US To Have Same Limits As Germany's Autobahn?

thedguy said:
Which is still odd for me, plates go with the car where I'm from. But the laws here get on my nerves, everyone always told me "registration is dirt cheap in missouri" and It is, my car is like $8 to register (under 67hp), but then there is still the personal tax. It seems like every time you deal with someone there is always something they conveniently leave out, and usually the most important/expensive bit.
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I agree, I'm originally from Oklahoma where a plate is on the car for it's life. It was even a selling point on car if you had just renewed the plates/registration. However, they had an excise tax and a plate on a new car could be quite expensive.

I like how Missouri keep adding fees to the price of a tag. I renewed the SVO's plate on the internet and they charged me something like $2 for a convenience fee on top of the $3.50 processing fee. Why not just empty my wallet? :lol:
 
TomCat said:
I actually enjoy driving in California. If California drivers know how to do one thing, it's drive in traffic. I've never driven on such crowded freeways at such high rates of speed. They seem to know that there are a lot of people and a lot of cars and in order to get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time, you have to drive as quickly as possible.

In Arizona we get all the "Snow Birds" in the winter. 80 year olds who don't like the snow anymore, so they live in Arizona and drive like there is 10 inches of powder on the roads. It use to be great driving in Arizona in the summer. The population would drop by 60% in the summer. But not anymore. Too many people moving in from out of state, and none of them know how to drive.
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I've heard about arizona drivers. My Brother lived there for a year or 2, says for some reason people there will drive bumper to bumper no matter what. Could be the only 2 cars on the road, could be 500, they will be tailgating.

California drivers handle traffic well because, well thats all thats there. And it's the only way to get around, all forms of public transportation suck ass. When traffic does pick up here, I'm usually pulling 3 or 4 cars a long with me through traffic. People don't realize the whole "jump in the lane thats moving" trick usually gets you stuck further back. Watch the patterns of what lanes moving when, then make your move. Looking as far ahead as possible helps to, it's amazing the number people who drive like they are playing GT2 and only look 4 feet in front of them.

Deanodriver said:
Is that $8 for a year? Registration here is about $500 a year, and it's among the cheapest in the country.
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It's been a couple of years since I had to register the car, we can do registration in 1 or 2 years. If I recall the registration fee and plates were $30-40, and the personal tax on the car was another $30 a year. Even in California the entire registration a year on the car not including smog testing was under $100 US.

One of the many reason I much prefer older second hand cars. You may be inheriting someone else's problems, but not the horrible depreciation.
 
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zenkidori said:
Actually you aren't. Hot Rodding is one of the few good things the south has given us, not California.
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Lol, bootleggers FTW?!?
 
The type of Hot Rodding we see today got its start in California.
 
To get back on topic (kind of), another voice from Germany :)

I do like the idea of adaptive speed limits - some limit depending on traffic density and no limit when theres hardly any traffic at all. This would make it illegal for light flashing idiots to annoy everyone (and on average be 5 km/h faster than traffic) but then make it legal to drive at decent speeds when theres no traffic. And as I have experienced, 130 km/h is *not* a decent speed for long journeys. I like to cruise at 150 and even doing 900 km somewhere around that speed doesn't make me feel stressed out. I guess I would go faster than that in a different car, but far above 150 fuel economy of the Sharan begins to be worrying ;-)

Honestly doing the same amount of time in Sweden at the 110 km/h speed limit doesn't make me tired as well, but once I arrive I have covered 200 km less and I don't get where I want to go before I fall asleep.

And getting back to high traffic situations: I have done a lot of driving during daytime in crowded areas as well. I always averaged about 110 even in those conditions without needing to use my break all the time. Therefor the last change of front brake pads is about 100.000 km ago and now the mechanic said its time to change them.
 
zenkidori said:
Actually you aren't. Hot Rodding is one of the few good things the south has given us, not California.
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No, thats nascar. They did everything they could to keep cars looking stock, and built cars to handle with loads of weight in them. They preferred sedans with high windows, the '39 Ford is the de-facto classic bootlegger-mobile. Hot rodding was only about going fast, not about carrying cases of moonshine.

California gave us the chopped up/stripped down t-buckets, the multi-engined dragsters, and the like. Why do you think the first Drag strip in the US was an air strip in Southern California, why do you think the NHRA ( and it's museum) are based on California? Any wonder why the group that does the timing for record runs at Bonneville (in Utah) is called the "Southern California Timing Association"? Hot Rod magazine is based in California, most of the early popular rodders are from there and still there.

It's safe to say, hot rodding started in California. The South built fast, heavy duty cars out of necessity, the Californian's did stripped out racers for fun. Flip thru any books, or magazines and very few, if any, would say anywhere but there started hot rodding.
 
zenkidori said:
credit card rods got started in cali, that's about it.

california FTL.
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While this is unfortunately true, what sources do you have to prove the South created the hot rod?

BTW, the most victorious builder of Indy 500 Engines and midget racer engines was also from Long Beach.

I'm struggling to think of any famous, or well known people from the south involved in hot rodding in general, let alone back then.

http://www.nhra.com/content/about.asp?articleid=3263&zoneid=101
Born on the backroads of America in the post World War II years, drag racing's roots were planted on dry lake beds like Muroc in California's Mojave Desert, where hot rodders had congregated since the early 1930s and speeds first topped 100 mph.
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http://www.hotrod.com/thehistoryof/hot_rod_history/
However, this homegrown phenomenon reached its zenith in Southern California. The Southland?s combination of year-round summer, high-tech industries (both movie and aircraft), hungry race-car builders, wide streets and dry lakes generated what were called ?hot jobs,? essentially denuded Model T roadsters augmented by the offerings of Ed Winfield, Harry Miller and Pierre Bertrand. Because of Southern California?s remoteness, ensured by the physical barrier of the San Gabriel mountains and the high desert, hot rodding remained virtually undetected until the 1940s when two events occurred: World War II and HOT ROD magazine. With that short introduction in place, we will commence with our pictorial overview of the rise and haul of hot rodding.
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http://autos.msn.com/Advice/Article.aspx?contentid=9226
California, especially the dry lakes region in the southern part of the state, generally is regarded as the birthplace of hot rods.
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man in a van said:
To get back on topic (kind of), another voice from Germany :)

I do like the idea of adaptive speed limits - some limit depending on traffic density and no limit when theres hardly any traffic at all. This would make it illegal for light flashing idiots to annoy everyone (and on average be 5 km/h faster than traffic) but then make it legal to drive at decent speeds when theres no traffic. And as I have experienced, 130 km/h is *not* a decent speed for long journeys. I like to cruise at 150 and even doing 900 km somewhere around that speed doesn't make me feel stressed out. I guess I would go faster than that in a different car, but far above 150 fuel economy of the Sharan begins to be worrying ;-)

Honestly doing the same amount of time in Sweden at the 110 km/h speed limit doesn't make me tired as well, but once I arrive I have covered 200 km less and I don't get where I want to go before I fall asleep.
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Any wonder why Sammy Hagar made a song in called "I can't drive 55" when the US instituted the "55 to stay alive" crap? 1800 miles going through flat desert at speeds under 75 sucks donkey balls.
 
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