getting knocked out of your limits

But that's only in ONE lane of the typical California freeway. That
would be the #2 lane, if, and that's a big IF, the drivers in that
lane are following the 2 second rule.

There are also big rig trucks on California freeways, and the trucks
have to drive 55 mph and maintain a minimum 300-foot separation.
That's 3.72 seconds minimum between trucks.

Furthermore, the trucks have to stay in the two right hand lanes,
except when they have to use a lane to the left to continue on their
intended route.

So, there are two lanes of trucks to the right, proceeding at a rate
of 16 vehicles per minute per lane when the truck lanes are running at
maximum capacity.

There are two lanes of cars to the left. The scofflaw drivers who
believe they should be able to drive as fast as they please are
overtaking drivers who believe they should obey the speed limit, so
they are causing a clot in the #1 lane.

Drivers who are tired of angry scofflaws line up in the #2 lane,
following each other about 1 second apart, so you get 60 vehicles per
minute past a point, and that's probably the most efficient lane, if
not the safest lane, you have on a California freeway.

But the scofflaws in the #1 lane are blocked in by the fed-up law-
abiders in the #2 lane, they cannot get over to the right, no matter
how much they signal, and that's how TW got knocked out of whatever
"limits" he has.

http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d11/vc22406.htm
http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d11/vc21704.htm

 

Oh, you...you...
You cracked me up with that crack about Bernoulli's law! Lucky for you I
wasn't drinking anything when I read that, or you'd owe me a new keyboard!

Interesting thought though...traffic might seem like a liquid or gas,
but apparently it's not. When compressed, it just goes *slower.* Against
all laws of physics...

--
barb
Chaplain, ARSCCwdne

buy my book!
http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=1198812

read my page! (thanks, R. Hill!)
http://www.xenu-directory.net/critics/graham1.html

visit my store!
http://www.cafepress.com/birdville

 

This is confusing, isn't it?
Let's see...I tried to do a little math to see which is right and
immediately got a headache!
I guess it's too late at night.
I think, in fact, that you are right because at a slower speed, they would
be MUCH closer together.
Still doesn't seem right somehow.


You have a hill which is .5 mile to the top and .5 mile back down the other
side, for a total of one mile over the hill.
If you drive UP the hill at 30 mph, how fast must you go down the other side
to average 60 mph for the whole trip ??

 

It's somewhat beside the point. The reason the cars are on that freeway
is to get from point A to point B, not just to pass a given point. My
algebra being quite rusty, and my ability with spreadsheets somewhat
better, I put together some numbers.

Assumptions: Vehicles are 19' long and maintain a 2 second space
between them. A mile of freeway lane can hold 240.73 cars travelling at
1 mph, 109.24 at 10 mph and 27.08 moving at 60 mph.

At the end of an hour, 240.73 cars will have passed from the beginning
to the end of the measured mile going 1 mph. Travelling 10 mph, 1092.41
cars will have made the trek. At 60 mph, throughput (Thruwayput?) is
1624.62 cars.

What I found interesting is that further increases in speed produced
little gains in throughput. Even if the cars could go 120 mph, you'd
only increase throughput to 1707.82 cars. And at 800 mph, you'd still
be less than 1800 cars/hr throughput.

The key to increasing capacity appears to lie in reducing the safe
distance between vehicles -- perhaps a high-speed car train.

Rich, Urban Biker

 

Well, against the Perfect Gas Law and Bernoulli's law ... which just
means the laws don't apply so well to this sort of fluid. My carpool
rider was telling me today that recent research on traffic in the Bay
Area reveals that traffic is subject to turbulence just as any gas or
liquid is, and as it is chaotic (in the technical sense), the conclusion
is that one cannot predictably apply traffic smoothing efforts.

