I live in metro Melbourne and rarely drive in regional areas.
Today, I was driving on the Hume Freeway, and the rain was significant at times. Even though I felt it is quite unsafe to drive at the normal speed (110km/h), most drivers seemed to care less. I felt that I might lose grip. I ended up driving around 95-100km/h on the left lane to see vehicles piling behind me before overtaking.
What would you do in these conditions?
Call it an investment. Rubbish houses are worth a lot if you call it an investment.
Tell us what you drive, that might be your answer…
Ok. mine is a MY08 Mitsubishi Outlander with 4x4. I was on 4wd mode. My tyres are Hankook HP2. They have done closer to 40,000 km. Have not done any tyre checks after fitting. Still have plenty of threads (already booked a tyre service to clear my mind).
4wd mode does a whole lot of nothing driving on the highway. How long have you been driving, and how much experience in the wet?
I've been driving on and off for around 10 years (used public transport and bike mainly for getting around). Not many experiences in the wet, specially on highways
@TKC: That's probably your issue then. Lots of people drive on wet highways all the time, and have plenty of experience doing so.
That depends on the default 2WD mode. AWD is certainly better in the wet than RWD - because if the front aquaplains then it tends to spin alerting the driver and moving the water away. On a RWD car (without electronic aids) the front aquaplaning can go unnoticed until the driver tries to steer. This is not such a problem in FWD cars (although they have their own issues).
@macrocephalic: I didn't have any problem noticing my 2wd car briefly aquaplane on the highway. It was quite a fright. Can't imagine anyone not noticing actually.
I drove one of those a couple of years ago (rental) and I thought it handled like a boat. So it should feel right at home in the rain! lol
Username checks out
I wouldn't be driving on sealed roads in 4wd mode regardless of weather, with the exception of some snows. If you lack confidence in your ability to drive in the wet try doing an advanced course and learn more about your vehicle and its tyres.
is it a AWD or full time 4WD car? if it is a part time 4WD car and you drive at high speeds will damage the transmission.
It has 2WD, on-demand 4WD (auto AWD) and 4WD-lock. I was on 4WD-lock (full time 4WD) and was using cruise. I assumed full time 4WD provided more traction in situations like these.
@Euphemistic: Not in the outlander, the "4WD Lock" mode is not locking any diffs, it is just sending power to the rear all the time, vs the 4WD mode, which only sends power to the rear when the front slips. So it is perfectly fine to use on sealed roads in the dry, just probably unlikely to get any benefit.
@md333: Learned something today! So it’s not really a 4wd lock mode at all. It’s AWD. Normal lexicon is that 4wd lock is locked centre diff - which is no good for on road, maybe in really wet conditions, but not for damp roads.
I was on 4WD-lock (full time 4WD) and was using cruise.
That is made for a low gear & off-road situation on that sort of car. E.g. Clamboring up or down a rocky slope.
Going cruising in high gear with 4wd locked on is going to greatly reduce the life of your transmission.
@Tambani: Ohhh no, don't lock the centre diff on road!! it can (and does) lead to the driveline 'binding up' when you try and turn (during a turn the front and rear diffs will want to spin at different speeds, but with it locked, they can't).
If you're lucky you'll come out unscaved, if not.. you can break a CV or even worse split the transfer case.
In addition to that, locking that centre diff leads to understeer which won't give you any confidence on wet roads.
@MrKnowItAll: It's not a diff lock, outlanders don't even have a centre diff lock.
You need to understand what the modes are on the particular car, as different manufacturers (even different models) use similar names for different things. 4WD lock in an outlander is just the mode where it drives 4 wheels all the time instead of only engaging the rear when the front starts slipping. Totally different to other 4WDs that actually lock a centre diff, and harmless even with dry bitumen.
@md333: Thanks mate, good to know that they don't actually lock equal power to front / rear, might have saved OP from a costly repair bill.
Upon reading, seems that 4x4 auto sends at least 14% to the rear at all times and 4x4 lock is up to 60% to the rear wheel. A little odd to call it '4x4 lock' when it doesnt really lock anything.
@TKC: I reckon the issue you had was due to cruise control.
I am surprised others haven't picked up on it.
I would never use cc in wet conditions.
Ok. mine is a MY08 Mitsubishi Outlander with 4x4. I was on 4wd mode. My tyres are Hankook HP2. They have done closer to 40,000 km. Have not done any tyre checks after fitting. Still have plenty of threads (already booked a tyre service to clear my mind).
So you drive a huge car and never check your tyres, but other drivers are the ones who couldn't care less?
Well, I do annual servicing with the same mechanic. When I asked him the last time (March 2020), he did not report any issues. What I meant was I did not check it with Beaurepaires or similar.
You have 40,000km and never had a check? What about a rotate? Are you sure half your tyre on the inside isn't completely bald and shredded?
