On paper that's perfectly fine.

In practice there seems to be a ton of correlation between people who say things like that and people who think their Fiat 500 stops like a garbage truck.

Funniest thing I've heard a kid say all month. My colleague's 7 year old daughter to him:

D: "Dad why does everyone honk at mom when she drive's us to school?"

F: "Because she drives too slow sometimes."

D: "Why doesn't she speed up?"

F: "I don't know. She's always been like that."

D: "I tried saying people are waiting for us to go [referring to a pretty benign yield right-on-red near their house]."

F: "How'd that go?"

D: "She didn't listen!"

I don't know why but it was absolutely hysterical to me. Kids are precious.

That's the speed you're supposed to drive at.

Yep. I remember being driven around roads like this with a friend with a high performance car who knew what he was doing, so could go what seemed like a terrifyingly high speed to me, but was perfectly safe for him. Then we hit some other cars going slower and he just followed at the same speed, infinitely patient for someone with a thirst for speed. Just completely happy to adjust to the appropriate speed for the situation.

People who know those roads drive fast, indeed, but it is not safe.

Visibility is poor and you cannot safely go through a bend at 50+ mph when you cannot see what's beyond it. There might be a stationary vehicle, a horse, a cyclists, even a pedestrian and you wouldn't know or be able to stop in time. This is how lethal collisions happen in those roads.

Exactly. All these people saying ‘well I know the road’.

Yeah you know THE ROAD not what might be in it this morning.

Makes sense, and I know driving in france I've felt the same. I also know driving in Canada our speed limits often cater to some lowest common denominator, where anyone driving the limit is going dangerously slow (I'm thinking of certain country roads) and inevitably has a long line of angry people following them.

I've heard before about setting speed limits using percentile studies of people driving on the road, which in the absence of some specific safety concern (which then needs engineering like narrowing the road or adding turns) makes the most sense.

I also wish there was more of a culture of pulling over if you don't want to drive at the flow speed. If I want a leisurely drive and see someone rapidly coming up behind me, I'll happily pull over and let them pass. There seem to be these sociopaths or self-righteous jerks who will happily drive 5km/h under the speed limit with 20 cars behind them. This is way more dangerous than speeding and should be treated as such. If you just want to drive slowly, why would you want the stress or a bunch of angry drivers behind you.

I think the concept of a “speed limit” is part of the problem. On controlled-access roads, I think it would be better for the posted speed to be advisory and, instead, train drivers to think of driving too slow for your lane as being just as dangerous as speeding because, in a moving group of cars, you want to be as close to 0mph relative to the other cars as is feasible.