waltt@shark.UUCP (Walt Tucker) (01/18/84)
------------------------
A few disjointed speculations and personal opinions:
After driving years at the 55 mph speed limit, I (personally) would
find it hard to adjust back to a 70-80 mph freeway (expressway for
Easterner's) speed limit. However, I would support a raise to a
60 or 65 mph limit, which seems to be the normal freeway speed, anyway.
A number of weekends I've gone on 100+ mile freeway cruises and just keeping
up with the flow of traffic puts me between a constant 60 to 65 mph. At
least in Oregon (and California), the 55 mph limit does not seem to be
enforced.
I do not believe the 55 mph speed limit saves lives or fuel, as opposed
to a 60 or 65 mph hour limit (but certainly compared to faster speeds) for
many of the reasons mentioned in this newsgroup (I won't bother to repeat
them). I also agree that there are better ways to legislate and enforce
saving lives and gas than through the type of legislation that gets passed
in the state legislatures (more about this later).
However, in a practical sense, raising the speed limit could cause a
problem I haven't seen mentioned. In Oregon, a lot of the freeways
and highways throughout the state go up and down hills, over mountain
passes, etc. Since the trend in American cars (which I'm sure many of
you own) in the past few years has been towards gas-saving four cylinder
engines, raising the limit could cause a traffic snarling problem. My
wife has a four cylinder Capri. If I use that car to go into Portland,
there are hills where I will pull down to 55 and 60 (even 50 on other
passes in the state). No problem if I am only going 5 mph slower than
other traffic, but you put a lot of cars like that on the road that
average 15 mph slower than the top end of the limit, and you have a
problem. 10 years ago, when cars had larger engines and higher gear-ratios,
they were built for sustained higher speeds of 70 and 80. But, in the
past few years, American cars (which you'll have to admit still comprise
a large segment of the driving population) have been engineered for
lower speeds.
Now, an example of inane legislation. The trend in the past few years
has been to get the drunk driver off the road. OK, fine and dandy.
Bars close at 2 AM in Oregon. Convience stores used to have to stop
selling beer and wine at 1:30 AM (hard liquor is sold through state
licensed stores and stops selling much earlier, like 10 PM), which
is 1/2 hour before the bars close. Now, a couple of years ago, the
legislature raised the fine for drunk driving up to about $1000 (it
has since been raised again). In the same legislative session, they
extended the time that beer and wine could be sold from 1:30 to 2:30.
Does anybody besides me see something wrong with this?
-- Walt Tucker
Wilsonville, OR
be sold davew@shark.UUCP (Dave Williams) (01/18/84)
There would not be a problem if people with underpowered cars would simply move to the right. The 55 mph speed limit seems to foster a "cop" mentality in some people that if they are traveling at or near the speed limit they can hold up a long line of cars that wish to go faster. As I've said before this practice is not allowed in European countries, even those that have speed limits. If you are approached from behind by a faster vechicle and you are in the fast lane, you must move over or face a ticket. It is not your job to enforce speed limits. While most states have similar laws they are rarely enforced unless violated by a slow moving truck, etc.
bees@druxy.UUCP (01/23/84)
I agree with Dave Williams. Please move to the right if you
have people behind you! I have a sniglet for people who drive
in the left lane(s) oblivious of others: An Oblivinoid - the
guy in the left lane going 40 in a 55 next to a semi going 40
completely oblivious of 20 cars behind him slamming on their
brakes. Also refers to the geek who changes into the left
lane without noticing the guy doing 80 that had to slam on the
brakes. (A sniglet is from the HBO series Not Necessarily The News,
and refers to words that *should* be in the dictionary.)
I also wish the highway patrol would spend more time ticketing
those who drive dangerously (like oblivinoids), instead of
generating revenue with a Kustom KR10. As I understand it,
California (CHiPs) do just that. They cruise all the time,
and do not waste time with radar.
Ray Davis AT&T Information Systems Laboratories Denver
{ihnp4|hogpc}!druxy!bees (303)538-3991ibm@ccieng5.UUCP (01/24/84)
---------- A few disjointed speculations and personal opinions. After driving years at the 55 mph speed limit, I (personally) would find it hard to adjust back to a 70-80 mph freeway (expressway for Easterner's) speed limit. However, I would support a raise to a 60 or 65 mph limit, which seems to be the normal freeway speed, anyway. ---------- A couple of things come to mind here, in the form of my own disjointed and personal opinions. First, when the speed limit was dropped to 55, many people had a very tough time of things getting used to moving sssooo ssslllooowwwlllyyy. After all, if you lived in a state with a 80mph limit, and you just had to drop back to 55mph, you've lost nearly one-third of your speed. That is mighty slow by comparison. So many people had trouble adjusting but managed to do so anyway. Second, concerning the normal speed: I believe the Department of Tran- sportation contends that US drivers generally drive 5-10mph over the limit no matter what the limit is posted to be. That is, when the speed limit was 75 in most places, they *tended* to drive around 80 or a little faster. Now that it's 55, people drive at around 60 or a little faster. That's generally the margin within which the cops can't reasonably ticket you for speeding, since you can claim a momentary case of "lead foot," or that your speedometer is off by 5-10%, or some such thing. Third, I know that the state of Wyoming has tried on two occasions of which I'm aware to do away with the 55mph limit. (They may have tried more than that, but I moved away from there two and a half years ago.) On both occa- sions, the attempt failed, but the second attempt failed by a very slim margin. I suspect that it will succeed the next time it comes up. An interesting side item which came up when trying to do away with the 55mph limit in Wyoming is that the various mineral producers in that state (and there are a *lot* of them: coal, natural gas, uranium, oil, oil shale...) supported the attempts, even though one of the solutions proposed to recover the lost DoT funds (DoT's penalty for not enforcing 55mph) was to RAISE mineral severance taxes! The reasoning was that, since their trucks would be delivering goods 10-20% sooner than they were under a 55mph limit, an 8-12% severance tax increase was a good way to make more money. (Not bad reasoning, I might add.) Karl Kleinpaste ...![ [seismo, allegra]!rochester!ritcv, rlgvax]!ccieng5!ccieng2!kfk
jonab@sdcrdcf.UUCP (01/25/84)
In article <914@druxy.UUCP> bees@druxy.UUCP (DavisRB) writes: >I also wish the highway patrol would spend more time ticketing >those who drive dangerously (like oblivinoids), instead of >generating revenue with a Kustom KR10. As I understand it, >California (CHiPs) do just that. They cruise all the time, >and do not waste time with radar. Very true. The California Highway Patrol is not allowed to use radar, however, the local police departments can and do, so don't assume you have a free ticket to speed. -- Jon Biggar {allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,sdccsu3,trw-unix}!sdcrdcf!jonab
fair@dual.UUCP (Erik E. Fair) (01/28/84)
In point of fact, it is illegal for the California Highway Patrol
to use radar of any kind. We (the people) said so in an election
a few years back. But then I don't expect a denverite to know that.
Erik E. Fair
dual!fair@BERKELEY.ARPA
{ucbvax,ihnp4,cbosgd,amd70,zehntel,fortune,unisoft,onyx,its}!dual!fair
Dual Systems Corporation, Berkeley, Californiamonroe@sequent.UUCP (02/07/84)
If the speed limit is 55 and people are driving 60-65, how fast will they
be going if the speed limit were raised?
just something to think about,
The Knight In Glowing Phosphor,
Doug Monroe
Sequent Computer Systems
{ogcvax,cdi,verdix}!sequent!monroe