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Some rural roads have low speed limits due to things like tractors, large livestock, and or deer/elk. Narrow roads with trees on either side of the road means if you're going 45 mph at night you won't see the animal until it comes out from the trees and onto the road with no chance of avoiding the animal. City streets have low speed limits due to cross traffic intersections. While most vehicles are capable of going over 100 mph, for many of these vehicles, it's not safe to do so. Road conditions can cause the tires to loose contact with the road and cause a loss of control, sharp and deep pot holes can severely damage the vehicle, reaction times are greatly reduced, not every vehicle can stop quickly or safely from such high speeds. You could argue tickets for money if the road has a sudden unwarranted and no warning speed change. Some local towns have been taken to court for such traps. Speed sign 55 mph closely followed by a 35 mph sign with no time to slow down or brake to the 35 mph before they got you for speeding.
Don't visit our island, then. The highest speed limit we have is 55. In the whole state, I think. But what good is rushing around? If you go too fast you'll fly off the island and then where would you be? We get a lot of folks driving slower than the posted speed limits so there are a lot of signs posted with the MINIMUM required speed limit instead of the maximum allowed.
I think the speed limits in the areas I frequent are perfect - not too low, not too high. I don't have a sports car though and understand that if my vehicle could accelerate supercar speed, I would probably whine about the speed limits and traffic congestion.
Due to the condition of the roads, the lack of driving skills, personal distractions (Cell Phones, eating, etc.), the steaming piles of metallic crap some people are driving and the amount of anger people seem to feel once they slip behind the wheel, I'd say let's leave the limits where they are now.
Speed limits are fine, but let's enforce them ok? I hate going the speed limit in a construction zone just to have jerks ride my butt in the right hand lane when the left is wide open. Even then there are guys going 20-25 over the limit, can't wait to get rear ended...
Now I could go for some improved stoplight timing, and some red light cameras (come on guys there is a huge red light running issue in my town, let's stop it and generate revenue)!
With the countless empty pickups and SUVs on the roadways in the US, we can't expect to drive like Germany, where most everyone drives a good handling car. Get a little out of control in a pickup or SUV and you are toast, not to mention if there is anyone around you that you may kill. Lets face it, Americans aren't drivers, they want floating big living rooms, not to mention in the US there are no rules on the roadways. People just drive in whatever lane no matter if they are passing or not. I pass cars ALL the time on the right because people don't know what they are doing and just don't take driving seriously. If they took it seriously, you wouldn't have all these floating living rooms barreling down the roads.
Yes, most people drive wherever the heck they want (whether you're in that lane or not). I'm older and in a state that takes speeding and accidents a lot more harshly than NY/NJ and we're not no fault. I also ride a motorcycle. The good thing about where we are is there are billboard signs that alert auto drivers to the fact
that we are back on the road. The bad thing about it is drivers are still pretty oblivious and two years ago, I went on one ride where a few cars almost hit me. But my bike has instant pickup and I tend to speed a bit (but it is fun). NY/NJ still take the cake for the worst and most dangerous drivers in any state in which I've lived. I have a 2013 Hyundai Elantra Ltd (not a floating living room) with fewer horse than my last cars (in 20 years) and the tires that come on it are worse than on any car I've had. I can't exactly barrel anything in it.
The answer lies in realizing that the speed limit really is just a number on a sign, and it has very little influence on how fast people drive. “Over the years, I’ve done many follow up studies after we raise or lower a speed limit,” Megge tells us. “Almost every time, the 85th percentile speed doesn’t change, or if it does, it’s by about 2 or 3 mph.”
As most honest drivers would probably concede, this means that if the speed limit on a highway decreases from 65 mph to 55 mph, most drivers will not drive 10 mph slower. But for the majority of drivers, the opposite is also true. If a survey team increases the speed limit by 10 mph, the speed of traffic will not shoot up 10 mph. It will stay around the same. Years of observing traffic has shown engineers that as long as a cop car is not in sight, most people simply drive at whatever speed they like.
Luckily, there is some logic to the speed people choose other than the need for speed. The speed drivers choose is not based on laws or street signs, but the weather, number of intersections, presence of pedestrians and curves, and all the other information that factors into the principle, as Lt. Megge puts it, that “no one I know who gets into their car wants to crash.”
So if drivers disregard speed limits, why bother trying to set the “right” speed limit at all?
One reason is that a minority of drivers do follow the speed limit. “I’ve found that about 10% of drivers truly identify the speed limit sign and drive at or near that limit,” says Megge. Since these are the slowest share of drivers, they don’t affect the 85th percentile speed. But they do impact the average speed -- by about 2 or 3 mph when a speed limit is changed, in Lt. Megge’s experience -- and, more importantly, the variance in driving speeds.
And the real reason speed limits are set low...
The other reason speed limits may remain low, which John Bowman, Communications Director of the National Motorists Association strongly insists on, is that cities and police departments use traffic citations as a revenue generating tool. As Bowman says, when speed limits are artificially low, it’s easier to give out citations and pull in fine revenue.
Due to concern about such “speed traps,” Missouri passed a law in the 1990s that capped the amount of a town’s revenue that could come from traffic tickets. In 2010, auditors discovered that Randolph, Missouri, generated 75% to 83% of its budget from traffic tickets. The tiny town of around 50 residents, which is located near several casinos, employed two full-time and eight part-time police officers, turning it into a speed trap poster child.
We have far to many rules in the USA, I prefer no speed limit. Montana had the right idea, reasonable and prudent. If there's ice on the road, it's prudent to go slow and if it's clear and little traffic, open it up. I hate our legalistic Gestapo way of enforcing speed limits and other traffic violations...too much infringement on liberty.
True that. To answer the original post, yes, many of the speed limits are set entirely too low, and that, not some supposed "bad attitude," is why they're broken by so many people.
What they ought to be enforcing--people who drive significantly BELOW the speed limit to the point of holding others up, especially when they refuse to move the heck out of the way upon realizing they're doing this. I can't tell you how many times I wished I had sorcery powers or the like and could inflate their car's speed to 100 miles per hour and send it through the woods. It would totally serve them right.
No, I do not think they are too low. The main reason is safety. DOT has shown over and over again that fatalities in car wrecks increase with speed.
I said speed limits are too low. Not speeds. Low limits breed disrespect for the law.
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