| Re: Return of the 55-Miles-Per-Hour Speed Limit? |
Subject: Re: Return of the 55-Miles-Per-Hour Speed Limit? by Klaus on 2008/8/18 19:03:15 Drive 55 campaign gaining speed By William M. Welch, USA TODAY  Rocker Sammy Hagar, who wrote the song I Can't Drive 55, helps change a sign in 1995 after the maximum speed limit was raised to 65 mph on Highway 101 in Northern California. File photo by Robert Buhl, AP LOS ANGELES Though it lasted longer than disco and leisure suits, the national 55-miles-per-hour speed limit was another remnant of the 1970s that did not endure. Yet with high fuel costs reviving memories of the energy crisis of that decade, proposals to bring back the "double nickel" or something like it are emerging, with backers saying federal speed limits could save fuel, money and perhaps lives. "The faster you go, the more you waste," says Tim Castleman, a Sacramento man who is promoting a Drive 55 campaign. Until gasoline approached $4 a gallon, Castleman didn't find a lot of support for reinstating the 55-mph limit that Congress abolished in 1995 after more than 20 years. "It was a terribly unpopular law," acknowledges Castleman, who maintains a website, www.drive55.org. Indeed, reinstating the national 55-miles-per-hour limit, or 60 mph as some suggest, would seem a tough sell after the first experiment proved about as successful as Prohibition. Opponents such as Jim Baxter, head of the National Motorists Association, a Wisconsin group, argue any fuel savings would be tiny and that higher limits haven't made highways less safe. "People have to be willing to comply with it," he says. "And they weren't." New action in Congress Proposed by President Nixon and enacted in January 1974, the nationwide speed limit was described as a temporary emergency response to oil shortages and was to expire in mid-1975. But Congress soon made it permanent, and the 55-mph limit immediately became part of the national culture. Auto speedometers highlighted the 55-mph limit, police radar detection devices became popular, and rocker Sammy Hagar had a 1984 hit record that complained, I Can't Drive 55. States that had allowed speeds 75 mph or higher were compelled to go along because of the threat of losing federal money for highway construction. But in the face of resistance, Congress in 1987 relaxed the law to permit 65 mph on rural interstate highways. In 1995, Congress lifted the federal limit entirely. Baxter says most states have maximum limits of 65 or 70 mph. Some Western states have higher limits. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., introduced a bill last month that orders a study to determine the effects of a national 60-mph speed limit. Warner says the 55 limit reduced fuel use by 167,000 barrels a day, or 2% of highway consumption, citing a Congressional Research Service report. With far more vehicles, fuel savings is likely to be far greater now, he says. Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., has proposed a 60-mph limit in urban areas and 65-mph elsewhere. "There is no need for OPEC or the oil companies to help us out," Speier says. "Every driver can affect change simply by easing up on their right foot." Both point to findings by the Environmental Protection Agency that fuel efficiency decreases above 60 mph. Speier says 11 other House Democrats, most of them from California, are co-sponsoring her bill. And she claims support from environmental groups and the American Trucking Associations. Few other politicians have been eager to climb aboard, Baxter says. He notes that Warner is leaving office at the end of this year and that Speier represents a San Francisco and San Mateo district where voters may be less tied to their autos than elsewhere in the country. "The public isn't real excited about going back to a 55-mph national speed limit," Baxter says. Traffic fatalities on decline Baxter says the savings potential is overstated because most driving is done on streets and roads where lower limits are in effect. Only 2% of the nation's roughly 4 million miles of roadways have limits above 55 mph now, he says. While up to one-third of daily traffic volume is on interstate highways, Baxter says, congestion often limits speeds anyway. "All we would do by establishing another national speed limit is we would generate a lot of tickets, a lot of insurance surcharges, and give a little boost to the radar-detector industry," Baxter says. "There would be no change in fuel pricing." Warner says safety is a reason to lower speeds too. He points to a National Academy of Sciences finding that the law "saved up to 4,000 lives per year from highway accidents." Disputing that, opponents point to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's figures that show the rates of traffic fatalities and injuries have been declining for more than a decade. The fatality rate in 2007 was 1.37 per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, compared with 1.69 in 1996. Castleman, 50, a retired heating and air conditioning contractor, acknowledges his cause is a long shot. "We've been calling on people to do it for themselves, do it voluntarily, do it for the country, do it to stop climate change, do it to save money, do it to make our roads safer," he says. http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-08-17-Drive-55_N.htm |
