Here we go...55 mph national speed limit

[Badbeams3]

http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/07/07/u-s-sen-john-warner-talks-up-55-mph-national-speed-limit/

This makes good sense. I know my mothers Sonata gets around 40 mpg at around 60 mph...according to the trip computer. Hard to stay at that speed without pissing everyone off.

But if 55 were brought back into law...also I would imagine a lot of expensive speeding tickets would be given out regulaly...that would help our police departments who are struggling for funding as property taxes drop along with home values. Help insurance companies as well...as they could charge higher rates to those who rack up points. Well screw that last thought ...but still great idea.

This will cut demand and help the price of gas drop...make the roads safer as well. :rock:

 

[FlashKat]

California already has enough stupid slow drivers which causes me to drive faster just to get around them on the highways. If they pass this law they need to pass a road rage law making it legal to shoot on sight of any idiots driving too slow.

 

[ConfederateScott]

I recently traveled from my hometown of Magnolia, Mississippi to Jackson, Mississippi. One way is 85 miles all on interstate highway. On the way there I drove 70mph using my cruise control. I got 17.5 MPG. On the way back I drove 55mph again using my cruise control. I got 24 MPG. Needles to say I drive 55 a lot more now. I believe a national speed limit of 55 would go a long way towards conserving gasoline and also save lives.

 

[jtr1962]

It's been argued that the 55 mph speed limit is responsible for an entire generation of bad drivers. Even today's higher than 55 mph speed limits are often at the 5th or 10th percentile, meaning 90-95% of drivers routinely violate them. Since drivers see they can safety break this traffic law, their behavoir carries over to other traffic laws, such as not stopping at red lights, where violation is defintely not safe. The end result is a country of unsafe drivers who routinely ignore traffic laws and common courtesy. Lowering the limit back to 55 mph will make this behavoir even worse. Also, legislating speed limits is a terrible idea in general. The original 55 mph limit got us into this habit. We never went back to letting traffic engineers decide the limit even after it was lifted. Quite a few states still have maximum state speed limits making it impossible for traffic engineers to set proper limits.

Lower speed limits also hinder automobile development. Had higher limits existed, we would have been using vehicles which were more efficient at those speeds, and incidentally at all speeds, rather than SUVs. Even when gas was $1.50 SUVs would have been too expensive to operate for most people had proper limits existed. We can make vehicles which are more efficient at 100 mph than most of today's vehicles are at 55 mph if there was the need. All a 55 mph limit does is act as a bandaid for poor vehicle design. Also, since the reason is to ostensibly save fuel, then what would be the deal with the soon-to-come electric cars which don't burn fuel at all? And for that matter why should a highly fuel efficient vehicle be limited to the same speed as a gas-guzzling SUV?

Lower speed limits are NOT the way to deal with higher energy prices. Besides being unenforceable, they have been proven to decrease safety. Slower speeds remove a driver's attention from the driving process. They end up doing other tasks besides driving with deadly results, or even fall asleep behind the wheel out of sheer boredom. If we're really determined to reduce the energy usage for travel in this country then we need a multitiered approach. For starters, we need a national high-speed rail system so that many long distance car or plane trips are done by train instead. We need to switch over from internal combustion engines to batteries and electric motors. We need to design vehicles which are inherently more efficient regardless of how they're powered. This means getting rid of the boxes which currently dominate the roads. It costs no more to shape a vehicle to cut through the wind, and the energy savings last for the life of the vehicle. Lastly, we need to set sane speed limits based on sound traffic engineering practice. Higher limits will encourage innovation.

Incidentally, the original 55 mph limit was the reason I totally lost interest in obtaining a driver's license. Driving at such a low speed made the auto totally useless to cover the large distances in the US from my perspective. Even today's slighter higher limits don't cut it from a transportation efficiency standpoint. How about the novel idea of letting traffic engineers set speed limits, and designing cars which can run safely and efficiently at those limits? Last I checked I don't think any lawmaker had a degree in traffic engineering, let alone was qualified to determine speed limits. I honestly can't believe the lawmakers are even discussing doing something this idiotic again. It didn't work then, it won't work now. If an individual wants to drive 55, that's their perogative. However, their decision shouldn't be forced upon the rest of us.

 

[Diesel_Bomber]

Eek! I'm semi-retired and on my way to completely so, but some of my frequent business trips are 250+ miles. At my usual ~80 mph speed that's a little over three hours. At 55mph that's 4.5 hours. Even if my time wasn't valuable enough to negate the added fuel consumption, that's another hour and a half I could be spending with my wife, soaking in the hot tub, sitting here surfing CPF, napping or reading in the hammock under the grape arbor out back, or........ You get the idea. I'll pay the extra $$$ and take the hour and a half of extra time.

I hope this doesn't happen. :buddies:

 

[LuxLuthor]

Don't get me started on more of the environmental terrorists using government rules and regulations to supposedly make your life better. They are dedicated to bring USA to its knees, while ignoring the growing elephants in the room, China & India.

I haven't gotten over the stupidity of one small toilet flush size fits all, even if you don't live in a water shortage area. Then comes the lame CFL light bulb, never mind those with old fixtures/dimmers that won't accept them...or the side effect of the mercury hazards from dropping/disposing of a CFL. Then the ignorant ethanol debacle which costs more to make & with devastating side effects on the global food supply.

I won't get into the increased fire risk side effects of these same enviro-terrorists restricting sensible logging which can thin and replant forests. No, let's just let them all burn down catastrophically in major bonfires of their vanities--that are many times more damaging on the environment, animals, people, and firefighting resources.

