That combined with the parent's post is, perhaps counterintuitively, somewhat concerning.

The proper technique for yielding to pedestrians wishing to cross is to start slowing down early, as if you were planning to stop before the crossing. That sends a clear signal to the pedestrian they're good to start crossing. Then you're free to speed back up. This is very comfortable for the pedestrian and the vehicle never needs to stop, so the slowdown is minimal.

That Waymos apparently don't act this way and seem to need to send an explicit signal to pedestrians sounds concerning to me, even if its ultimately safe.

In Italy several cities lowered the maximum speed from 50 to 30 km/h.

There was a huge fight over it, car drivers in those cities were mad. Plenty of politicians opposed it.

One year later stats were super clear: streets got way safer and the number of fatal accidents dropped to near 0. Time to traverse cities didn't change much, as it was already limited mostly by traffic and lights.

Yes, agreed. Though speed limits higher than 75 are not something I will ever support.*

* Unless we're talking about removing a speed limit altogether and regulating unsafe driving using other criteria.

Because American drivers have normalized always driving 10 mph (16 km/h) over the speed limit.

Cops won't pull you over or write tickets if you're not at least 15 mph over, we basically don't have speed cameras, everyone's trying to win the rat race and dehumanizing other cars around them, and it's not considered morally wrong (by most) to break that specific part of the law.

So a single vehicle obeying the law will quickly get a long line of tailgaters and tailgaters of tailgaters trying to "push" the vehicle to go faster.

They can suck it, I'm not late or in a hurry, and my ancient truck, steel bumper, and class 5 receiver hitch will not be badly harmed by your plastic grille. I get better gas mileage and have a longer stopping distance when I drive the limit, and I don't care if others are honking or riding my ass because they think I should drive faster.

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.

> How do you get “stuck” behind someone doing the speed limit?

"Only 46.5 percent of U.S. drivers consider going more than 15 miles per hour over the speed limit on the freeway to be "extremely" or "very" dangerous — with 40.6 percent openly admitting to doing it at least "a few times" in the last 30 days" [1].

[1] https://usa.streetsblog.org/2023/11/30/why-so-many-u-s-drive...

On the stretch of motorway that I frequent in Italy, the speed limit is mostly 130 km/h, but the majority of people drive at about 100 to 110 km/h (including me).

But there are also people who drive in the left lane, who will tailgate you at 1 or 2 meters because you're doing 130 km/h. These people are idiots, but you get these sorts of people everywhere.

On American freeways, you don't have a choice, every lane is doing about 10 mph over the limit (or in LA way under) and it is disruptive or dangerous not to. These freeways tend to be running at full capacity so it actually makes sense since it improves capacity.

speed limits in the US are barely suggestions, let alone rules