To bad we can't do this... - Page 2 - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

t walgamuth · #16 08-16-2010, 11:01 AM

Unlimited speed should be reserved for highly skilled drivers driving well designed machines with all vital parts highly maintained to the needed standards......like me.

And while we are fantasizing, I want some special rockets to mount under my front bumper to vaporize left lane hogs.

Hatterasguy · #17 08-16-2010, 11:03 AM

We could make a special high speed lane which requires a different license and plate to use. The cars would have to pass inspection, and be of a certain type. The drivers would also go through more training.

This way we can run fast, and the cops can have a field day enforcing it.

mgburg · #18 08-16-2010, 12:42 PM

Germany has standards that go WELL BEYOND what would be tolerated here.

AAMOF, a friend of mine just e-mailed me this morning, commenting on a statement I made 2 weeks ago quering him about how does he like traveling the Autobahn...he said that "...there's not many injuries compared to the fatalities..."

That about sums it up for me...

Knowing how well they designed their roads compared to the haphazard designing and maintaining that we do to ours...70mph is probably more than 4/5ths of this nation should be allowed to dream about.

We're all idiots when we get behind the wheel. It's our nature and some have a much better grasp of their own limits than others. A MUCH BETTER GRIP THAN OTHERS!

As for special licenses and training?

Leave that for the LEOs and race-car drivers. Hell, even the LEOs can't handle what they've been given to drive and were trained in. We just recently lost a 17yo kid to a County Sheriff Deputy that T-boned his car at an arterial intersection. And NASCAR exhibits its BEST every weekend or so...just tune in for the last few laps of the best darned trained high speed duelers out there on 1-2 miles of the nation's best paved asphalt.

Tell us how many cars are running at Lap 20 and then give us a final FINISH LINE tally at the end of that demo-derby...just the running cars...not the ones with flashing lights and a towhook holding them up off the pavement as they're heading for their paddocks.

Yep...stick me out there on the old American Highway with Johnny Reb and his 550hp Hemi-fuel-sucking sky-scraping pick-em-up truck and no limits as to how fast or how stupidly he can drive it...he don't need no "special-license" or "special-training" or crap like that. This is 'MERICA. Land of the free (as in brain-free) and home of the brave (idiotically brave).

If anything, the roadway will soon be littered with piles of Jap crap-can-exhausted ricers and bubba-trucks that all should have been scrapped the minute they left the owner's yard.

And we'll have more politicians on the nations TVs and Radios telling us WE screwed up when they are the ones that made us pay for this crap to begin with.

It's never the idiots that died that are responsible...it's the living that are too stupid to quit listening to the finger-pointers and blamers.

GOD!!! I NEED TO GET OFF THIS SOAPBOX!!!

SwampYankee · #19 08-16-2010, 04:07 PM

What a tremendous waste of fuel!

I remember one comment Clarkson made in the episode of McLaren vs. Ferry/Boat to Oslo. At full throttle the McLaren empties its 20 gallon fuel tank in 19 minutes!

PaulC · #20 08-16-2010, 04:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pj67coll

Because American roads, in general, are crap. I'm talking interstates here. You are right. Wide open spaces and huge distances cry out for high speed roads. But what we have are not high speed roads. We have roads engineered as slow speed roads from a time when 55 was the limit. No banks in turns, inadequate maintenance with lots of pot holes and generally rough surfaces. And then or course there are the moron drivers. Rechts fahren is not a concept that I think would ever be enforceable here. Too many idiots think they own the road.

- Peter.

The relatively narrow and winding PA Turnpike was opened in 1940 with a 65 MPH limit, a pretty ambitious speed considering that the average 1930's - 1940's car on the road at the time was shod with bicycle tires and possessed pretty weak brakes that took a temporary vacation everytime you drove through a puddle. Imagine hydroplaning at 60 MPH in a 1940 Ford....

MTI · #21 08-16-2010, 04:27 PM

Want to go fast? Get a pilot's license and have at it, but leave the rest of us poor slobs out of your "need for speed" at ground level. Oh right, it takes education and a fair amount of money to get licensed and to own and operate a general aviation setup . . . darn . . .

PaulC · #22 08-16-2010, 04:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jcyuhn

I think we have three limitations to higher speed limits in the USA - the low standards for driver training, the low standards of maintenance of vehicles, and the vehicle choice. The first speaks for itself. For the second, think of underinflated tires. On the last, SUVs are not made for high speeds - 75MPH is plenty, given the generally crude suspensions, weak brakes, and rollover proclivities.

A few months ago, I was driving in NJ on my way to NYC in my 2010 Nissan Xterra Off Road, which is fairly optimized for off road use, being relatively narrow-tracked, equipped with knobby all-terrain tires and a 9.5" ground clearance. Traffic was moderate-to-heavy, and while I was just keeping pace with traffic, I was driving too quickly for conditions. I was on a long arcing curve on a single lane that merged onto a major highway from the left - nice highway design BTW. I was doing 70-ish, accelerating lightly to mesh my speed with the cars on the other road, when the driver of the car ahead of me, deciding that the lane merge was too challenging for her, threw out the anchor and panic stopped dead in front of me.

This was easily my best "Oh #$^*&$^$!!!" driving moment of the last 10 years, and lacking room to drive around her, my options were limited to mashing the brake pedal and hoping that my shorts were clean enough to avoid embarrassment in the hands of emergency room personnel. Here I am, in a new but old-school SUV, braking as hard as possible from a high speed while on a curve. In a similar vehicle circa-1990, I'm sure that either I would have mashed the pedal down and hung on as the rear end started to come around to ruin my day, or while feathering the brakes to keep the back end in line, run out of room, turning the VW Jetta sedan ahead of me into a VW Golf.

Instead, an electronic symphony of ABS and yaw control, backed up by beefy 4-wheel disc brakes, stopped me quickly and precisely, keeping me out of the hospital and the defendant's chair in People's Court. While interstate highway layout and maintenance is lacking, and I definitely had a lapse in driving judgment, vehicle technology is offering some element of compensation for deficiencies in the first two categories you discussed above - even in SUV's.

panZZer · #23 08-16-2010, 07:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PaulC

The relatively narrow and winding PA Turnpike was opened in 1940 with a 65 MPH limit, a pretty ambitious speed considering that the average 1930's - 1940's car on the road at the time was shod with bicycle tires and possessed pretty weak brakes that took a temporary vacation everytime you drove through a puddle. Imagine hydroplaning at 60 MPH in a 1940 Ford....

You mean when they finished paving it was 1940--It was a 18th century revolutionary war road.