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Montana Lawmakers Propose 85 Mph Speed Limit On Interstates
HughPickens.com writes AP reports that Montana lawmakers are drafting bills that would raise the daytime speed limit on Montana interstate highways from 75 to 80 and possibly as high as 85 mph. "I just think our roads are engineered well, and technology is such we can drive those roads safely," says Art Wittich. He notes that Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho have raised their speed limits above 75, and they haven't had any problems. Drivers on German autobahns average about 84 mph. State Senator Scott Sales says he spent seven months working in the Bakken oil patch, driving back and forth to Bozeman regularly. "If I could drive 85 mph on the interstate, it would save an hour," says Sales. "Eighty-five would be fine with me."
A few years ago Texas opened a 40 mile stretch on part of a toll road called the Pickle Parkway between Austin and San Antonio. The tolled bypass was supposed to help relieve the bottleneck around Austin but the highway was built so far to the east that practically nobody used it. In desperation, the state raised the toll road speed limit to 85 mph, the fastest in the nation. "The idea was that drivers could drop the top, drop the hammer, crank the music and fly right past Austin," says Wade Goodyn. "It's a beautiful, wide-open highway — but it's empty, and the builders are nearly bankrupt."
Or has the US DOT had a change in policy?
Repealed as of 1995 with the passage of the National Highway System Designation Act.
Jason Van Patten
...if they raised the speed limit to eighty-eight, scott could save *years*...
Montana used to have no speed limit during the daytime but that was overturned for being too "vague" by the Montana Supreme Court. People actually drove reasonably well and there weren't any major issues with it. The major issue was the Susie safety nuts who felt that without telling people how fast was reasonable that it would confuse people, the court agreed.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Have you compared the average car in Germany with the ones in the USA? Furthermore, in Germany there are mandatory periodic technical inspections, and these are no joke. Half the cars I see in the USA would never pass these inspections. Also, getting a driver license in Germany is HARD, and the average Autobahn driver is very well disciplined compared to his USA counterpart (exceptions exist, I know I know...)
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The national maximum speed limit was repealed under Bill Clinton so federal funding is not an issue.
Safety is an issue. Crashes on highways are no more frequent at higher speeds so long as they are designed for it, they are however more deadly. In Germany you have two additional things that make it possible to have high or no speed limit on intercity highways. First, the driver training is of much higher quality, you will never see anyone changing lanes without signalling on the autobahn. Second, there is generally a parallel slower road. If an 85 mph road is the only option then you will have people who are little tired or had a glass of wine with dinner on it. Not a recipe for success.
It was in the 60's not the 90's. Lowered to 55 in the Nixon admin and slowly climbing since then.
Shortly after Clinton signed the National Highway System Designation Act in '95. Montana did indeed have a "reasonable and prudent" speed limit set on its (very rural!) highways. It didn't last due to how vague the phrasing was.
Jason Van Patten
The German Autobahns are unrestricted. You can literally go as fast as you want on them (your insurance may blame you in an accident if you're the only one doing over 100mph, but it's not "illegal").
Strict lane control is the saviour. You can be arrested for dawdling in the inner lanes (the "fast" - actually "overtaking" - lanes) unnecessarily. It works well because the old grannies do get too scared to be in anything but the first lane, so they actually stick to it, rather than hog the middle lane as they do in my country (the UK).
I see no problem with a rise in speed limits (and would vastly prefer that to people campaigning to scrap speed cameras etc.), but basic driving etiquette must be enforced. In Germany, I believe it's actually written on the road signs and road markings - this lane below 55, these lane over 55 ONLY.
Enforce that strictly, it becomes much safer.
Since US and German driving were compared, German police is really tough on tailgating. You will see cameras on motorways, they don't measure speed but the distance between cars. The correct distance is speed in km/h, divided by 2, as meters. Less than half that can get you a ticket (25 mtrs and 100 km/h = 62mph). Even less distance gives serious fines and can be a criminal offence.
When the feds mandated a speed limit Montana complied in order to get the funding but limited fines to $5 which could be paid to the officer on the spot. It was a pretty good system because it gave the overlords something to feel good about but didn't incentivise ticketing for the police and friends.
Your perception is skewed. The commute he mentions is indeed that long. It's a vast empty area and there is no option other than driving.
Let me tell you. When I was stationed in Germany from 1991 to 1993, you were correct. Then the EU and open borders and the Eurozone and all that stuff happened. I've been back to Germany several times (no longer as poor soldier) in the 2000's, and I can say that there are a lot of foreigners on them there Autobahns (nouns are cap'd in German), and the rules ain't that strictly followed. (Not sure why I'm writing in that tone of voice.)
There's still pretty good discipline in the leftmost lane. But out of five or six lanes, it's not quite good enough. And of course in cities and urban areas there have always been speed limits. In fact the speed limits in these areas are programmed based on traffic flow and peak times.
