The State of Texas is looking at raising speed limits to be the fastest in the nation:
The Texas House of Representatives has approved a bill that would raise the speed limit to 85 mph on some highways. The bill now goes to the state Senate, the Austin Statesman reports. {…}
Texas currently has more than 520 miles of interstate highways where the speed limit is 80 mph, according to the Associated Press. The bill would allow the Texas Department of Transportation to raise the speed limit on certain roads or lanes after engineering and traffic studies are conducted. The 85 mph maximum would likely be permitted on rural roads with long sightlines.
Texas is currently one of the only two states currently allowing 80mph speed limits on a few stretches. Utah is the other.
The two main groups against it are the insurance companies and environmentalists. Though I could have sworn I saw 80mph speed limits on my original move from Delosa to Deseret, I can’t find anything to back me up on that. So I guess I have never driven on an 80mph road. I would think that you would want to be careful about where you put them, but there are some stretches of road that are asking for it. Particularly in the great plains region. When moving to Deseret, I took a route that had me going north through (a tip of) New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming instead of the GoogleMaps approved route that takes you through Kansas, Nebraska, and so on. The main reason for the detour was the scenery, but if the great plains had 85mph speed limits, I probably would have gone that route.
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4 Responses to Speeding Westward
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This is fine, as long as the engineering and lack of volume support it…
That reminds me. Our street has been in the local paper lately. They (before we moved here) apparently lowered the speed limit to 15mph when the traffic study did not support that conclusion. We always wondered why the speed limit was so dang low. The answer is that an elderly city councilman lives two houses down and wants Those Damn Kids to slow down, or something.
A 15 limit reminds me of a trend in law making that I am not a fan of. Some states use 55 as a limit so people won’t drive 65. Some towns set 25 on streets that they won’t pull people over on unless they are going 35, or black.
This sets up a selective enforcement situation that leads to a general disrespect for the law.
In NJ one can’t buy cigarettes unless one is 19. Why? So 18 year old seniors don’t buy for their younger classmates.
A similar no man’s land occurs with under 21 college students, who can’t legally drink, even though they almost all do. If almost everyone breaks a law, doesn’t that show that the law is unjust?
In Delosa, they can’t actually give you a ticket if you’re within 5mph of the speed limit. So the purpose of a 20mph speed limit is (a) to keep you from going over 25 and (b) to give them an excuse to pull you over (they can’t give you a ticket, but they can check you out in the process of giving you a warning). There are also yellow-sign speed limits, which can also elicit a warning but no ticket.
I don’t really care about the age limit of smoking being 19 rather than 18, though the drinking age should be 18 or 19.