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What? No they don't. Only a minority of drivers go that fast anywhere I've lived.
Yes they do, in my American coastal experience.
I'm willing to accept "Americans on the coasts routinely speed a lot", but not "Americans routinely speed a lot". The latter isn't true.
I have driven as far west as Las Vegas and as far east as NYC, I don't even know how many multi-day road trips, etc. I have a family member who sets the cruise control to the speed limit and doesn't touch the gas. We can go hours getting passed non-stop while never once catching up to a car ahead of us. Either everyone who isn't speeding is also doing the cruise control at exactly the speed limit thing, or almost nobody is driving at or under the speed limit. I often complain about how dangerous it is because even the 18 wheelers all want to pass us and that shit is risky on a two lane country road.
That says that most Americans speed, which I agree with. What I disagree with is the claim that most Americans are going 10 mph over the speed limit (let alone more).
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In my American lifetime of anecdata coastal Americans and Texans very far from any coast love to speed.
And given the distribution of population in the US, I think that's most people. But yes, I've seen reddit threads were posters bafflingly ask questions about why anyone would speed. So someone somewhere thinks the norm is to drive 60 miles per hour on the freeway. Midwest or deep South maybe? Someplace I don't go apparently.
Were those posters possibly people who don't do much interstate driving? My experience is that you're much more likely to find speeding on the interstate than on a non-interstate highway, and more likely to find it on a highway than on local roads. This also applies to the magnitude of the speeding: on a highway, you might be going the limit at 45 along with most of the other drivers, but there'll be a couple cars who go past you at 50, whereas on the interstate the posted limit will be 65 and the speed of traffic as a whole will be between 70 - 75.
Personally speaking, I follow speed limits fairly religiously on non-interstate roads, but am willing to go 5 or so over the speed limit on the interstate, or up to 10 over if the driving conditions are good, everybody else is going at that speed, and the speed limit isn't already something pretty high like 70. I seem to recall that this was a bit of an acquired behavior on my part: when I was younger and most of my driving was local, I would obey the speed limit pretty much everywhere, but then got less strict with my interstate speeds the more I drove on the interstate. So I could see somebody who mostly drives local not realizing how going faster than legal is more common on interstates.
I've driven in various places in the Midwest, and I don't think I've ever encountered a place where everybody stuck to the speed limit on the interstate. I guess here it would depend on what percentage of people would have to be going faster before this would be considered "the norm". If 20% of drivers are going 5 over, is considered abnormal (because the vast majority of people are going the speed limit), or is it normal (because it's consistently present behavior)?
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The average highway speed in light traffic seems likes it’s pretty consistently around 80, which is 5-15 over the speed limit.
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Really? People don’t routinely go at least ten over on highways and rural roads where you live? We have vastly different experiences then. In the city where I work, even the timed lights require you to go about five MPH over the speed limit to avoid hitting a red light.
No. Both where I live now (Denver) and where I lived previously (northeast Wisconsin), people going 10 mph over were in the minority. People routinely go 5 over, but not 10 (let alone more).
Every state I have driven in, has had the exact same thing on the freeways, at least 10mph over being the norm. From PA to Kentucky to Florida to Louisiana to Minnesota.
Having said that I have never been to Colorado or Wisconsin so I can't say you are wrong there.
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Where I am, 5 over is ubiquitious on city streets and 10 over is common on city freeways where the speed limit is 60, most drivers go 65, and 70 is common during rush hour or among people in the left lane.
Sometimes I think that's bad, then I go to Nearby Big City and drivers ubiquitously go 70 on freeways where the limit is 60, with 75 being somewhat common and 80 not at all unheard of.
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