Yep. I do rotations every 5000km. Gives a chance for tyre wear and undercar inspection and clean back of wheels
.
I went to the local Bob Jane and got my tyres tested. As they said, my front tyres have around 5 -10k and rear are all good. Though they did not see a reason to rotate tyres at this point, I got tyres rotated. I will be looking at tyre deals on OzB in the coming months.
its not recommended to drive in selected 4wd mode on concrete / bitumen roads at speed
Because people are idiots. Especially when driving.
I'd love to hear from the people that negged you. The number of people that were driving without headlights during the rain was pissing me off.
The number of people who drive with no headlights on at night astounds me! Especially when you know the the car they're driving has automatic headlights too!
I ended up driving around 95-100km/h
Why were you driving so fast in the rain?
@jv - you and the OP are both from Melbourne.
How fast should OP be driving in the said scenario?
In rain, on the Hume, probably around 80-90 Max.
You're being negged for talking sense
You're a rolling hazard if you drive 20-30km/h under the limit while everyone else is near the limit.
@bobbified: You're a rolling hazard if you drive 20-30km/h over what is a safe speed whilst it's raining heavily.
If you're the only one
If you're not the only one, the issue is with the irresponsible drivers, driving unsafely in the wet…
@bobbified: Your safe speed should not be dictated by signs or other drivers, particularly in poor conditions.
@Euphemistic: I'd agree with you in principle, but if everyone else is able to drive "safely" at the speed limit in certain conditions and you seem to be the only one that doesn't think it's safe, I'd say that there's a pretty good chance that problem is in your own lack of confidence or ability to drive.
@bobbified: Maybe I should have been clearer. Per car on the road there are far more accidents in the wet. It is a much more dangerous time to be driving. Same as at night, in the snow, in fog, etc.
@nigel deborah: On suburban streets, I'd agree with you.
But for a 110km/h motorway, I'd actually be very interested in seeing any stats you might have that show any significant increase between wet and dry conditions. There's really not that all much to crash into if you keep a safe distance between cars. There's also no sudden direction changes that could cause the car to simply lose traction.
@bobbified: There's plenty of studies floating around, this one looks fairly good.
That said, it doesn't clearly differentiate between freeways and other roadways.
At the end of the day fatal accidents happen on freeways pretty often, and in wet weather you don't stop or turn nearly as well as in the dry. You may also have worse visibility. This obviously makes driving more dangerous.
everyone else is able to drive "safely" at the speed limit
I think you mean everyone else thinks they can drive safely at the speed limit. I’d be surprised if more than half have ever really controlled a car, driven at the limit and known what to do when the limit is exceeded. I’d say the majority of drivers do nothing more than go from A-B in traffic 90% of the time and haven’t spent sufficient time on country highways in the wet.
Many drivers wouldn’t have a clue what to do in an emergency and okie in at the speed limit because in this country we’ve been taught that the speed limit is virtually the only thing you need to worry about.
@Euphemistic: It is one of the biggest drawbacks of speed limits and many other road rules. Entitled, ignorant road users believe that as long as they are following 'the rules' then they are operating their vehicle safely, without ever stopping to think critically. Partly because thanks to those road rules they have not (yet) been in a situation where they lost control of their vehicle.
Many of the comments about how safe 'modern specced 4x4s' are on wet roads clearly highlights this.Take one out on a skidpan for 5 minutes and you'll find out.
@jv: Everyone loves to sit in a traffic jam during heavy rain because someone decided to drive too fast and close the freeway due to multi car collision cause by one guy running into back of 1 car and pushing them into multiple other cars.
It is a good trade off trying to save 20 mins with potential of sitting there for 2 - 3 hrs while emergency services tries to clear the wreckage.
You're a rolling hazard if you drive 20-30km/h under the limit while everyone else is near the limit.
Everybody should be driving as if there's a tree across the road coming up.
Don't blame others in front of you for not being observant and driving no faster than you can see.
Ah so that was you hahaha…yeah nah
Honestly most speed limits on motorway's are already overly conservative so really most people on the outer lanes are over the speed limit by 10-20 during dry/clear conditions (in NSW at least), so really most just adjust for rain by coming down to the speed limit when rain is present, which happens to still be a legal speed.
It sucks as most motorways in Sydney, and I'd presume Melbourne (given my few trips down) have variable speed limit signs that can be easily adjusted to cater for weather and not just traffic/accidents. Would be nice to have some model like France to have higher limits, i.e. 120-130 (or whatever is appropriate) during clear weather and then have 90-110 (20-30 below) for rain/poor conditions.