 

That's not true. Here's an inductive proof:

You can follow another vehicle at a two-second following distance no
mater what reasonable speed it is traveling. (Say, between, oh, twenty
and a hundred miles an hour.) Another car could be following you at that
speed, two seconds behind. And so any number of cars could be traveling
along at some speed, with two seconds between them.

Now place someone at he side of the road, counting off "one one
thousand, two one thousand" for every car. The distance between the cars
would, of course, depend on the speed they're traveling, with the
formula of their speed (in ft/sec) times two (seconds). It does not
matter how fast they're going: you get one car every two seconds, thirty
per minute.

 

Please see my inductive proof on my other post.

Since the average speed must be 60 mph, the total trip time must be one
minute. But you already took one minute going up the hill, so you have
zero time for the second half of the trip. You need to call Mister
Scott.

 

You're ignoring the scofflaws who ignore the "Slower Traffic Keep Right"
signs and jump all the way across three lanes of traffic so they can
plod along in the left lane doing 60.

No, it isn't. The traffic was doing maybe 20 mph.

Did you read this part: "The provisions of this section shall not
prevent overtaking and passing nor shall they apply upon a highway with
two or more lanes for traffic in the direction of travel." ?

 

Woah! Woah! Hold yer horses! Maybe if your speedometer was reading 60.00
mph, you could calculate 27.08 cars, but even your average vehicle size
has a built-in inaccuracy as well. Since your speedo reads only 60, and
might even be off by 5%, you can only claim 241, 109, and 27 cars at
those speeds.

You need to toss your calculator out the window and buy yourself a
slide-rule. That way you'll get the right number of digits without
trying all that hard.

Questions of number of digits of accuracy aside, you are correct.

 

"Slower Traffic Keep Right" refers to vehicles which are heavily-laden
and lack sufficient power to drive at the safe and reasonable speed
limit.

"Slower Traffic Keep Right" does NOT refer to vehicles lawfully
proceeding at the safe speed limit.

Mature drivers who have been driving in California for 50 years know
that the
#1 lane is the primary lane of travel where they are supposed to drive
if they are
going to drive for any distance on a freeway.

So, mature drivers get onto the freeway and move to the leftmost lane
and drive at the speed limit in that lane until a few miles before
their planned exit before they start moving over to the right, while
signalling their intent to do so.

Scofflaws and weirdos think that the "Slower Traffic Keep Right" signs
mean that everybody else should get out of their way so they can drive
as fast as they please.

Weirdos and scofflaws go onto Usenet and whine about how law-abiding
motorists are all "idiots" and how it's "immoral" for somebody to get
ahead of them on the freeway.

If you had bent over for "Johnny" to bugger you, wouldn't that have
been "rude"? Wouldn't you have been "ahead of him"? Wouldn't that be
"immoral"?

 

Say. I was just wondering. Did you inherit any of the Carr family
tendancies?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Carr,_Earl_of_Somerset

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Carr,_1st_Earl_of_Ancram

Have you ever felt the urge to bend over for royalty?

 

So many moral issues. What's a concerned citizen to say about issues
of personal privacy when somebody is flaunting their sick perversions
as an alternative lifestyle to be "proud" of?

If a Very Sick Puppy includes a link to his website as part of his
signature, isn't he inviting the public to come and gawk at his Freak
Show?

If a lonesome queer inserts a foreign object up his ass and
photographs the act, does that make him a proctologist or a Hero Of
the Queer Class?

If a proctologist removes a foreign object from a queer's ass, does
that make him queer? If the proctologist smiles at the queer, is he
coming to the queer's emotional rescue? Does the proctologist become a
Queer Hero to be admired for his quiet strength?

If a Very Sick Puppy spreads his anus with a surgical speculum and
posts pictures of it on his blog, is he doing it in the interest of
educating the public about the use of
medical instruments?

If a Very Sick and Lonesome Puppy derives all of his sexual
stimulation from hurting himself, and somebody who views his self
abuse pictures looks up the mental illness and discovers that it's
called http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algolagnia
and draws attention to the plight of the Poor Sick Puppy, is that such
a bad thing?

