This is a good point. My kids make me think twice now before i do something too crazy like going 200mph lol.

Unfortunately with speed - you have to pay to play and I probably have wasted enough $$$ on that to buy a used car. The fines / assessment for speeding are insane in NYC.

If anyone ever drives in Staten Island - please NEVER go over the speed limit! They got speed traps everywhere and will cite you for even 1mph over.

 

it doesn't seem like you've ever had a 'young and dumb' phase though... i'm sure your dad wouldn't have so freely leant you the keys to his LS if he thought you did, unless you were just better than me at concealing it lol

also what's the most powerful car you've driven? and i mean actually driven not just taken around the block

 

the potholes alone are enough to make me not even want to lol

NYC is a terrible place to go fast... i'm surprised that you with your minimal suspension travel, low profile tire cars would be willing to drive quickly through there

 

There's a reason for that. With NYC's enormous population (many of which don't drive or own a personal vehicle) effective enforcement of moderate speed limits is an absolute MUST. Otherwise, the potential for pedestrian deaths is mind-boggling.

 

wrong thread?

 

I've got two cars that probably match C63 performance, and I still feel that anything exceeding 80mph is very unsafe. These performance cars may be rated for high speeds, but at those speed physics forces are tremendous, and if anything goes wrong it gets very ugly. Not to mention that most drivers do not have the skills required for such speeds.

 

Not really... initiating a passing safely requires that you keep an eye on what's in front of you, behind you and to the sides. That's a lot of places to look at, and you can't really do it simultaneously. Closing speeds of 200KPH can very easily make you miss a 300+KPH vehicle when you're just cruising. There's also wildlife, vehicles with malfunctioning lights, etc - at 120kph (limit 140 here) I almost rear-ended a lorry that was completely greyed out by dirt and had no functioning lights on the back - cruise control just suddenly started braking hard and beeping at me to brake even harder... Of course, it's highly unlikely that such a lorry would make it anywhere in Germany without being promptly pulled off the road, but from what I've heard, other places tend to be lacking in enforcement vigilance.

Common sense still applies. The "advisory limit" is 130KPH - the higher you are above it, the more likely you're deemed responsible in a potential incident. People don't just go flat out all the time. You won't get fined for speeding (well, not always), but you WILL get warned/fined for tailgating, coercion, overtaking on the right, etc. Even with all those + actually disciplined drivers, 300kph is NOT safe - the safest speed is generally the one that everybody's traveling at, due to a lack of relative motion.

One last bit:
https://www.portsmouthctc.org.uk/a-f...-on-the-roads/

I'm not flat-out against "highway pulls" or anything like that, but... you know, safety first

 

Haha, Whoops!

 

Everyone has had a young and dumb phase, the point is to recognize as an older person that what you did younger was stupid. I drove that LS400 at 150MPH, although overall I was very respectful of it. Had my dad known I had done that, he would not have "been proud". I never would have seen the inside of it again. I would not drive a car at 150 MPH on a public road as the person I am today.

Just because "people have young and dumb phases" doesn't excuse behavior like that on a public road. If you still think thats okay, you're still in your young and dumb phase. Its a psychological construct called the personal fable, you don't think anything bad can or ever will happen to you. When you get older that construct fades and you start to worry about your own mortality and the consequences of that and risky crap like that doesn't have the same appeal.

You keep bringing it back to what the car can do and thats not the point. The point is what its safe to do on the road you're on. Its not safe to drive a car on the majority of US roads at those speeds. The roads aren't designed for it, other users of the roads aren't expecting to find another vehicle driving those speeds on them either. We've had this argument many times, you just don't get it.

The most powerful car I've driven for any length of time would be a Challenger Hellcat probably. And no I never drove it over 80 MPH.

 

You have to know the roads - some places i go 5mph or less because of the road.
West Side Highway, FDR drive are both not that bad in the city.
Parts of BQE are a disaster.

Local streets- I never go over 30mph.
Too many potholes and cameras.

 

Not sure what cars you have - but I highly encourage you to take a few grand and invest in performance driving school class. All the top brands have one.

We literally are using maybe 50% of what these cars can comfortably do but you need to have skills to do it safely.

 

Well ever since the idiotic 25mph speed cameras- the pedestrian deaths have increased.
Enforcement is small part.

#1 should be training of drivers and testing skills to renew licenses!
Govt only cares about $$$ therefore speed cameras on a 6 lane Open road (3 each way) at 25mph is there solution. (This is a local road with red lights but it creates more traffic and less safety)

 

You are probably talking about Ocean Parkway. I have no idea why a 6 lane highway even freaking exists cutting right through residential neighborhood without any fencing or even parked cars protecting pedestrian alleys on both sides of this road. The 25mph speed limit is systematically ignored by drivers and fatal crashes involving pedestrians occur there all the time. Drivers speed like maniacs, crash into each other and without any kind of fencing their cars get thrown right into pedestrians on the alleys. Happens all the time on that damn road.

It needs to go on a road diet and reconfigured into two lanes in each direction with pedestrian alleys widened and properly fenced off. Its going to slow down the traffic, protect pedestrians, and make it easier for elderly pedestrians to cross it.

 

Yeah I always mean to do that but never got around to it. When I went to motorcycle school it was a total blast, I will definitely sign up for performance driving school... some day.

That being said, I still don't buy into idea of speeds over 80mph being safe or comfortable on public road, no matter how capable the cars may be. I don't have the stats, but its a safe bet to say that greater percentage of high performance cars get into wrecks vs regular family cars despite their cars being more capable.

 

damn not bad that's just a bit faster than i've ever taken my LS haha

believe me i don't think that nothing can happen to me, i'm genuinely a moderate cautious driver 99% of the time but occasionally i'll chose my brief moment when the opportunity presents itself

i've also never said that 191 mph is safe, but in a car like the C63 with those power levels (and brakes) you only need like 3/4 a mile to go from 75 to 150 and back to 75 again, and there's plenty of closed off sections of road where it's literally impossible to put anyone else at risk or for another car to enter the road unless it literally fell from the sky

150 in a brand new 1998 LS 400 must've been quite a privileged experience lol, so i guess you were just better at hiding it than me