Add to that most people have shitty tyres on their cars that make them feel unconfident in the wet, whilst most decent brands perform just fine in the wet. I hope linglongs and other non-name-brand tyres that really are sub-par and otherwise not ADR approved are removed from the market/ banned from importation and are hopefully monitored during annual inspections and weeded out of the system. Just my 2c's
Just to note not all state have mandatory annual inspections…. Vic for example. You could buy a car and never have it serviced, never change your tires/brakes and possibly get away with that for 10 years if the car doesn't break down first.
Yeah I'm aware, I believe its only NSW & NT that have an annualised inspection policy in place.
It seems truly ridiculous that other states don't have a similar system in place to ensure roadworthiness of vehicles, given that they spam you with 'Road Safety' ads and actively state that "Speed Kills", when in reality many high-speed zone accidents (whilst maybe not fatal) are also a result of poor vehicle condition among other things. Going off what I've noticed in friends and Ozb users alike, those who aren't car enthusiasts are generally quite poorly educated when it comes to automotive maintenance and have little knowledge or regard to maintaining their vehicles via basic periodic checks (i.e. Tyre Pressure/tread depth and Engine oil).
I recently experience this where after helping a mate buy a car about 10 months ago, he subsequently never checked anything on his car and messaged me about a warning light a couple months back. Turned out to be the TPMS (lucky it was a newer car), and upon taking him to the servo and showing him how to fill up tyres, I noticed that the rears were at 16psi (no nails or anything, just low pressure). Being a med student he'd driven at least a dozen times between Syd and Coffs over the few months prior so I was amazed that he never noticed the whole time, and was thankful nothing more serious occurred.
Whilst the system in place in NSW has its faults, it does some good at ensuring the general condition of vehicles are somewhat tolerable and in theory caps the roadworthy issue to 12 months. At a minimum, most inspection places will warn you to change tyres and provided you use a decent brand, you'd be improving the overall safety of your vehicle.
Unfortunately however, once a vehicle comes to its first/second tyre change, its perceived as 'old' by its owner and hence for most people the tyre change decision is purely dictated by price. As I mentioned earlier it would be great to have to have an auditing system to get rid of sub-par/non-ADR approved tyres.
There's a notable lack of transparent road safety stats IMO - what percentage of crashes are speed-related without contributing factors of driver impairment, poor vehicle condition, poor road condition, other rule breaches etc?
You can always say 70%+ of crashes are "X"-related if they're substantially correlated
It seems truly ridiculous that other states don't have a similar system in place to ensure roadworthiness of vehicles
It is just another cottage industry. It is like all the safety features on cars to try to stop people doing stupid things. People still find ways to do stupid things. The law books are thick enough. The lack of common sense is beyond a joke.
Kindly reminder, please turn on headlight during raining, it helps to be more visible on road.
Noted.
So, who's the clown that negged this useful PSA?
Please turn them on anytime you are on a freeway, it helps to be more visible on the road.
Especially on county roads when cars need to drive in the opposing lane to overtake
Call me silly, but returning from a lot of driving in Europe I've recently picked up a habit of always having them on no matter the conditions.
I drive at the speed limit when the road is wet or it's raining. If there's rain or spray from the road, I turn on my headlights.
I will slow down when the road conditions demand it, such as when a road is twisty or there is standing water on the road. I will also slow down if the rain is really heavy and impeding visibility. I have a fresh set of tyres. Please stop buying rubbish brand tyres. There is a difference. I once put a set of Supercats on my car. Never again. Easily lost grip on wet road markings, easily squealed, and the lack of grip was appalling. Pay $10 extra per tyre and get something far better.
A couple of years ago I drove during a typhoon in Japan. Even though it was 4pm, conditions were very dark with wipers on maximum speed and very low visibility. Despite this I still had people tailgating me on one lane country roads. I sped up to the speed limit and they still tailgated. Madness.
Japan road speed is Sign +20km/h outside of citys.
Is that official or what people tend to think/do?
I think its the same in US? EVERYONE was speeding. Heck - I got overtaked by a large load truck with an escort! I'm in VIC so out of habit I spend 99% of my time looking at the speedo for "safety reasons"
@whatthecrappin: I totally understand. If I dont keep my eyes on the speedo I can drift over easily. Especially when I was younger. I was always paranoid about speeding and paid little attention to what was on the road… Luckily I survived. Now I drive with adaptive cruise control, speed limiter and HUD and can focus on the road. Plus I now live in Tasmania where the speeding laws arent perhaps as strictly enforced as in Victoria…
I spend 99% of my time looking at the speedo
Get a cruise control and use it. Then you might be able to spend more than 1% of your time looking where you are going.
@whatthecrappin: Yep. My mind was blown driving a coast ride like the great ocean road in hawaii and having a 80kph speed limit. It was honestly very difficult driving, light rain, high speed, lots of blind corners…And yet I had a queue of 20 cars behind me overtaking me one by one. Eventually the final car in the queue was a cop who also overtook.
