Originally Posted by
RomansFiveEight
... The question, to me, is glaringly obvious. What exactly does that speed give you? You burn more fuel and don't make a meaningful improvement to your time!
So yeah, I get you. I'm sure it bugs folks when I putt along in the right lane at 5 below (though, another advantage is, no jockeying for position! Other than passing the occasional 18-wheeler up a steep hill, and then them passing me down a steep descent, I pretty much can just sit in the right lane; no jockeying and passing and getting frustrated by left-lane slowpokes). But it is what it is! They can call me names, I'll be listening to some good music or an interesting conversation on NPR and not playing full-tackle interstate jockeying!
R58 absolutely right and it's even more true for driving in town in my experience. Sure, every once in awhile the speeder will get through a light they'd otherwise have stopped at, or get ahead of someone turning into the street instead of stuck behind them but even those successes doesn't save much time over the whole route. Racing to the stop light to get ahead of someone is another example.
I don't think that it reflects on their character though. I think that for most people, it just never occurs to them to test it objectively. And, sadly, many people just aren't equipped to understand how speeding might not actually be much faster.
Teaching my teenager to drive, one of the things I stress is to observe the traffic ahead, to prepare to react to whatever
they are reacting to. The eye-opening part is that most of those drivers are only reacting to what happens directly in front of them. No value judgments, no real thought involved, just routine reactions to whatever forces its way into their attention.
In light of that perspective I can't really agree with the equivalence Joey draws between freeway speeding and scoff-law traffic in general. Yes, some are being scoff-laws and frankly being stupid at it, but the 762 vehicles passing at 65 probably not. Most of them are probably just following traffic, speeding up to pass whenever they get too close to you.
Why should you care? I don't think you should care either way. You should ride in a manner so as to ensure your safety, and to minimize traffic disruption from any technically illegal maneuver. Which may often amount to the same thing. What they think about it is mostly extraneous.