Except in a few exceptional circumstances this is surprisingly not the case. People drive at a speed they perceive as appropriate for the design of the road. Wider roads, wider lanes, straighter roads, open sightlines, and bigger shoulders will make people naturally settle on driving faster. This is why just blithely reducing speed limits with poxy signs on problem roads famously doesn’t accomplish anything. It’s also why people go bombing down the stroad in your local commercial district at 55+ MPH in complete contravention of all the signs everywhere that probably say something around 35. The damn thing looks like a highway to peoples’ monkey brains, so they treat it as such.
People certainly talk about how “my strategy for speeding is to take the speed limit and then you can go around 5/10/15/whatever over and the cops probably won’t care,” and if you sit there in the passenger seat and actively press them on it they may actually drive that way for as many as several consecutive minutes. But in actual reality most of them just fall back to their perceptual “intuitive” speed for whatever road along with everyone else. Especially if they see everyone else passing them.
Increasing and decreasing speeds have different results. A speed tgat seems too slow is not treated the same as one that is too fast.
You are correct that reducing speeds under the speed people drive doesn’t tend to reduce speeds actually driven. Speed limits are not as effective as things thst encourage driving slower.
Increasing speed limits doesn’t mean people ignore the limit and go under the new limit. They do scale up, including those who tend to drive a certain amount over the limit.
UK national speed limit is a good example of this in some places. Narrow country lanes, yeah technically the speed limit is 60 but you will die if you tried it and it would be considered driving dangerously. So people don’t drive above the speed limit.
Some still drive dangerously fast, they would do so anywhere. But the speed limit isn’t setting their speed.
Except in a few exceptional circumstances this is surprisingly not the case. People drive at a speed they perceive as appropriate for the design of the road. Wider roads, wider lanes, straighter roads, open sightlines, and bigger shoulders will make people naturally settle on driving faster. This is why just blithely reducing speed limits with poxy signs on problem roads famously doesn’t accomplish anything. It’s also why people go bombing down the stroad in your local commercial district at 55+ MPH in complete contravention of all the signs everywhere that probably say something around 35. The damn thing looks like a highway to peoples’ monkey brains, so they treat it as such.
People certainly talk about how “my strategy for speeding is to take the speed limit and then you can go around 5/10/15/whatever over and the cops probably won’t care,” and if you sit there in the passenger seat and actively press them on it they may actually drive that way for as many as several consecutive minutes. But in actual reality most of them just fall back to their perceptual “intuitive” speed for whatever road along with everyone else. Especially if they see everyone else passing them.
Increasing and decreasing speeds have different results. A speed tgat seems too slow is not treated the same as one that is too fast.
You are correct that reducing speeds under the speed people drive doesn’t tend to reduce speeds actually driven. Speed limits are not as effective as things thst encourage driving slower.
Increasing speed limits doesn’t mean people ignore the limit and go under the new limit. They do scale up, including those who tend to drive a certain amount over the limit.
UK national speed limit is a good example of this in some places. Narrow country lanes, yeah technically the speed limit is 60 but you will die if you tried it and it would be considered driving dangerously. So people don’t drive above the speed limit.
Some still drive dangerously fast, they would do so anywhere. But the speed limit isn’t setting their speed.