Now liberal environmental political-terrorists driven by their global warming psychoses are looking primarily at the energy conservation side of the equation. Fine, you want to do your girly conservation measures that will be a hardship on people with long driving distances, and those lower economic workers who now get hit with speeding tickets & higher insurance rates--then open up nuclear power, offshore & Alaska drilling exploration, clean coal mining/technology, shale oil production to name a few.

Better yet, lets just have the UN take over running the world. :shakehead

 

[Metatron]

Don't get me started on more of the environmental terrorists using government rules and regulations to supposedly make your life better. They are dedicated to bring USA to its knees, while ignoring the growing elephants in the room, China & India.

I haven't gotten over the stupidity of one small toilet flush size fits all, even if you don't live in a water shortage area. Then comes the lame CFL light bulb, never mind those with old fixtures/dimmers that won't accept them...or the side effect of the mercury hazards from dropping/disposing of a CFL. Then the ignorant ethanol debacle which costs more to make & with devastating side effects on the global food supply.

I won't get into the increased fire risk side effects of these same enviro-terrorists restricting sensible logging which can thin and replant forests. No, let's just let them all burn down catastrophically in major bonfires of their vanities--that are many times more damaging on the environment, animals, people, and firefighting resources.

Now liberal environmental political-terrorists driven by their global warming psychoses are looking primarily at the energy conservation side of the equation. Fine, you want to do your girly conservation measures that will be a hardship on people with long driving distances, and those lower economic workers who now get hit with speeding tickets & higher insurance rates--then open up nuclear power, offshore & Alaska drilling exploration, clean coal mining/technology, shale oil production to name a few.

Better yet, lets just have the UN take over running the world. :shakehead

amen to that.
our energy minister is trying to ban regular globes, i bet u 10 to 1 that he or his family have shares in concerns producing these new fangled energy efficient light bulbs that flicker even when they're supposed to be off.

 

[Monocrom]

http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2008/07/07/u-s-sen-john-warner-talks-up-55-mph-national-speed-limit/

This makes good sense. I know my mothers Sonata gets around 40 mpg at around 60 mph...according to the trip computer. Hard to stay at that speed without pissing everyone off.

But if 55 were brought back into law...also I would imagine a lot of expensive speeding tickets would be given out regulaly...that would help our police departments who are struggling for funding as property taxes drop along with home values. Help insurance companies as well...as they could charge higher rates to those who rack up points. Well screw that last thought ...but still great idea.

If you wish to save money by setting the cruise control at 60mph, just always drive in the right lane. You'll upset fewer drivers as they can just pass you on the left.

No other nation in the world has 55mph. as their speed limit on highways. Yet their death tools for car accidents was never higher than when 55 was the Law of the Land here, in America. There's no safety benefit.

Also, why should my hard-earned money be used to off-set dropping home values? Standard practice used to be that a potential homeowner had to put down 10% before being eligible to buy a house. Then all of a sudden, the banks started lending money to people who couldn't put down the 10%, but they wanted a house anyway. Well hey, I'd like a Surefire Beast II; but I can't afford one and I know it. So I live without one. You have folks who also knew they didn't have the money, and couldn't afford the payments; but they took the home loans anyway! ..... I'm not responsible for folks losing their homes due to poor judgement. And my hard-earned money shouldn't be used to off-set their poor judgement.

Price of gas is never going to go down until the U.S. dollar is strengthened. Do you realize that it's only a few cents from being the lowest it has ever been since America was founded. There are ways of strengthening it. It's been done in the past. It can be done again. But those who have the ability to do so, don't seem interested. The price a nation pays for gas is directly proportional to the value of its currency. This is why gas prices are not fixed on a planetary scale.

 

[NA8]

I'm pretty amazed at the way things have been going. The Dems apparantly thought they could just wait for the next presidential election and things would be all right. I guess they thought "things couldn't get any worse". I think they were wrong. I really get annoyed when they trot out some clown who starts in on yet another reason to have a last minute war with Iran before the next election.

 

[binky]

No other nation in the world has 55mph. as their speed limit on highways. Yet their death tools for car accidents was never higher than when 55 was the Law of the Land here, in America. There's no safety benefit.

I am against a nationwide 55 law too, however I just want to point out that I think the more sensible argument in favor of 55 doesn't go like that. I think the argument is put forward that above 55 the accidents more often result in death than at a lower speed.

With the argument taking that tack, one aspect is to want to let people drive that speed who want to take that risk, another moment one might not want to let those people driving on the same road with others take such a risk in such risky close proximity with other people.

Those two sensible arguments are more than difficult to reconcile. I'm no moderator but I bet this thread's going to have a short lifetime here above the Underground.

 

[58sniper]

If they drop the speed limit, who's footing the bill? Imagine hundreds of thousands, if not millions of speed limit signs that would need to be changed. Hundreds of bucks each, plus labor.....

 

[NA8]

Ok, on topic. I always thought they should mark the lanes on the freeway 55, 65, 75, and 85. Drive at the speed you want. There's probably some ugly mathematical reason that wouldn't work.

 

[Empath]

We make clear that our Underground forums are the proper place for controversial political discussion and the expression of politically strong feelings. It's still a curiosity to me why some people, feeling that they don't want to make use of our arrangement for such discussion, insist on interjecting such into otherwise benign threads and forcing actions that threaten or end an otherwise valuable and enjoyable thread.

We permit nearly any topic to be discussed. However, we do insist that topics be addressed in the proper boards or forums. This practice is as out of line as would be posting non-flashlight topics within the flashlight discussion forums.

The Cafe is for more casual, relaxing, non-controversial, kick-back and enjoy one another type discussion. Insistence that you don't read or post in the forums that permit greater latitude does not grant a greater latitude here.

Thread closed.