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Texas Opens Fastest US Highway With 85 MPH Limit
Hugh Pickens writes "Most highways in the U.S. top out at 75 mph, while some highways in rural West Texas and Utah have 80 mph speed limits. All that is about to change as Texas opens a stretch of highway with the highest speed limit in the country, giving eager drivers a chance to rip through a trip between two of the state's largest metropolitan areas at 85 mph for a 41-mile toll road between Austin and San Antonio. While some drivers will want to test their horsepower and radar detectors, others are asking if safety is taking a backseat. A 2009 report in the American Journal of Public Health found that more than 12,500 deaths were attributable to increases in speed limits on all kinds of roads and that rural highways showed a 9.1 percent increase in fatalities on roads where speed limits were raised. 'If you're looking at an 85 mph speed limit, we could possibly see drivers going 95 up to 100 miles per hour,' says Sandra Helin, president of the Southwestern Insurance Information Service. 'When you get to those speeds, your accidents are going to be a lot worse. You're going to have a lot more fatalities.'"
It's in texas.
So. There's that.
"We could possibly see drivers going 95 up to 100 miles per hour."
Hate to break it to Sandra, but that's the usual speed in many parts of Texas.
Well, that's 136km/h - that's what our recommended travelling speed (130) on the "Autobahn" is in Germany.
It has proven to be an excellent balance between emission (gears and cars are tuned to that speed), moving forward, but not braking too much due to other people's influences.
Once again I have deep mis-respect for you "best country in the world" guys.
Don't like the higher speed limit? Don't drive on it.
Doesn't get any simpler than that.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
With a speed limit of 10mph, you can virtually eliminate car related deaths on highways!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The sad fact is that its not speed that kills, its differential speed. Unfortunately our drivers training here is not really up to the standards it should be with modern machines. If you look at Germany they take drivers ed a lot more seriously, as well as licencing, with 6 month courses costing thousands of dollars being the norm. As well the rules of the Autobahn are strictly enforced, if you're going slow in the left lane you WILL be pulled over, just as quick if not quicker than you would for "speeding". Same with sudden lane changes, and just general bad driving. Speed doesnt kill, dumb drivers do.
The German Autobahn's have no speed limits in rural areas. I have driven at 160 Kph (i.e., 100 mph) and been routinely passed by faster vehicles. In fact, if you are in the left lane at that speed, they may get pretty annoyed with you if you don't get over immediately.
My understanding is that the German Auto Club serves a function much like the US NRA. Touch the speed limit, and your political career will be limited.
That happens anytime you raise the speed limit. from 55 to 65. from 45 to 55. from 10 to 20. We've already had this argument brought up multiple times, and you lost. Take that argument and go away.
Statistically speaking anyway, once you're hurtling down the road at 65 mph or faster, you're already well over the curve for speed-to-lethality tradeoff. Dropping your odds of survival from 2% to 1.8% really doesn't impress me that much.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Just stay out of the left lane when not passing and driving will be much safer for everyone.
You don't have to pull over. It has cameras that check your toll tag on your car or snaps your license plate to charge you for the trip. Any modern tollroad is like this. They do have places to pull over if you want to pay in cash but it's not required. You can blas up 45 miles from Austin to Georgetown currently without ever stopping.
Ehhh sorry, I have lived for nearly 20 years here and I would like to ask where these courtious, follow the rules and don't try to do anything stupid drivers are. You see I have a car that can, and have driven 250 KPH. Let me tell you there are more idiots out there than you let on. I can't tell you how often I have to slow down from 230 to 120 because a driver feels he has the right to a pass a truck doing 80. Yes folks trucks are allowed a maximum of 80.
You can drive safely at high speeds if people realize that you are driving at highspeeds and I will argue that even Americans clue into it.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Then you really dont have to worry about anything. of course when traveling back and forth in time i could always collide with another vehicle. Oh and i also need lightning.
I live in Italy. The highway speed limit here is 130 km/h (81 mph), 90 km/h (56 mph) on normal roads and 50 km/h (31 mph) inside the cities, with some 30 km/h areas. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate (OECD data) there are 8.7 road fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants per year and 12 per 100,000 motor vehicles. The corresponding figures for the U.S.A. are 12.3 and 15. That's 41% and 25% more respectively. It hints that speed limits don't necessarily have a direct correlation with deaths. Cars, road conditions and (most important of all) driver behavior make the difference. Keep your eyes on the road is the first recommendation I can't think about (btw, there are 1.47 mobile phones per person in Italy vs 1.039 in the USA - found on wikipedia - so it's not texting or calling that accounts for the difference - many people do that while driving here). That said, I welcome raising speed limits a little: it's good for Americans that will get home earlier and good for European tourists that won't fall asleep driving on straight roads at 55 mph anymore :-)
For those of us who don't know mph, here's some conversions to km/h:
https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+85+mph+in+kph (etc)
100mph =~ 160.934km/h (by definition)
95mph =~ 152.9
90mph =~ 144.8km/h
85mph = ~136.8km/h (motorways in Italy, among other countries, have speed limits of 130km/h)
80mph =~ 128.7km/h
75mph =~ 128.7km/h
74.5mph =~ 120km/h (this is the motorway speed limit in Ireland)
70mph =~ 112.65 km/h (this is the motorway speed limit in the UK)
When I was stationed in (middle-of-nowhere) Texas in 1987--8, the drivers were courteous to a fault, and pulling over onto the (fully paved) shoulder to allow a faster car overtaking one was the norm.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
The 1980's 55 MPH federal mandate was not done to save lives. It was done to conserve energy. In fact, some states at the time even issued tickets for people driving over 55 that read "failure to conserve energy", not "speeding". The federal government still has its hands in regulating energy used by cars. Although we have now learned that it is more effective to regulate at the manufacturing stage, not at the operating stage.
