You are driving down the road. You see the first sign (below). 1/4 mile later you see the second sign. As you pass the second sign, what is the legal speed limit? Think carefully. Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login
Not sure if this is serious or a trick question, but the legal speed limit there is 35. The 15mph is in yellow and therefore just a recommended speed for pansies who don't know how to take a corner. -R
Heck yeah! I was 47 years old before I found out that the yellow ones are just suggestions and not real speed limits. Yup, I'm a dumb@ss.
I must have forgotten (I took Driver's Ed. in '78, folks) that there are such things as 'suggested' speed limits!
Thanks for bringing that up. I don't know what that mean't either. I thought they yellow meant nothing.
Yeah its 35 - yellow are suggested speeds, not enforced limits. The great part of this is cloverleaf exit offramps on the highway, or even better, getting ON the highway. Take a nice long sweeper and get on the throttle as you straighten out. Its awesome in a grippy RWD car. I got pulled over once for hitting it on one of those cloverleaf offramps... until a new speed limit overrides the 65mph highway limit, taking the 35mph offramp at 60mph is perfectly legal. The only thing they can hit you for is reckless, which is a long shot if you retain control and are not sliding the azz end, etc.
Yup. However, I've heard the suggested safe speed doesn't just take into account corner radius and slope but sight lines, i.e. reaction time for what's not-visible (like opposing traffic out of lane) around the corner.
I see those "suggestion" signs and add to them depending on what I'm driving. SUV - 25 (+10) Benz - 30 (+15) Porsche - 40 (+25) I'm not kidding...
You don't have these moments in surgery though, do you?! "Oh, so THAT'S where that goes! Man, all these years I've been stitching it back over here..."
I lived in California for many years. I got a few tickets, and did some time in traffic school. In that state, there are two types of white rectangular speed signs. There are ones that say "Speed Limit", which mean that you're breaking the law if you're exceeding the posted limit. Other signs look basically the same, but they say "Maximum Speed" with a number. Those signs, which are quite common, are advisory speeds. If you get a ticket in one of those, let's say doing 55 in a 45 zone late at night, you can go to court and make a case that the circumstances (light traffic, etc.) were such that 55 was a safe speed. A lot of times the judge will let you off. Of course, if you were doing 75, you're going to have a tough time convincing the judge of anything. I don't know what other states make that distinction.
On a related topic... You're travelling westbound on a two-lane (one each way) road with a the speed limit of 40mph. You go past a high school travelling westbound, but the area is not marked as a school zone with the prerequisite signage. If you were to turn around, travelling eastbound the area is marked as a school zone. Clearly, going eastbound the speed limit is 25mph. What is it travelling westbound? I go past this everyday on the way to work. Is the westbound speed limit implied? What if you never took the road going eastbound, how would you know the area is signed as a school zone?
35mph is the posted speed limit. The YELLOW 15mph is a suggested limit usually observed by heavy/long vehicles. It warms them that the impending turn is such that a slower than posted rate is recommended.
I made a point of getting a VA drivers manual when I switched my license to VA (the first time, back in the '80s) and I made a point of looking up those signs -- they're advisory, not regulatory. For me: "15" means "second gear". (Or "two left tightens"...) Although the curve shown looks more like a third gear turn from what part you can see.
