This evening I found myself being the fastest driver on my route, as if I was passing a funeral parade. It kinda freaked me out that I was driving 5mph under the speed limit and passing everybody in front of me. Everybody. There was a light rain and some fog, which in my experience usually results in everybody driving EVEN FASTER.
I asked Mrs Fixer "you reckon since they legalized maryjane in our state everybody ahead of us has been smoking the kind bud all afternoon?" She says "huh?" Her never having smoked pot, she had no idea what I was talking about. "Often times when you smoke weed you tend to drive slowly"....
We came to the conclusion that it was the fog that had everybody driving so slow. But it wasn't very foggy at all. Like you could clearly see 1/4 mile (0.4km) ahead. Yet in a 45mph zone the train was going 30. It was kinda strange really.
I'm guessing that it was during the early 70's that there was a educational driver's safety course given on TV in the form of a True/False Multiple choice test.
One point they made was that one should not overdrive the visible distance of their headlights. Another was on curvy roads, there are a lot of blind spots/perhaps blind driveways, and one needs to address his speed to the visual limitations.
Another point was that people have a tendency to overdrive their headlights and visible distance in fog. IE, they drive too fast. They may not have time to react and stop before having a collision, because of the limited sight distance, and the speed they are traveling at.
Today we had fog. Within a 3 mile run, I ran into variations of light fog to very dense fog. Tonight on a road that is posted at 45 mph, and the "natural limit" is actually 45MPH, in light fog, the "natural limit" dropped to 40MPH.
It was 10:00 PM, New Year's Eve, and drivers were doing 40MPH and not crowding each other. In NJ the DUI alcohol limits are very low. That may have had something to do with it.