I've been to the North-East US and understand that most roads in Europe look the same, so here's what's to know about this road:
- This road is where there is a lot of flat land. Even at 85 you can see where you will be in a few minutes (and virtually not take a turn until you get there). You can also see any animals that may enter this road, but it's mostly a bridge anyway which avoids that.
- There's nothing to see on this road. No billboards or distractions. No gas stations, restaurants, few farm houses. Few exits.
- The road has heavy steel guard rails that would stop most anything driving along it. These rails are after over a car lane of margin. A few places don't where it's just flatland for 1000s of feet.
- The state-standard noisy edge-of-the-road keeps drivers from hitting the road's guard rails.
- If I drove you on it blindfolded (in a car whose engine noise doesn't give away the speed like mine does), you'd think we were driving - Very light traffic. No old cars
- The biggest risk was just getting bored, & speed helps this.
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
I've seen Autobahn drivers - they're mostly courtious, follow the rules, and usually don't do anything stupid.
Here we're talking about Americans - specifically Texans. Expect to see many many shoot outs, accidents, law suits and fatalities.
In Texas you will see beat up old 1970's pickup trucks trying to do 100 mph. Things weren't geared for it and generally don't have speed rated tires. Probably more fatalities from blow-outs at speed than any other non-alcohol/drug related incidents.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
There is nothing unsafe about driving very fast on roads designed for driving very fast. You are FAR safer driving on a restricted-access divided highway at 100 MPH than you are driving on a 45 MPH city street with cross traffic, or a country road. Especially now that many states are putting up those cables in the median that prevent cars from getting across into oncoming traffic.
Even the article summary has to grasp for straws in trying to provide a "balanced" summary.... this 85 MPH divided highway is apparently unsafe because.... driving fast on country roads increases fatalities!
But a divided highway is not a country road.
Accidents between two cars going in the same direction at relatively the same speed (+/- 10-15 mph) are rare. It's the car going 35 MPH+ one way that encounters another car going 35 MPH+ in a different direction (hed-on or cross traffic) that kills people. Divided highway fatalities are usually coming up on stopped traffic in fog or at night, or falling asleep and leaving the highway.
One more point to note ... if you're going to get in a single-car accident at 65 MPH and hit a pylon or something, you're dead. If you do it at 85 or 90 MPH, you're just REALLY dead. Same difference.
paintball
I'm not saying you're wrong, but look at it from the other car's perspective. They're gaining on the truck at 40 KPH, which is fairly quick, and they check their mirror and see nothing so they go for the pass. Before they get around the truck you've shown up gaining on them at 130 KPH. Before they can accelerate out of the way you have to slow down to avoid rear-ending them.
No one is at fault for this - it's just the nature of a road system that allows such diverse speeds. In the US on roads which allow high speeds, typically greater than 60mph, there is also a minimum speed not more than 30mph below the maximum. If you don't have a maximum speed designated for the road it's much harder to manage a minimum speed.
One thought I've had is to have speed ranges defined per lane. It works best on roads with 3 or more lanes. Lane 1 would be 50-100 KPH, lane 2 would be 80 - 150 KPH, lane 3 would be 130 - 200 KPH, lane 4 would be 180 - unlimited KPH.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Years ago when we finally got rid of the double nickle speed limit there were people predicting carnage on the nations highways. I tried to run the numbers and came up with inconsistent results. Here's a couple of stats I remember from that era:
AAA reported that over eighty percent of injury accidents occur at speeds under forty miles per hour and within a few miles of home. This was in their monthly magazine.
At the same time it was widely reported that half of all traffic fatalities were the result of intoxicated drivers. (Alcohol, drugs.)
Those two stats leave very little room for accidents on high speed freeways where speed is the sole factor in the accident.
That happens anytime you raise the speed limit. from 55 to 65.
Accident rates in Colorado lowered when they raised the speed limit from 65 to 75.
One good reason you are not accounting for is that no matter what the speed limit is, drivers drive at a speed they consider comfortable on a highway. That means that people like you imperil everyone else by sticking close to an old and arbitrary speed limit. Once you raise the limits there is a much greater equalization of people driving around the same speed, making the whole road safer.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If California is on par with the rest of the states wrt drivers tests, then yeah, having an autobahn (which I have driven on during a vacation) would be a very, very bad idea in the states. Driving is a privilege not a right, you should have to work hard to get it (learn to drive and be tested accordingly).
Be glad you're in California, it's actually got one of the better driver training & licensing programs in the country. In the Midwest the program seems to be, "let's assume you've been driving your Father's tractor since 8 years old and call that equivalent experience". Out East I've had natives in New Jersey honk at me for not turning left across traffic at a red light; what lack of training is needed to think that is acceptable should be criminal. California may not have the most courteous drivers, but it could be a lot worse...
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
You don't think road crews in America check to make sure the highways they build are level? You don't know what you're talking about.
Still done that way today. I occasionally take SH 79 back and forth between Austin and Hearne, which is a 65mph road with one lane in each direction for the vast majority of it. Even when the difference in speed is minimal, a large percentage of drivers will use the shoulder as a "get out of the way" lane to allow someone to pass if they're unable to get around on their own due to oncoming traffic. There have only been a small handful of times that I haven't seen that happen, and even then, those drivers were still going at least the speed limit.
Texas drivers still don't honk at each other either. I've seen people sit through two full cycles of a stop light without honking at the car at the front of the line that for some reason didn't go either time. Having grown up in south Florida, which has a very northeastern U.S. culture due to all the snowbirds down there (i.e. honking is a way of expressing the fact that the light is almost green and you haven't started rolling forward yet) , it continues to boggle my mind.