Intercity is where the safe and prudent really works in Germany, especially because the left-most lane (not all lanes!) discipline works fairly well. Note that as early as 1991, though, there is certain liability for causing an accident in the left lane, even if there's a slow driver.
I guess my point is, Germany isn't the speed-limitless-wonderland that so many people think it is.
--Jim (me)
The Autobahns are also built to higher standards in terms of thicker roadbeds, better maintenance, and more gradual curves that are designed to be used at higher speeds. Admittedly you can restrict speed limits for just parts of a highway where curves are more common and raise limits on straight stretches of the road, but the smaller roadbed is a major concern and something that needs to be considered.
The reason for the lower standards on the American Interstate Highways is in part due to the huge scale of the whole project being a continent spanning system as opposed to something that simply runs through a much smaller country. Distances are huge in America and the higher standards used for the Autobahn would have been prohibitive in terms of how much it cost to build those highways... especially in rural America.
Interstate Highways are not the Autobahn, even though there are some superficial common features. If Interstate Highways had their construction standards raised and roadbeds rebuilt to those higher standards to accommodate these higher speeds, I would be more inclined to support some higher speeds.
The Bakken formation is in northeastern Montana and northwestern North Dakota and extends up into Saskatchewan. If working there you might be housed in a place like Bainville. From there you would drive about 360 miles on I-90 and I-94 to Bozeman before getting off at Glendale. At 75MPH, that's 4 hours, 40 minutes. At 85MPH, that's 4 hours, 14 minutes. So the speed limit difference could cut 26 minutes off your drive. If you were counting the round-trip difference, it's about 52 minutes, so close to what he was saying. You might do that every week or two if you were working in the oil patch and "living" in Bozeman.
However, I don't think it's realistic to drive all that way at 85MPH. You'd have to slow down at times.
What are they going to hit, an elk?
Or a cow. In spite of fences and other attempts to keep wildlife off of major roads, it still is a major problem. Avoiding wildlife while traveling at 55 mph is much easier to do than at 80 mph.
Out of interest, how well is the speed limit in somewhere like Montana policed? Do the cops actually pull people for doing 1mph over the current limit?
The reason I ask is that here in the UK the official speed limit on motorways is 70mph, but police can't pull you unless you're doing 10% + 2mph over the limit, so 79mph on a 70mph limit road. This is to ensure that there are no arguments about poor calibration or rounding errors as it's determined to be enough of a margin to rule out that kind of thing making prosecutions easy because it leaves little room for argument that you weren't in fact speeding. That coupled with the fact that all car speedometers actually underestimate and typically by a couple of mph means people are often going around 80 - 82mph or so on their speedometer anyway (though in practice probably more like 77 - 79mph).
I've never seen or heard of anyone in the UK get pulled doing that and only really seen cops pull people once they start hitting 85mph+.
Is it similar in the US? So would people be left alone at 80mph when the current limit is 70mph? what if the limit is raised to 85mph, would the cops then give leeway like they do in the UK letting people do 95mph? Or could you get pulled doing 86mph in the US on an 85mph limit road?
Somewhat true, but the Germans are much better trained than US drivers, including basic medical training and required safety equipment, should anything go wrong, and so on. Their vehicles are also more highly maintained. Also, let's not forget that the Autobahns are usually engineered to a very high standard.
I live in Germany, and so I might have seen a bit more of the Autobahn than you have in recent years, and I've not had the impression of dangerous foreigners driving all over the place. I'm not saying you're wrong, but the problem doesn't seem as bad as your post painted it.
I shudder to think what would happen if US drivers were let loose on roads such as the Autobahn in their cars, with their proficiency, and their respect for the rules of the road - it'd make some great TV :)
I believe the poster was talking about the B-roads which generally run in similar routes to the A-roads (the Autobahns). The B-roads are for slower traffic, and offer a respite for people not wishing to share the road with people thundering past.
I just think our roads are engineered well
Umm... American's infrastructure is not in good shape.
Is it similar in the US? So would people be left alone at 80mph when the current limit is 70mph? what if the limit is raised to 85mph, would the cops then give leeway like they do in the UK letting people do 95mph? Or could you get pulled doing 86mph in the US on an 85mph limit road?
You are generally safe at 10 over on US Interstates. Most cops won't bother you of that except where a local jurisdiction has control over a short portion and uses it for revenue enhancement. In addition, there are usually plenty of drivers doing 15 or more over that are much better targets anyway so as long a you are flowing with traffic you are pretty safe form being pulled over.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Is it similar in the US?
It's a little more insidious in the US, because there is an informal speed buffer of something like "10% + 2mph over the limit," but it is not codified into law anywhere, at least AFAIK. In general, people are not harassed for slightly excessive speed, but if the officer doesn't like you, or is having a bad day, or is behind in his quota (excuse me, "performance guideline") for the month, he is perfectly within his authority to write you a ticket for doing 71 in a 70 zone.