I tailed them a little to try and get an idea of the speed and everyone was doing 20 over. Asked my hostel owner later about it and he told me "aw yeah stay about 20mph within the limit and you're fine. I asked what the fine was for going over that and he told me it would probably just be $20 on the spot.
I'm usually an advocate for loosening the rules on speeding here (been booked one too many times at 104kph late on the geelong highway) but jesus are other countries relaxed.
From my experience it's more like +40-50km/h. Freeways are sometimes set at 80km/h but no one goes at that speed, including police.
I drive slowly if I feel unsafe. I keep to the speed limit normally. I am sure the car will do fine, but I don't want to risk it.
I once drove past a car that smashed onto a truck. The top half was completely gone. So I want to keep my safe stopping distance.
One thing that I could not understand is people getting passive aggressive during all that, driving really close, high beaming me etc etc.
There is a difference between driving below the speed limit, and keeping a safe stopping distance.
I drive slowly if I feel unsafe about the road condition.
Also, yes, they are completely different concepts. I was just talking about all the things I do to try to stay safe basically.
That said I think keeping a safe distance from the car in front does require you to drive slower than the car in front a lot of the times, especially in the rain? Whether that's below the speed limit or not would depend on how fast you are driving and how fast the other car is driving.
Not gonna deny, I probably underestimate how much the car can do. That said, I don't want to put myself in the situation where I need to rely on that to begin with.
Yep, no need to test limits, but then physics is physics right? So:
I think keeping a safe distance from the car in front does require you to drive slower than the car in front a lot of the times
How does this work? Keeping a safe distance is keeping a safe distance behind the car in front. You might need to slow down to get to that distance, but once at that distance the same speed is required to keep that distance…. And this is true in the dry AND in the rain amazingly enough.
Hence if that distance keeps getting bigger, you're not keeping a distance, you're just driving slower than the car in front.
@bargain huntress: Same speed refers to being the same speed as the car in front.
Sorry to confuse you.
@CMH: sorry to confuse you that's not what i meant
i mean you're correct that IF the car in front of you maintains a steady speed, then;
You might need to slow down to get to that distance, but once at that distance the same speed is required to keep that distance
but you are assuming that the car in front maintains a steady speed. if they speed up or slow down to maintain the distance you would also have to speed up or slow down
there are so many douches who drive distracted and just don't maintain a steady speed
so i dont think iridiumstem was wrong when he said
keeping a safe distance from the car in front does require you to drive slower than the car in front a lot of the times,
I drive at normal speed during wet conditions, but leave bigger gaps. If there is a visibility problem, i.e. storm, everyone slows down here
I agree - most drivers are way too close to the car in front of them.
The answer to your question is they drive at the speed limit in wet conditions to account for people like you that drive slower, and in general drivers who can't drive.
I was on the Monash in the rain today and the amount of cars that changed lanes unsafely and without proper gap selection was astounding. I think people should be more cautious in wet weather conditions, but that doesn't necessarily mean reduce speeds although keeping longer gaps between cars is a good idea.
I think people should be more cautious in wet weather conditions, but that doesn't necessarily mean reduce speeds although keeping longer gaps between cars is a good idea.
Exactly this.
Worse still those who think they should drive slower AND stay on the rightmost lane.
The faster cars clear the water quicker brah
/s incase anybody missed it
Donuts
look at all these people justifying their dangerous driving with their 'skill' and 'experience'
delusional
your 'experience' doesn't change the laws of physics
for a start wet weather reduces friction which increases the stopping distance
you need to double it
and that's if you drive safely in dry weather!
the signed speed limit is the maximum safe speed in ideal driving conditions
No ones telling you to tailgate in the dry or wet.
the signed speed limit is the maximum safe speed in ideal driving conditions
Thats just not true.
Oh really?
Citations please. Prove that it's not true.
Maximum safe speed for a loaded semi trailer? A 90s Triton with skinny tyres and drum brakes towing 3500kg? Or a brand new car with fat tyres and big brakes?
Speed limits are for the lowest common denominator.
Where's your source for the initial statement?
the queensland government department of transport and motoring
https://www.qld.gov.au/transport/safety/road-safety/wet-weat…
So you must be exceeding speed limit in school zones and eating a lot of fines and demerits?
Sigh some people's minds at work.
are you talking to me or presence?
if your're talking to me you're not making sense at all
the maxium safe speed limit in ideal driving conditions is always marked in a school zone. it is always low during school hours so people have time to break when unpredicatable silly children run into the road
You're right. @bargain huntress should have said "the signed speed limit is the maximum speed". End of.
I reckon OP is not from QLD. Otherwise he/she would have asked:
Why do most people
drive at the speed limit wet conditionsspeed all bloody time?