Comment Re:Tailgating (Score 1) 525
I've done 90mph in the left lane on I-10 through Houston before when traffic is light and the conditions are good, since, as you said, it really is built for high speeds along most of that stretch (i.e. great lines of sight, gradual curves, wide lanes, well marked), rather than the 60mph it's marked as. That said, I was driving back home last night and was heading out of town on 290 West, a bit outside Beltway 8 on the north side of Houston, and nearly had a very painful reminder of why tailgating is such a bad idea.
As I was coming up to the crest of an overpass, everyone was doing the standard "we're all braking because there's a hill" thing that Texans do, and I was braking as early and gradually as possible because I wanted to give the guy who had been tailing me too closely for the last five minutes every opportunity to slow down (he instead used it as an opportunity to close the distance between us even further), when I realized that the car three ahead of me had suddenly gone from gradually slowing down to slamming on their brakes for a reason I couldn't see. I managed to pump my brakes once or twice in an attempt to warn the car behind me that we were about to brake hard, before I had no choice but to slam on my own brakes since otherwise I would've rammed the car in front of me, but the car behind me still couldn't stop in time. Thankfully, that stretch of 290 West is no longer under construction, so we had a shoulder there that he was able to yank the wheel to get into, but he ended up 2-3 cars ahead of me by the time he managed to come to a screeching stop, and the car that had been behind him ended up next to me by the time it could stop.
(Near as I can tell, what had happened is that a car somewhere ahead of me and in my lane hadn't been paying attention when everyone else did the "Texas hill braking" and rear-ended the car in front of them. Unfortunately, they did it just barely over the crest of the hill where we no one could see them until the last moment, and then they didn't clear their vehicle out of traffic, so it was sitting there in a horrible spot where people didn't have much time to react, which was what led to all of the slamming on of brakes.)
All of which is to say, I'm totally in favor of higher speed limits since the roads are built for them already, but first we need to make/enforce laws regarding tailgating and then do the same for people occupying the passing lane without passing. The cops started enforcing the latter along parts of SH-6 towards Bryan/College Station after signs regarding it went up a few years back, and it's really helped to improve the flow of traffic through there while reducing the number of accidents I've seen. Without them, you get a crowded situation rather quickly, which significantly increases the risk of an accident occurring. With them, you have less accidents and faster speeds.