Posted on 06/27/2005 8:37:42 PM PDT by Diddle E. Squat
Drivers in Texas, Iowa, and Indiana will enjoy higher speed limits next month as legislation raising the top speeds on rural roads takes effect.
On Friday, Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) signed HB 2257 into law making 80 MPH the maximum allowable speed in the state. Rural portions of I-10 and I-20 will enjoy the new top speed, while other rural roads could see the limit rise to 75 MPH. Both the state House and Senate adopted the legislation without opposition last month.
On July 1, a law signed by Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack (D) creating a 70 MPH speed limit goes into effect. This new limit better reflects the actual speed of cars on rural highways which averages 69.8 MPH according to sensors embedded into the pavement.
In May, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels (R) signed SB 217 into law raising the maximum limit from 65 MPH to 70 MPH in areas with less than 50,000 population. The law also raises the limit for trucks from 60 to 65 MPH, and gives a 10 MPH boost to several roads currently posted at 55 MPH. The state will begin placing the higher-limit signs on July 5.
(Excerpt) Read more at thenewspaper.com ...
Got it backwards., I meant faster cars on left. But obviously you never had a Mercedes bearing down on you at 200KPH with lights flashing for you to get out of the way.
Yep - it's the slow drivers hogging up the fast lanes that cause the trouble. That and big rigs who do the same.
Well, if they can't afford driver's ed, then they probably can't afford insurance, therefore it is illegal for them to be driving anyway. Time to clear the roads of the poor!
I don't doubt that it's true, just that I'll never go 55 again. Road Rage will be all the rage.
Strange enough, my past 5 cars have all gotten their EPA hwy rating at 80mph. I'm sure that they would have gotten better mileage at 55mph, but I'll never know.
Hold muh beer and watch this...
Were you in Naples? That makes Vegas traffic seem highly organized.
When it's 80 miles between towns and, often, 20 miles between intersections, 80 mph is a very reasonable speed limit.
Not that granny won't pass you, doing 90 per in her pickup.
When I first bought my new car last fall, I was generally traveling 60-65 mph on my long commute to work. More recently, I've been driving 70-75 mph. I've noted that I'm getting better gas mileage than before, 25.8 MPG versus 25.3. I attribute this to the higher speeds. Of course, my vehicle is European (BMW) so it may be calibrated for better gas mileage at the higher speeds than an American model.
Power required is proportional to velocity cubed, as bicyclists know. Takes a lot more power to increase speed by 1 mph when you're riding 20 mph than at 2 mph.
(I wonder how fast Governor Warner was riding when he took a tumble this afternoon.)
i dont know, I just remember hearing that 55 was like the best for efficiency. I looked at a few sites found alot of people saying 55 also.
Not *****ing up in a 75-80mph flow of moderate to heavy traffic is asking too much of the average US driver. All the more so at night or in inclement weather. 55-65mph in those conditions is already quite bad enough, another 10mph will mean even more wrecks and deaths.
But the same 75mph that is lethally fast during the workday commute is ludicrously slow in good conditions and off hours or rural areas with low traffic.
The problem here is that a fixed speed limit is fundamentally flawed. Over the course of an average day, changing traffic and weather conditions will vary the safe and reasonable maximum speed for any given roadway by a factor of at least 2 if not 3.
Putting a single number on a road is a compromise that is simply wrong for almost any given road condition. Tweaking that limit up or down will make it even more wrong for some driving conditions.
That said, as long as we are stuck with this fundamentally unworkable system, I'd rather it err on the side of freedom to kill ourselves than to pay more money to the king's highwaymen. Baby steps in the right direction.
People said the same thing when we (Texas) raised the limit to 70. The death rates did not increase. However, DPS officers did step-up enforcement of driving regulations and were more prone to issue citations and tickets for moving violations.
75 is a speed suggestion in NM. :-)
There have been time when I have flown past their highway patrol at about 80 to 85 and they just smile and wave.
I have noticed that as well. i keep track of my fuel economy and notice that when my cruise control is set between 70 and 75, I get at least 6MPG more than what my car is supposed to get on the highway. On the other hand , when I am on an FM road that is restricted to 55mph, my fuel economy is a bit below what I should get.
If you have good tires and brakes, that is not an unreasonably high speed. What bothers me about I-35 traffic in the DFW area are what my wife calls the "video-game" drivers who seems not to understand the concept of inertia, that vehicles have mass, and that it is a very, very bad idea to move in front of a heavily loaded 18 wheeler.
Also, people get tickets for following to closely (based on your speed).
The only speed zones on the Autobahnen are in cities, at a few congested interchanges, construction zones, and in some curvy mountain areas.
Most of the road system has no speed limit, and is readily negotiable at 140 mph.
Personally, I never felt comfortable going more than 110-115 mph.
The German Police focus intensely on ticketing slow people clogging up the passing lane, rather than going after speed violations.
The Austrians, OTOH, love to run speed traps on their part of the Autobahnen, as do the Czechs. Both those countries limit their identically constructed roads to an artificially slow 80 mph. OTOH, the Austrians allow for relatively very high speeds on rural 2 lane roads - 75 mph if I remember from driving the road from Vienna to Brno, with passing on the opposite lane allowed the entire length of the road. The roads were built wide enough to allow this, and all the drivers are intelligent and courteous enough to allow it to work.
The Italian Autostrada are also good for very high speeds, and although apparently they do have speed limits, though they do not appear to be enforced from my visits there. Nearly everyone was driving 90-120 mph.
American speed limits and roads and traffic enforcement are a pathetic joke. It is amazing supposedly "free" Americans put up with the imposition, which is little more than outright highway robbery by the state.
Didn't you read the signs?
"Bei Strasse Nass, fuss vom Gas!"
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