Nope, in most countries it's a requirement that you drive at a speed where you can stop in the length of the road where you have visability. It is plain common sense that to do otherwise is asking to have an accident, should anything be in your lane.
I suspect you two are also the sorts of idiots who don't leave enough distance between you and the car in front for an emergency stop, either - 2 second rule for dry conditions, and a bit more for wet or slippery conditions.

As for driving at night, that's when I prefer it, especially for trips, as traffic is light and you can make good progress - most of our roads are 2 lane (one each way) , twisting and unlit. When I was making regular 400 mile overnight runs between home and tech', my car had 80W low beams, which were also on with high beam (100W headlights plus 100W driving Super Oscar Cibies - 560W of overdriven QH - close to 2 million candlepower, IIRC) - at 14.3V they were enough to get flashed from a little over 5km distance. Low beam was good for a couple of hudred metres and would pick up street signs at least double that!

If you feel you must drive too fast in case you get tailgated shows two things, others are at least as stupid and that you should move to the slower lanes.

What you think right before you might get into a car crash? "Why the **** did I let this bitch drive my car?"

I crashed into a tractor once! It was on a country road that was just wide enough for two cars. I was going "quite fast" around this bend when I see this massive tractor and trailer taking up the whole road coming towards me. Broke and swerved as much as I could but still clipped it. When I came to a stop I remember thinking "my wing mirror is missing, that's ok, that's to be expected". Got out and most of the right hand side of the car was lying in pieces all over the road between me and the tractor. All the panels were either sheared off or deformed. The farmer refused to get out of the tractor to speak to me! I'd glanced his trailer and although my car had £3000 worth of damage his trailer was intact. Damn agricultural equipment!

One funny thing I do remember is when I stopped my stereo was still playing some pop music and I thought I hope he doesn't hear this music!

True story....my mate crashed into a skip about a week after his driving test and hasn't driven since. I imagine he was thinking "I've binned it".

I have standard 55W headlamps and I drive at the speed limit of 70mph on motorways. Does that make me an idiot?

I've only had one prang in my time driving, 20yrs, i remember it well, it went something like: "OH FU...http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ies/blink1.gif /CRASH!"

If, as you've been saying, you're driving too fast to stop in the road distance you can see, then it does - haven't you realised that's what I've been saying? It may not be another vehicle, I've seen all sorts of struff on roads - spare wheels, bits of wood, bits of exhaust, horses and cattle, rocks, etc.
At 70mph, at night, you should be able to either find a vehicle to follow at a safe distance, which will give warning of a problem and allow you to stop safely, or if the roads are quiet, to use high beam. That's assuming the motorway isn't lit, of course.

Have the headlight alignment checked and check the voltage at the bulb vs at the battery - effective light output is to the third power of the voltage, ie, if battery is 12.5 V and the bulb is 11V, you're getting less than 70% of what you should be getting with some decent wiring and relays, and it'll be a yellower colour. Enough dirt on the lights or windscreen to be noticed will reduce that a further 5+% for each - just a good clean can make a big difference, especially as many people don't keep the inside of the windscreen clean - which is also really bad for sunstrike*, the loss of visability when the sun lights up the screen when it's close to the horizon.

Sorry if it seems I'm giving you a hard time, just don't want you to be another person hurt or killed through a careless action - known too many killed in avoidable crashes.

* As a learner driver, nearly drove off the road when coming round a bend on a strange road and straight into the sun and completely lost track or where the road went.

I don't want to derail this thread any further so all I'll say is that I don't agree with the idea of driving slow enough on a motorway (highway) to guarantee that you can stop for anything that may be lying in the road. If there was a drunk person lying in the middle of the motorway when I'm doing 70, by the time I realise what it was and that it is in my lane it would probably be too late to stop. But I'm not going to start driving at 40 just so I can avoid this situation, because the chances of that happening is so small that it's not worth worrying about. If that makes me an idiot to you then that's fine. You'll probably have a pretty hard time finding a driver who you don't think is an idiot.

Fine, if you do as i suggested it'll give you an edge, though, perhaps enough to make the difference.

An edge over what? Going that slow is probably as much of a hazard as the junk in the road. You seem to be the only person that engages that unecessary level of caution when driving at night.

I had a crash about 12 months ago.
Been driving since I was 17 and I'm now 25 without any incident until last year.

I smashed into a Honda Civic and after the impact all the snow from my roof slid onto my Windscreen and covered it completely (plus it was like half-frozen ice so the wipers wouldn't shift it).
My initital thoughts were as follows:

1) I hope the damage is much less expensive than the insurance excess on my 3rd party policy... yeah right!
2) What a retard... who the (French Connection United Kingdom) brakes immediately after accellerating out of a junction at a rather fast speed in the God damn snow?!
3) I hope the driver of this Honda I've just crashed into realises the snow completely covering my windscreen is something which happened AFTER the crash otherwise I'm gonna look stupid.http://www.discussworldissues.com/fo...ies/wacko1.gif

However despite all the above... the one thought I did find myself ACTUALLY lingering on for quite sometime after approaching the person I crashed into was this:

"Why are you crying so much womanhttp://www.discussworldissues.com/fo.../confused1.gif... We had a LOW SPEED crash (I'm guessing about 10-15mph impact speed) in which nobody was hurt and we are both insured. Seriously it's not like you just survived a nuclear explosion... get a grip"


However the Civic came out completely unscathed... durable little demons they are.
My Peugeot has joined the piles of rusting metal at the local scrapper however.

