Just because a road "feels" like it can handle more speed does not mean that it is. The wider streets are built to handle the volume of cars, not necessarily meant to become a speed way. There are several 6 lane roads in my area while being wide and well built still have many intersections only controlled by stop signs for the smaller streets with multiple intersections controlled by stop lights at the larger cross streets.

People unable to recognize this and only driving by the feels are the problem. Hand wavy comments like yours suggesting using the feels as being okay do not help the situation

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pastel8739 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Basing your speed on what the road looks like may not be “okay” or “legal”, but it’s what people do. It’s just not useful to claim that individual people are the problem when this is something that is overwhelmingly true across the entire population—-a broader solution than individual responsibility is the only thing that will actually work.

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potato3732842 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Speeds are fundamentally a tradeoff between risk and reward. In nominally democratic societies we place these thresholds based on some approximation of social consensus. The general public literally cannot be wrong because their rough consensus, the fat part of the bell curve if you will, is what determines what the right speed is.

Your comment is literally the principal Skinner "no it's everyone else who's wrong" meme.

	▲	dylan604 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Um, no it’s not. If you think that roads are built with no consideration for anything other than if the infrastructure will support traffic at a certain speed then you’re just not thinking about things. Speed limits are set with many factors in that decision. Things like noise and safety are major parts of that. Someone else has already suggested a lame reason as a noise complaint made by a single person, but cars moving faster make more noise. Cars moving faster limits the time a car at a stop sign can safely navigate causing traffic at cross streets. Regardless of what you think, speed limits are not set in place just to ruin your day because you can’t leave on time and constantly need to “make up time”. They are not arbitrary decisions just because you haven’t considered all of the factors involved.

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the_sleaze_ 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Now you're relying on Jimmy "Buck" Rawgers born and raised in Billton county working at the DOT setting the speed limits and the traffic light cadence.

How many roads are 35 when they should be 50 simply because some local yokel asshole made a stink at city counsel 10 years ago and now it's impossible to change?