If I'm doing the math correctly, the universe is expanding at around 46 miles per second, which is around 165,000 mph. Is there some reason why humans could not overcome this speed limit? It doesn't seem that exceptionally fast (no where near as fast as the speed of light), and if you accelerate slowly to it, like over several days or weeks, the g-forces involved wouldn't be that extreme, would they? The video didn't really explain why we could never go fast enough to overcome the expansion rate.

Also, I thought most theortical physicists like Stephen Hawking believe that in the future technology could advance enough to allow us bend space-time and hence travel "faster than the speed of light" without actually travelling faster than the speed of light, basically like folding a piece of paper and sticking a pin through both sides. When you lay the paper down flat, the two holes will seem quite far away from each other, but when you fold the paper, the holes are right next to each other. Our current understanding of physics doesn't rule out the possibility (at least from a mathematical perspective) although generating the energy necessary to perform such a feat would of course be problematic.

They were likely travelling at or close to the speed limit on that road even. How does this sort of thing get on the internet? why would the girl want this seen?

@dannym3141 -- I agree with your fault figure, from a legal standpoint. But I would feel bad / partially "responsible" from a moral standpoint if I brake-checked a guy in that situation and he smashed into someone else. It would still be overwhelming / entirely the tailgater's fault, BUT if I hadn't been there and/or I hadn't brake-checked, the outcome would have been different.

I didn't explain the "assumptions" that I'm talking about very well in my original post here. Anything can happen, but we make all sorts of assumptions that very low probability things that *could* happen won't. We also subconsciously prepare for some of those low-probability things to make them even lower probability (drive slower than legal speed limit in rain, etc.). That's the sort of thing I wanted to comment on, but I rambled and didn't make that clear. Sorry.

In general, yeah, the brake checker should have pulled over.

However, if you look around the 20s mark, you can see another vehicle coming in from the on ramp, so he couldn't really pull over.

It also depends on what the speed limits are on the road and what speed they were travelling at. If the brake checker was travelling at or near the limit, then the tail gater has no right to expect him to pull over.

This is a fair and accurate example of how reasonably priced trains are in England.

By way of another example, a U-Bahn (subway) ticket in Berlin is around 1 euro to go anywhere in the city (perhaps it's gone up since but still). To do the same for a few stops in London can often be in the region of £20+.

They are also slow as shit due to the generally low speed limits across most of the network. If you are lucky enough to be on one and not a hastily co-opted bus.

We might possibly have the worst (or least least value for money) rail service in the 1st world, though I'm prepared to consider counter examples.

Yeah, this really is beyond horrifying.

"PC is more scary that open totalitarianism"? Nope, here's your real villain: stealth totalitarianism. Fuck over your fellow man in the name of a higher score.

"Chairman, oppressing the citizenry is hard work!"
"Fear not! I have a cunning plan to make them oppress each other"

And by god will it work.... put a number beside a name and people will do anything to make that number go up.

As an example: my wife got a new car recently that shows your average fuel consumption in l/100km. I didn't pay any attention to it until I was playing in the settings and found I could switch the units to km/l. A completely innocuous change, right? Except now it's a number that can go up, and I am obsessed with making it go up everything I drive her car.

I set cruise control at the speed limit and brake as little as possible.

A/C? Not unless I am actually melting!

Corners? You'd be amazed at how fast you can round them if you let a machine control your speed!

Red lights? Er, yeah, I suppose I should stop, but then I'll have to accelerate again!

And that number doesn't even matter! FSM only knows what I'd do if it affected my mortgage rate or something....

I always dislike the lazy position that uninformed, 'natural' reactions are free from ethical scrutiny, while considered, planned decisions have to be assessed on the level of 'premeditated homicide'. Getting into a non-automated vehicle, or accelerating to potentially lethal (but legal) speeds, or even setting speed limits that experience shows will kill a few people every year and convenience millions, are all just as premeditated actions as the programmer trying to think of scenarios and algorithms to minimize damage. Automated vehicles don't bring anything really new to the 'acceptable risk morality' game, they just shine a different light on it.

Texas is actually very hard on their speed limit...lol, they will fuck you up for 6 over.

I take exception with the description. It CLAIMS there are 'warning lights', but I don't see any at all. it CLAIMS there are warning signs, but all I see is the single small 'caution' sign with terrible placement so it blends in with the speed limit sign and the junction boxes on the telephone pole. The only noticeable sign does not indicate any low clearance, it warns of grooved pavement ahead. It would be simple for them to put up the type of system where small weighted red balls hang from above WELL BEFORE THE BRIDGE that will hit any oversized truck AND trigger flashing warning lights on the bridge itself. Instead, they put up easily missed 'warning' signs, and a camera to catch the action they know is coming. I've been seeing footage of this bridge for years, there's absolutely no excuse for them not fixing the problem, yet they have not fixed it. If I were a truck driver caught out by this bridge, I would definitely sue the city for knowingly not fixing a known issue, and knowingly not even putting up visible warnings.

I highly doubt your car can be impounded for driving with an expired registration , even in PA. That is very nearly the least significant traffic violation there is. Of course, the police lie about that sort of thing all the time, which is probably the case here.

Even though people hate them, this is actually one of the reasons I'm all for automated traffic policing devices such as speed cams, stoplight cams and even more advanced devices as technology allows (with proper care for privacy in data collection). In the US, for instance, everybody knows you can generally drive up to 9 miles an hour over the speed limit without worry. This should not be the case. The police let this happen because if everybody is always technically speeding because that's just what's done, they can justifiably pull over and hassle whoever whenever they want to (read: minorities).

QFT
*fear - that jerk-off driving well in excess of the speed limit, nearly killed a lot of people.

I'm pretty sure the person that pulled out did look to his left before pulling out. He is about 20-30 metres from the junction and has completed the turn, this probably took a few seconds to complete the turn from stationary or near stationary and get away from the junction. The Ferrari driver looks to have covered somewhere between 100-200m of distance in this time.

The first sign the Ferrari driver passed was a warning sign of an awkward junction coming up ahead on his right so he should slow down. There are other warning signs and a speed limit clearly posted that he is in excess of.

He may be a talented car handler, but he's a poor (and dangerous) driver.

It's been my experience that it's kind of a myth that in Europe there are no or high speed limits. In fact at the 5 sec mark he blows past a men working sign and a speed limit sign of 30 kph. I kind of think he was doing a bit more than 30k. Also he blows past the construction site the split second before he almost hits the Mercedes. The Ferrari driver is a douche who would have gone to prison if he'd hit anybody and caused a death.

That looks like it had to be way beyond the speed limit for that road...

It is wrong.

Self driving cars are being programmed to get out of the way of emergency vehicles and break the speed limit or other minor traffic infringements where they judge it is safe to do so in order to get out of the way. Still plenty of work to be done, but this kind of obstinance is still better explained as human assholery.