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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Repealed as of 1995 with the passage of the National Highway System Designation Act.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...)
int main(void) {while(1) fork(); return 0;}
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.
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.
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)
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?
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.
"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.
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.