Is there something wrong with rescuing Very Sick Puppies?

The "I Am Curious (Yellow) film (which you enjoyed so much you
remembered it after 40 years) was the cleaned up version of a
Scandinavian porno movie.

As I recall, it showed a guy throwing a woman out of his MG because
her tits were too fat.

I don't remember any queers in the movie.

But, back in those days, "gay" meant "happy", not "emotionally
desperate" and "curious" just meant that somebody had a normal
interest in things he didn't know about.

"Curious" never meant that a desperate man was considering being
sodomized as an alternative to suicide back in the late 1960's.

 

barb wrote:

I have nothing to add, but that deserved being said again.

 

Clever ruse. You'll get .p.jm on your side for sure now!

 

Oddly enough, I was out there with you! I thought it was some kind of
event, or weird Friday afternoon traffic until I got home from visiting
my folks. That said, traffic began to wad up near the I-5 N. / I-8
interchange. I needed the Sea World exit on 5, which is a mile or so
north of 8, so I switched to the #2 / #1 lanes and proceeded to split up
to the offramp to Sea World. I got there handily and made it to dinner
on time.

Lanesplitting is only dumb for people who can't or shouldn't do it. For
competent riders, it's a definite perk!

--
barb
Chaplain, ARSCCwdne

buy my book!
http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=1198812

read my page! (thanks, R. Hill!)
http://www.xenu-directory.net/critics/graham1.html

visit my store!
http://www.cafepress.com/birdville

 

You know, maybe you should quit flaunting your tiny ignorance, Toronto
and accept that there are people here who ride more than you, longer
than you, harder than you, and deeper than you ever could! (okay that
last bit was just gratuitous porn, as the sentence seemed to be going in
that direction anyways.)

I've been riding since 1978. Count 'em. Nearly thirty years. I've been
splitting lanes since I discovered it was probably legal. I was a
motorcycle messenger for three or four years, where lane splitting is a
requirement, not a convenience. I've only had two accidents, both from
left turning cages with PBS stickers on them.

So, maybe lane splitting is a dumb idea...FOR YOU. But you aren't the
world. Should I not hang glide because YOU have a fear of heights?
Should I not eat chocolate because it makes YOU break out in spots?

What is it with you people, anyways? You're like a strange parody of
that Vonnegut story, where everybody had to wear appliances to make the
average feel better about themselves. Or them rabid Christofascists who
want everyone in the world to live by their rules and morals!

Sit in traffic if it makes you feel safer. But do not be so presumptuous
as to dictate to the rest of us. You go right ahead and blend with
traffic. But I'll get where I'm going a lot sooner than you will, mate.

--
barb
Chaplain, ARSCCwdne

buy my book!
http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=1198812

read my page! (thanks, R. Hill!)
http://www.xenu-directory.net/critics/graham1.html

visit my store!
http://www.cafepress.com/birdville

 

Hah. Maybe you need to try out California freeways before shooting your
mouth off.

--
barb
Chaplain, ARSCCwdne

buy my book!
http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=1198812

read my page! (thanks, R. Hill!)
http://www.xenu-directory.net/critics/graham1.html

visit my store!
http://www.cafepress.com/birdville

 

If you ride a motorcycle at all you chance a crash and/or death. If
you aren't aware of that then you're in denial and if you can't deal
with it you shouldn't be riding. And if you don't understand _why_
exceedingly low speeds are a problem and think that it has something
to do with getting to your destination faster you've never ridden in
heavy traffic.

There's no evidence that suggests that lane splitting is a major cause
of death among motorcyclists.

 

Well, yes, you can maintain 2 second following distance if you slow
down and reopen the gap every time someone pulls into it, but if you
do that then after a while you're going to be paddling backwards.

 

Bait. Stinky. I give you a -1 rating and throw your slimy hook back
at you.