A few thoughts… About speed limits and why people ignore them

By Sandy Compton
Reader Columnist

By some combination of luck and perseverance, I am six weeks into a 60-day drive-and-fly road trip. This is the vacation I planned to take when I retired from working for other people. It was put on hold for five years courtesy COVID-19. 

Forty-five days into it, after rambling through Montana, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, Oregon and even California, I’ve made my way to Hawaii, specifically the island of Maui. It’s been a good experience, if not always fun. There are too many people on this island, and on the larger one we call Earth, as well. Having said that, I will also say that may or may not be true. I’m the one that doesn’t like crowds. I’m sure there are many others who are more comfortable in close company than I. 

There are no speed limits on Maui. There are speed limit signs, which the population ignores, so speed limits themselves seem nonexistent. Even when I force myself to drive 10 miles an hour over in self-defense, others zoom by me as if I am doing only the speed limit. 

Sandy Compton. Courtesy photo.

This phenomenon is not confined to Maui, but the island is small and doesn’t have a lot of highways, but it has lots of cars — some homeless people even have cars — so it seems intensified. The highways it does have sport speed limit signs; never above 55, and often 45 or 35 (which are thought to mean 75, 60 and 50). Some signs have minimum speeds posted. I laugh at the thought, and I wonder what’s the big hurry. 

Where frantic drivers everywhere are rushing off to may not be the point at all. It might be an automatic response to the millisecond world in which we live. Maybe it’s an unconscious urge to be always first in line at the grocery store or the gas station or the stoplight (fat chance). Maybe it’s just a high-speed homing instinct pointing the frantic to anywhere but where they are right now. 

I don’t like driving among lead-footed, lane-changing, race-car-driver wannabes. I can, and do, and will continue to do so, but it wears on my middle finger — as if anyone ever looks in their rearview mirror — and my sense of order, of which there is not much on HI 380 at 5:30 on any afternoon. 

Since beginning this journey, I have spent a lot of time on roads that will definitely kill your car at 70 mph and likely you as well. At the same time, I’ve watched for lakes and rivers and beaches and mountains and trees and other interesting stuff to take too many pictures of; all the while being on the lookout for good camp spots, of which I have found a fair amount, and some not-so-good. But they have all been uncrowded. 

For reasons not to be revealed here, I had to go to Costco yesterday. It didn’t quite freak me out, but it tried. It reminded me again of my propensity to be shy of crowds and crowded places. Thankfully, there are still places to be alone, in whatever manner you define aloneness, even on the buzzing hive of Maui. This is good. It keeps sane people that way, by giving them a chance to get away from the rest of the crazy world. 

To get to these places, you have to walk, which I don’t mind doing. But, you can’t walk everywhere; at least not without chancing being run over by those in a frantic hurry. 

The question remains: Why are they in such a hurry? 

Whatever the reason, I don’t plan to join them.