's First Inaugural Address * * No I did not intentionally prevent people from passing me. My beef is with the revenue centers that are the pre-emptive enforcement of low velocities--not with my fellow passer-motorists.

> I remember when they adopted the 55 mph speed limit. Some truck drivers in Michigan decided to protest it by obeying it. The resulting congestion was pretty painful for everybody. Some people actually did this on an interstate near Atlanta, Georgia a number of years ago and posted it on Youtube [1]. [1] [VIDEO]

That's essentially the situation on the highways through Atlanta. It's so extreme that some students made a video[0] demonstrating the extreme effect on traffic when drivers in every lane maintain the speed limit. Their conclusion is that the speed limit should be increased; there are other reasonable conclusions one might draw, but I would argue against the one that follows from your comment: that nearly every driver on the road deserves punishment. [0] [VIDEO]