Where there's (fake) pain there's a claim....

10 points to the man...
Yes she apparently put in a claim for whiplash, along with the damages.
Either way I don't care because it didn't bump up my insurance a hell of a lot and my no claims were protected but the principle of her claiming damages was a shitter (I sent photos to my insurer because there was NOTHING wrong with her car) and whiplash...Whiplash....WHIPLASH. I've suffered worse pain from sitting up in bed too quickly than i felt in that "collision"

Bah... rant over

You seem to be a safety freak. You can see just fine at night going 70mph. I think you are worrying about nothing.

No, he's not. You drive for the conditions. If that means you can only do 40mph because of the risk of hydroplaning, or because the roads are so wet your stopping distance has increased by a factor of 8 then that means you go slower.

Most of the highways here are well lit. Meaning that you can drive them without any headlights at all and still see the road fine. But what really helps more than anything else is that our lane dividers have reflectors built in. Headlights and running lights also severely increase your visibility to other drivers as much as helping your own vision. While your lights may only illuminate a few hundred feet, your lights are visible from THOUSANDS of feet away by other drivers in normal weather.

I will be the first to tell people that I do speed.

But in poor visibility conditions such as rain, fog, snow, I slow down for visibility, and traction reasons. If I can't SEE a car in front of me, and my visibility is limited to 200ft, then I'm NOT going to be going 70mph (102.6ft/s). In all likely hood I'll be closer to 30mph. 30mph is 44ft/s, which if you are being paranoid thats enough time to react and stop when your visibility is 200ft. Thats about 4 seconds, and if you are ready to stop because you are actively looking for hazzards. I will even go slower. I've done 10 to 15mph on the highway before because of weather.

Now, if one is NOT paying attention to the road, then no amount of reaction time can save you because you are being reckless.

Read this. http://www.visualexpert.com/Resources/reactiontime.html

Expectation

Reaction times are greatly affected by whether the driver is alert to the need to brake. I've found it useful to divide alertness into three classes:

• Expected: the driver is alert and aware of the good possibility that braking will be necessary. This is the absolute best reaction time possible. The best estimate is 0.7 second. Of this, 0.5 is perception and 0.2 is movement, the time required to release the accelerator and to depress the brake pedal.
• Unexpected: the driver detects a common road signal such as a brake from the car ahead or from a traffic signal. Reaction time is somewhat slower, about 1.25 seconds. This is due to the increase in perception time to over a second with movement time still about 0.2 second.
• Surprise: the drive encounters a very unusual circumstance, such as a pedestrian or another car crossing the road in the near distance. There is extra time needed to interpret the event and to decide upon response. Reaction time depends to some extent on the distance to the obstacle and whether it is approaching from the side and is first seen in peripheral vision. The best estimate is 1.5 seconds for side incursions and perhaps a few tenths of a second faster for straight-ahead obstacles. Perception time is 1.2 seconds while movement time lengthens to 0.3 second.

I'm all for driving for the conditions but generally it's the over-cautious drivers that make things even more dangerous by crawling along and dithering.

Amen (Amended to be more than 6 characters)

Gordo is right, and it takes a certain type of stupid to not drive to the conditions.

That is true, said driver in clear/dry/mild traffic conditions doing 50mph in the right hand lane when the flow is averaging 65 is a problem. They are causing traffic to bunch up.

The same can also be said for the man doing 75mph when traffic is averaging 65mph and there is no clear path ahead of him. Aka, he's "pushing" people out of the way with aggressive driving.

Both forms are dangerous. Overly aggressive is just as bad as overly cautious.

Nothing is unsafe with doing 75mph on a 4 lane highway with little to no traffic on a clear, sunny day. A highway like that is perfect for it. Limited access, clear views of the edges of the road. But 75mph down a 4 lane city street with cars parked on both sides blocking the view of pedestrials. People and cars everywhere trying to cross the street, or merge...etc.

The road conditions determine how fast you can go.

Driving normal speeds limited visibility conditions is stupid. There isn't enough time to react. Driving normal speeds in limited traction conditions even when there is good visibility is also bad because even if you can react quickly enough, the car cannot stop quickly enough.

Here's an example. If you can stop a car from 60mph in 100ft (super car territory), that same car will take at about 300ft to stop from 120mph. Doubling the speed, triples the stopping distance.

So lets take the traction and throw bad weather into the mix. You have half the traction. So instead of stopping in 100ft from 60, it takes 200ft. Now your stopping distance from 120mph will be closer to 600ft, nearly 1/8th of a mile.

We aren't saying you can't do 55mph on a highway in winter. That depends on us knowing for a fact what the traction is, visibility..etc we don't.

What we are saying is that a driver must take into account the conditions of the road and weigh the risks.

There are days I've taken a half day, because I didn't want to be an idiot and drive through a zero visibility blizzard, or a rain storm so bad the car is hydroplaning all over the place because of the water puddling in the depression where cars usually tread.