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From: ibm@ccieng5.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: Fast Driving and Other Inane Legislation
Message-ID: <243@ccieng5.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 24-Jan-84 12:22:20 EST
Article-I.D.: ccieng5.243
Posted: Tue Jan 24 12:22:20 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Jan-84 08:11:51 EST
Sender: ibm@ccieng5.UUCP
Organization: Computer Consoles Inc., Rochester, NY
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	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
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