If there’s one thing that’s worse than paying $4 per gallon for
gasoline, it’s the resurgent talk of lowering speed limits to
conserve fuel.
Because, of course, these lowered limits won’t be enforced as a
“conservation” measure.
Any curtailment of speed limits will be treated as a
saaaaafety issue — just as happened during the Dark
Decades of the 55 mph National Maximum Speed Limit. “Speeding”
tickets will be issued and “points” assigned. At the stroke of a
lawmaker’s pen (and the cop’s, too) driving “x” MPH will suddenly
become “unsafe,” rather than merely wasteful.
This is the most intolerable aspect of the whole scam.
If they at least just changed the laws/penalties so that instead
of a traffic ticket you got a one-time fine for “overconsumption of
fuel” (or whatever) that had nothing to do with traffic safety,
carried no “points,” and was a purely civil fine that never came
near a traffic court…. okay I’d still oppose it, but at least it
would be honest and we’d have a policy that had some rational
basis.
THE NMSL ERA COMPLETELY corrupted traffic safety enforcement. Prior
to its enactment, people were still issued tickets, of course. But
the speed limits of the pre-NMSL era at least tracked roughly with
two important criteria.
The first was the intended design speeds envisioned by the
engineers who built the U.S. Interstate Highway System. Our
national highway network was not built randomly; rather, precise
studies were done to establish parameters for such things as lines
of sight, the radius of curves in the road, and so on. All this was
done assuming average traffic speeds in the 70 mph range. And this
was back in the mid-late 1950s — and so also assumed 1950s-era
vehicle technology, including tires, braking ability, and so on.
There was no ABS in 1955; no traction control, no air bags, not
even seat belts. Most cars had four wheel drum brakes and
suspension systems that would be considered inferior to the
clunkiest 200,000 mile pick-up truck by today’s standards.
And yet, professional engineers deemed it safe to travel in such
cars on the Interstates they designed at speeds of 70 mph or
thereabouts. And thus, speed limits were set in the 70 mph range —
and stayed that way until the mid-1970s, when the 55 mph limit was
passed to “conserve fuel” — but enforced as a saaaaafety
violation until 1995, when it was finally repealed.
The second criterion that made pre-NMSL speed limits and
enforcement more reasonable was that the higher speed limits of
that era conformed with the so-called 85th percentile rule. This is
the officially recognized means (even today!) by which speed limits
are supposed to be set (but routinely aren’t). The 85th percentile
rule is laid out in the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control
Devices (MUTCD) which is considered the “bible” of traffic
safety. Simply stated, the 85th percentile rule means that the
natural flow of traffic on a given road should be observed and
measured — and the speed limit set with 5 mph or so of the speed
that 85 percent of the vehicles are traveling.
Guess what the 85th percentile speed is on most U.S. highways?
Around 70-75 mph.
But thanks to $4 per gallon fuel, we may be about to revisit
history — and relive an era we thought was safely behind us.
ONLY THIS TIME, it’ll be worse because of the much-improved tools
at the disposal of the authorities — including automated speed
cameras and photo radar, which can issue tickets to every single
car that goes by instead of like the old days, when a cop could
only mulct one hapless motorist at a time.
So far, I have yet to see anyone challenge the soft-head
orthodoxy that “speed” always and necessarily “kills” (if it does,
why do most people survive jet airplane rides at 350 mph and
faster?) or explain why and how it is that for 20 years, under the
55 mph limit, it was treated as “unsafe” to drive even a few mph
faster — but after the repeal of the NMSL it suddenly became not
just legal to do so but (apparently) “safe” once again? Seventy mph
on I-81 in Virginia today is at most a minor ticket; just 5 mph
over the posted max of 65 mph. But pre-1995, the exact same speed
on the exact same road was dangerous speeeeeeeding. And
risked a very big ticket for 15 over that was literally just 6 mph
shy of a “reckless driving” cite. Please.
The whole sickly con is so transparent it ought to be
unnecessary to even make these observations. Everyone (except
perhaps a few Blue Hairs in Buicks) understands the game. We all
play along. Yes, officer. I know I was going tooooo
faaaaaast. I won’t ever do it again. I promise…
Get ready, because here we go again.
