How Speed Limits Are Determined

When you are driving down the road in your Honda CRV from Los Angeles, it can be hard sometimes to keep in mind that there is a speed limit law that you have to follow. However, as comfortable as you are in your ride, you have to make sure that you are going under a certain speed for the safety of yourself as well as others on the road. But how exactly are these speed limits determined? There are a few different factors that come together to help lawmakers decide how fast is too fast or too slow for different roads.

When a new road is being constructed, the engineers will conduct speed studies in order to determine a safe and efficient speed for cars of all sorts including your Honda HRV from Los Angeles. The study takes several data points into consideration, such as the design of the road as well as how it is used. For the design, you look at whether it is windy or hilly, what the lane size is, whether there are any traffic lights and more. For the use, it should be determined if the traffic is heavy or light. How many collisions occur on a specific road that is already in use may be taken into account in order to determine if the speed should change. It is also determined by how often the collisions occur and how that compares to the overall region.

The speed of the road can also be rounded up or down to the nearest increment of 5. The number is most often rounded down if there is a safety issue to take into account. Sometimes, the calculations could be off, which is how speed traps can sometimes become an issue if they are not changed. This can potentially cause problems for local residents, as it can sometimes be difficult to change speed in time for the limit change, like at the end of a big hill. However, if you are familiar enough with the area, you should be able to prepare yourself in order to shift your speed down in time.

Although the measurements used to determine the speed limit of a certain stretch of road aren’t always ideal or perfectly accurate, there is a lot of mathematics and science that goes into making this determination and usually they are not too far off. The professionals who help determine how fast you should be allowed to go based off of speed studies are responsible for making sure that traffic remains safe for everyone involved, including yourself and others around you. For this reason, it is important to obey traffic laws, as they are the limit they are for specific reasons.

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