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Many running well over 100. Jeez, 60 mph, we have faster speed limits here on our expressways thru town.
I'm referring entirely to outer urban and suburban highways for the most part, such as the ones I listed. Those highways have too many exists and in some case curves to support a 70 mph limit. My beef is mostly the old 60 limit roads that remain posted at 55 or in a few cases 50.
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Originally Posted by AlaskaErik
If you raise the speed limit in NY or NJ, then all those mobile tax collectors will see their revenue streams drop.
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Originally Posted by jambo101
I think people will speed no matter what the posted speed limit is.. Put it at 60 people will do 70-80 put it at 70 people will do 90-100.
You can offset that the way NJ does, which is to double fines in the 65 (or new 60) zones. Also I'm a believer in enforcement. The police should enforce at about 10 over the limit. If the did there were would be a revolution about the 55 limit and they would be raised.
As more cars come into use with safety features like lane departure warning, 360 degree radar, better engineered crash absorbing frames, curtain airbags, etc., fatalities will decrease, and higher speeds will become safer and more practical.
Traveling across Arizona and New Mexico on these long, lonely stretches of interstate, you can't practically go 55 mph. There aren't enough rest stops. As I recall from last time I was out there, the posted limit is 75, and most people were traveling 75-85. When it's fairly flat, the roads are broad and smooth, and you can see for 50 miles, these are reasonable speeds.
In New England, with all the hills, the weather, and the crappy roads, you can't safely drive those kinds of speeds unless you're highly skilled and your car is a performance machine. Most of us aren't that.
As more cars come into use with safety features like lane departure warning, 360 degree radar, better engineered crash absorbing frames, curtain airbags, etc., fatalities will decrease, and higher speeds will become safer and more practical.
Traveling across Arizona and New Mexico on these long, lonely stretches of interstate, you can't practically go 55 mph. There aren't enough rest stops. As I recall from last time I was out there, the posted limit is 75, and most people were traveling 75-85. When it's fairly flat, the roads are broad and smooth, and you can see for 50 miles, these are reasonable speeds.
In New England, with all the hills, the weather, and the crappy roads, you can't safely drive those kinds of speeds unless you're highly skilled and your car is a performance machine. Most of us aren't that.
Quite true. But I don't think that Southern and Western states have done badly in raising speed limits on Interstates, though Colorado, with its 65 and under limits on Interstates in the Rocky Mountains makes me wonder. I am referring mostly to the failure of urbanized states to return to pre-energy crisis limits on most of their roads. They all now have 65 mph limits but those are mostly for show; they apply to very few roads.
Traveling across Arizona and New Mexico on these long, lonely stretches of interstate, you can't practically go 55 mph. There aren't enough rest stops. As I recall from last time I was out there, the posted limit is 75, and most people were traveling 75-85. When it's fairly flat, the roads are broad and smooth, and you can see for 50 miles, these are reasonable speeds.
In New England, with all the hills, the weather, and the crappy roads, you can't safely drive those kinds of speeds unless you're highly skilled and your car is a performance machine. Most of us aren't that.
Huh?
Certainly in Northern New England, 85 would be no issue anywhere on I-95, I-93, I-91, or I-89.
There are lots of areas in cities in southern New England where you'd need to dial back the speed limit due to the congestion. In Boston, you're not going to post the Southeast Expressway and the Big Dig tunnel at 85. Connecticut is the only state with roads so crappy and congested that it wouldn't be possible on most of the interstate highways. Even there, I-84 from the Mass Pike to Hartford would be fine and I-91 from Hartford up to Springfield would be fine. Of course, Connecticut is such a transportation failure that Amtrak trains have to slow to 35 mph. The whole state should be bulldozed into Long Island Sound.
I think people will speed no matter what the posted speed limit is.. Put it at 60 people will do 70-80 put it at 70 people will do 90-100.
You think so, but you'd be wrong. Study after study has proven that raising the speed limit doesn't impact the average speed on the road. People drive the speed they're comfortable at, not whatever arbitrary number the government posts on a sign. Studies have also shown that increasing the speed limit reduced the number of accidents. Probably because the few "I must drive the posted speed limit" people finally get up to the speed everyone else is driving, reducing the speed differential and reducing accidents.
Most speed limits are not based on safety or science.
They are based on enhancing the ability of government to generate income.
The time has come to re-examine the correlation of safety to speed.
This mantra gets beaten into people from an early age, and there for believed.
Yet, evidence indicates (based on the European models on unlimited roads) that the fatal accident rates on the Autobahn and others, are lower.
I personally find it somewhat amusing, that as a nation we have re-examined the issue of the use of recreational Marijuana, but, raising a speed limit is like spitting on the flag.
Actually, we have made progress on raising speed limits, we simply have made the least progress in the Northeast. We are back to the pre-1974 environment where it's completely up to states to set speed limits with no federal penalty.
But pre-1974, the lowest speed limits were in the Northeast as well so it makes sense that they seem the most reluctant to raise them. When they first let states simply raise it to 65 in 1987, the Northeast were the last to do so (in fact, NY was the very last state, not doing so until 1995, right before the Federal government completely reverted speed limit laws to the states). It's funny the OP mentioned I-684 because the irony is that I-84 at it's northern end is still 55 mph for some reason and it's one of the few stretches of "rural" Interstate in the US that still is.
The 80 mph limits in Texas and Utah are actually higher that many European speed limits.....
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Originally Posted by jbgusa
The police should enforce at about 10 over the limit. If the did there were would be a revolution about the 55 limit and they would be raised.
They actually for the most part don't enforce until 10 (or even 15) over the limit. And when your ticket is close to that, usually you just show up in court months later with a million other people who got a speeding ticket and they reduce it to a "no points" violation (if it shows you have a clean or close to clean record) so they still get your fine with no other consequences to you.
In recent years, even many car insurance companies don't raise your rates for speeding tickets for less than 15 over the limit unless you get two of them in a 3 year period....
You might sometimes be able to see the top of a tall mountain 50 miles away. But that doesn't help with safe driving. Can you see a deer or other such animal that's going to be in front of your car in 40 seconds? If you're going 90 MPH towards a deer, and you see it 5 seconds before you hit it, how fast can you stop? People are trying to sleep in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. The screech of your tires would wake them all up. And the smoke would pollute everyone's air.
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