Texas House passes bill to raise speed limit to 85MPH

[MozoVote]

With gas at $4 a gallon, perhaps you don't really *want* to drive this fast however ...

http://www.autoblog.com/2011/04/07/texas-house-approves-nations-fastest-speed-limit-at-85-mph/

[brandon]

I wonder if they will enforce the speed limit more strictly now. In PA usually 10 over the highway speed limit of 65mph is acceptable. Will 95mph be acceptable to cops in Texas?

Anyway, I wish more states would do this. It is absurd that with all of the giant advances in tech over the past several decades we're still limited to driving the same damn speed.

[Kotin]

I heard about this.. nice!

there is a load of good bills in the Texas legislature this year.. my state senator is pushing for allowing concealed carry on campus..

[Texan4Life]

around here 3-5mph over is usually safe. I say usually because many will and do get pulled over for that. depends on the area.

[Anti Federalist]

I wonder if they will enforce the speed limit more strictly now. In PA usually 10 over the highway speedlimit of 65mph is acceptable. Will 95mph be acceptable to cops in Texas?

Anyway, I wish more states would do this. It is absurd that will all of the giant advances in tech over the past several decades we're still limited to driving the same damn speed.

One of the few successful pushbacks against more fed control was breaking the 55MPH speed limit.

You think 70 or so is slow...try creeping along at 55.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvV3nn_de2k

[Dr.3D]

I seem to remember as a kid back in the '60s, the speed limit in Texas being 75 MPH, then came the you can't dive faster than 55 MPH era. I always thought that state was so big, they should let people drive a little faster so they could get where they were going.

[malkusm]

I always thought that state was so big, they should let people drive a little faster so they could get where they were going.

God bless our wise overlords for allowing us such a luxury :p

[Southron]

That is a large increase in speed. They had better set a minimum speed too.

[Grubb556]

There should no speed limits like the Germany's autobahn. >:)

[Brett85]

Here in Kansas, our state government passed a law that increased the speed limit on interstate highways from 70 MPH to 75 MPH. I was surprised they did that.

[Anti Federalist]

I love reading this man's stuff, it's like I wrote my own car blog.


Texas May Go To 85! (Clovers Stroking Out All Over)

by Eric Peters
EricPetersAutos.com

http://www.lewrockwell.com/peters-e/peters-e35.1.html

Maybe we’re over the hump. Texas appears to be on the verge of raising its highway speed limits to 85. That’s good news for Texas motorists, who may soon get to drive legally at speeds they travel anyway.

Which brings up a question: Why do they call those signs speed limits?

A legitimate speed limit (not a speed that amounts to the de facto normal cruising speed or average traffic flow of most cars on the road, as current “speed limits” are) ought to be about 85-90 mph on most roads. It’s ridiculous that the “limit” – as we Americans define it – amounts to the speed most cars are cruising along at. A speed limit ought to be just that – the absolute maximum safe speed for that road under ideal conditions.

It is absurd to take the position – as our system currently does – that the posted max is the maximum safe speed for the road. It implies that any car doing that speed is already pushing the envelope, operating right on the edge of recklessness. If so, all those people trundling along with the cruise control set at 70 don’t seem to be sweating it much. And given that probably 70 percent – likely a lowball figure – are actually exceeding the posted speed imit, you have to take the position that either a very large percentage of American drivers are cavalierly reckless drivers – or the “limit” is really nothing more than a politically prescribed number that corresponds to – usually – just slightly less than the average, ho-hum flow of traffic.

A limit, it ain’t – except in a legal sense. Drive faster than the number painted on the sign and you place yourself in jeopardy of receiving a “speeding” ticket. It doesn’t mean anything more than that – even though our system imputes unsafe driving to it.

This is perhaps the biggest con since the Federal Reserve.

Consider: For about 20 years, no American could legally drive faster than 55 MPH on a U.S. Interstate Highway. On the same highways that had previously had significantly higher speed limits – 70, 75 MPH was common prior to 1974, when the 55 MPH edict went into effect. It suddenly became illegal to drive 70 or 75. But it didn’t become unsafe – unless you attribute magical powers to Congress, which imposed the 55 MPH limit – and then, just as magically repealed it in 1994.

Did it, then, suddenly – miraculously - become “safe” to once again drive at 70 or 75 MPH on those very same roads?