Now, there are reasons for him not to do so; a rational judge would probably look critically on an officer that submitted several such citations, for example, but that would require one to contest the ticket in court, something one may be loath to do if one is far from home. A good attorney could probably make the calibration argument in front of the judge and win, but that would require not only contesting the ticket but hiring an attorney, which may cost more than paying a simple speeding ticket in the first place. One would also hope that a high rate of contested citations would reflect negatively on the performance of the officer in his performance review, but that's assuming a lot (including that there actually is a high rate of contested citations, and it's not just you).
When speeding in the US, therefore, one counts on the largesse of the officer, something not guaranteed to be available.
So Bozeman to Bakken Oil fields is >400 miles. there and back is >800 miles.
800 miles @ 75MPH is 10h 40min. 800miles @ 85MPH is 9h 24min.
Savings of 1 hour 15 minutes, if you managed to keep average speed close to speed limit, which surprisingly is not horribly hard around that area. I live in South Dakota, and there really is not a problem. Almost no traffic and fairly flat and straight roads.
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This is only likely to reduce the number of speeding tickets.
I live in kansas where the speed limit is 75mph on the open highway but where the trafic is sparse, the road is straight, and flat many drivers already do 85mph. I would imagine Montana is the same way, I know Nebraska is I just drove through there.
Then there are the people with economy cars and cross overs with small engines that end up doing 65-70mph because they have trouble maintaining 75mph if there are any hills. {I used to have an older ford taurus with a 4 cylinder engine that was one of those cars}
"The reason for the lower standards on the American Interstate Highways is in part due to the huge scale of the whole project being a continent spanning system as opposed to something that simply runs through a much smaller country."
Good argument, except basically all the EU shares the same standards regarding highway engineering so you end up comparing apples to apples.
European Route E90, for instance, covers 4770Km (almost 3000 miles) from Portugal to Turkey, which happens to be a bit longer than Los Angeles to New York.
To the third power actually.
I'd heard stories about that $5 fine, and if I remember correctly, it was an energy consumption fee. State police would give a receipt to people driving through the state and tell violators to hang onto it if they were stopped again, it was valid all day long.
-Turkey
I would prefer to see more people ticketed for failure to use the turn signal than for speeding. Communication is key. Unfortunately, it's a bit harder to catch the former than the latter.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
You can check the road safety statistics to see just how dangerous it is on US roads compared to German ones.
Except the accident rates for the U.S. were often worse when the speed limit was lower (before it used to be 55). One pretty obvious reason for that is that some people would drive very fast anyway, so you had a greater discrepancy between speed of drivers on the road - after a lot of driving experience I'd say that's probably the biggest reason accidents happen, a slow driver does something suddenly and a fast driver cannot respond quickly enough.
In Germany things works out because multiple lanes are much more separate and slow drivers actually move right.
Comparing German accident rates to U.S. rates with very different driving situations makes no sense when arguing a speed limit should be raised or not, because it says nothing about how accident rates for U.S. drivers change at different speed limits.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
After moving to Belgium, I took drivers-lessons, just to be sure I caught the main differences (legal etc) between back home and Belgium.
By the 2nd session, I was getting nervous because of the comments made by the instructors (there were 2, alternating) about how I was doing things in traffic, that they completely had forgotten, like checking blind spots before turning...
Yeah, even their instructors are incompetent, no wonder the drivers are dangerous.
The difference in gas miliage between 45-50 MPH and 70-75 seems to be far more influenced by traffic conditions
Yes.... perhaps we have been measuring the wrong thing all along. Miles driven are not fungible.
We could take a standardized mile, but it would not reflect the real world.
Instead we should say...
The total fuel consumption rate accelerating from 0 to 65, maintaining speed at 65 and driving a distance from point A to point B is X.
X forms a "baseline"
Next you need to add realistic random traffic to the road, and an intelligent agent which attempts to maintain 65 while it is safe to do so.
And you obtain a "second baseline"; real-world gas consumption.
Then if you want to decide whether a different speed limit other than 65 is beneficial or not, you need to make the adjustment, and compare the results against the second baseline over a few thousand trials with a representative sample of travelers.
The ideal circumstances on a road by yourself does not reflect this complex system, and simple physics cannot even solve the N body problem, let alone this one; the only way to come at a decent answer is to experiment and gather the statistics.
To the third power actually.
Someone didn't take thermodynamics.
I've been tracking the data myself with torque. Fuel consumption per unit time increases with the square of speed because after 65mph drag does.
But since you get there faster it's just linear increase in consumption per unit distance.
Personally, I discovered my AFR drops from 14.1 to as low as 11.5 any time the engine produces over 400 grams CO2/mile for more than about 3 seconds. On a completely flat road this works out to about 85mph or so, I can do slight inclines at 80, and if I don't ever want to have to touch the cruise control, 75-76mph.
at 55mph I get 34mpg, at 70 I get 32, at 75 I get 29.5 and at 80 I get about 27.
If I want to get there I go 75.
If I kinda want to get there I go 65.
If I don't really care or I'm feeling cheap I go 55.