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Higher gas prices higher speed limits more fuel used more gas bought. No surprise that Texas is a huge oil state. What a surprise. You can raise the speed limit as high as you want and there will always be idiots who think it's not fast enough for them.
Sweet!!! Now if the rest of the Nation will up their speed limits, transportation would be more enjoyable!!!
Not to mention, more efficient. When I left the East, the speed limit had only recently been raised from 55 to 65 on interstate hightways. West of Chicago it was 70-75. These highways were designed for those kinds of speeds...with cars with 1950s technology. For several years Montana had no speed limit on rural interstates. 85 seems like a reasonable compromise.
Have Eastern states finally gotten their heads out of their butz and at least raised speed limits to 75? It's insulting to their citizens to assume they can't safely drive at those speeds.
At 85 mph your vehicle has 70% more kinetic energy to dissipate when you run off the road or into a bridge abutment. Guess where most of the energy is dissipated. A crash at 65 is likely to be survivable while one at 85 is vastly less so. So you set your speed and take your chances.
BTW: 85 mph is not all that rare on New England Interstates. We have our boonies as well.
I'm waiting for the insurance lobby to show up, because their right to raise insurance rates will be affected, with potential for drastically reduced speeding tickets. And cities/towns that have made speeding tickets their livelihood.
It's long been said that everything's bigger in Texas. Maybe faster, too, under legislation approved by the Texas House that would allow the speed limit on some highways to be raised to 85 mph, which would be the highest in the nation.
At 85 mph, Texas could have highest speed limits in the nation (http://www.statesman.com/news/texas-politics/at-85at-85-mph-texas-could-have-highest-speed-1383090.html?cxtype=ynews_rss - broken link)
good, I am used to driving on the autobahn in Germany with no speedlimit except going though city areas
At 85 mph your vehicle has 70% more kinetic energy to dissipate when you run off the road or into a bridge abutment. Guess where most of the energy is dissipated. A crash at 65 is likely to be survivable while one at 85 is vastly less so. So you set your speed and take your chances.
BTW: 85 mph is not all that rare on New England Interstates. We have our boonies as well.
That is true. Who need government keeping us safe from ourselves in a way they choose, not us.
good, I am used to driving on the autobahn in Germany with no speedlimit except going though city areas
I drive Dallas-Houston segment regularly. In many stretches, almost 70% of the people are on the left lane - with the guy in front going at/below the speed limit. Passing needs to be done from the right - provided some jerk does not speed up on the left. I would not expect the Eurpoean way of driving here anytime soon where people always drive on the slow lane and pass from the fast lane.
I recall that back in the 1960s and early 1970s, in Kansas, the speed limit was 80 or 85 in many parts. Course, that was before the OPEC oil embargo, when the Federal government mandated lowering the highway speeds to 55 mph.
The various states screamed, of course. The Fed simply replied "Go ahead. Keep your 80 mph, but no more federal highway money".
It worked.
The Federal government has used that federal highway money as a blunt instrument for many other purposes over the years.
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