Of course not. But no refunds were given for the millions of “speeding” tickets given to hapless motorists during the 20 years prior. Nor did the insurance companies issues an apology – and a store credit – for surcharging all those ticketed drivers on the basis of their “speeding” and, hence, their (supposedly) unsafe driving.

Things have gotten better. In most parts of the country, highway limits are at least up to – roughly – the normal, average speed of traffic – which seems to be somewhere between 70 and 75 MPH. Few cars go much slower than that; not very many go much faster than that.

Going by the 85th percentile rule – the method for setting speed limits that states and the federal government are supposed to abide by, which they have agreed to abide by but of course rarely do abide by – current highway speed limits, properly defined, ought to be around 85 MPH, just as Texas is proposing.

The 85th percentile rule says observe the normal flow of traffic – conduct a traffic survey – and note the average speed of the cars traveling on that road. This observed average speed becomes the baseline from which the speed limit is extrapolated. The limit – properly defined – would be set 5-10 MPH higher than the observed average speed. With most traffic on most non-urban highways running around 70, the limit thus ought to be about 80. Maybe higher on really rural, lightly traveled highways (as in Texas) where a limit of 90 or even 100 mph would not be at all unreasonable.

That’s how it’s supposed to be done. But of course, that’s not how it’s actually done.

The 85th percentile rule is obeyed about as much as the rule that says Congress is supposed to declare war before we send “the troops” off to fight a war.

The reason for this is obvious: There would be almost no need for traffic cops anymore; jobs would be lost – and revenue lost. A great deal of revenue. Some small towns (and even larger counties) depend on the cashflow generated by the local “speeding” racket for a huge chunk of their annual budgets. Everyone knows this. The officials barely even try to conceal the reality of the shakedown, for if “speeding” really were the homicidally reckless act they say it is, would they be giving people “breaks” at radar traps? Cutting the ticket down to 9 over instead of 13? Do we see such gentle, almost friendly, banter between cops and rapists?

Of course we don’t.

If routinely exceeding politically contrived “limits” were in fact dangerous and not just a scam to gin up money without imposing an explicit Motorists Tax, then our system is oddly kindhearted to all the millions upon millions of (cough) dangerous drivers out there.

But of course, they’re not dangerous. Just guilty of ignoring a number pulled out of a hat and plastered into a sign by politicians and bureaucrats. The cops know it, the judges know it, the insurance companies know it, too.

All the evidence says so, too.

It was just announced that highway fatalities have dropped to their lowest level ever - even though people are driving faster and lately, legally so.

By now, the idiot mantra that “speed kills” ought to be as discredited as neo-con Republican braying about “WMD.”

[Dr.3D]

I love reading this man's stuff, it's like I wrote my own car blog.


snip~
By now, the idiot mantra that “speed kills” ought to be as discredited as neo-con Republican braying about “WMD.”

And all along I was thinking those signs were about amphetamines.

[Nate-ForLiberty]

at least all those truckers will be less likely to be pulled over.

[muzzled dogg]

do they lose out of federal highway funds?

[acptulsa]

do they lose out of federal highway funds?

No. The two libertarian things Reagan did were eliminating the ICC and killing the federal tendency to hold up highway taxes based on the state speed limit. And bad as things were in West Texas, other states had drivers falling asleep at the wheel during the 55 mph limit days.

Oklahoma has been at 75 for some time. Tolerance is advertised as being strict, but they'll generally give you at least eighty before they get pissy. Kansas is just trying to keep up.

Montana did without speed limits for a time, but ran into trouble. The way they explained it, locals did fine but people kept driving to Montana just to punch it and yell 'yee-haw' because they had been repressed so long back home. After all, Montana had been issuing 'fuel wastage citations' back in the 55 mph days (five bucks) just to shut the feds up. So, they weren't so repressed...

[muzzled dogg]

repped

wasnt aware

[AFPVet]

With gas at $4 a gallon, perhaps you don't really *want* to drive this fast however ...

http://www.autoblog.com/2011/04/07/texas-house-approves-nations-fastest-speed-limit-at-85-mph/

Depends on your vehicle of course :) I know that my car gets the best mileage at about 85. Every engine has a sweet spot hehe.

[Fredom101]

I definitely drive worse when I'm worried about ANY speed limit.
Open it up and give us true freedom!