Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Lead foot limit

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    Despite the graying of America in which people’s reaction times are slowing down as fast as their hair color is changing, the Idaho Legislature last winter decided to allow speed limits to increase on interstate highways.
    It conveniently ignored studies of traffic speed that have shown repeatedly that fatalities rise with increased speeds. It completely ignored any environmental or political benefits of reduced fuel consumption at slower speeds. Instead, it jumped on Utah’s three-year experiment in which it raised top highway speeds to 80 mph and found that accident rates didn’t rise with the higher limit.
    Utah determined that the reason accident rates didn’t increase was because drivers on highways with the higher speed limits didn’t drive any faster than they had when the speed limits were lower.
    If August was any indication, there may be more lead feet among Idaho drivers than Utah drivers. Idaho State Police reported that they issued more speeding tickets on interstate highways in southern Idaho, where the speed limit for automobiles went up from 75 mph to 80 mph in late July, than they had in the same period the previous year.
    That should have surprised no one.
    Idaho drivers believe—or have been trained to believe—that they can go 5 mph above the posted speed limit without risking a ticket. In our minds, this means that if the speed limit is 80 mph, we can actually travel at 85 mph—or more if passing a slower vehicle. It’s going to take some time and a lot of speeding tickets to convince us Potato Heads otherwise.
    State police—the ones with a front-row seat on high-speed carnage—say they aren’t giving drivers any leeway when it comes to the higher speed limit—nor should they. The lead foot limit should be what it purports to be—the top travel speed.

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