Are speed limits really that low?

Great Debates
1

I notice that most people don’t follow the speed limit and it’s become more of a minimum than a maximum culturally. On various forums, some people are even starting to openly say that there’s nothing wrong with breaking the speed limit, and that it’s set too low for modern cars. I’ve even heard someone say that the extremely low (in their opinion) speed limits are “puritanical”, which is puzzling because I have no idea what the speed limit has to do with puritanism.

I personally don’t think they’re too low. I obey the speed limit and yes, if you’re in a rush it will feel slow. But overall, I find that following the speed limit just makes the drive look relaxing and presentable. I don’t think that it’s too slow though. People were complaining about how 70-mph speed limits for the bible belt are too slow, but driving through Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina I thought they were perfectly fine. How is 70 mph for a moderately populated rural highway slow?

I realize this is mostly all anecdotes, but I just want to know why a lot of people think the speed limits are too low.

2

Eh, it depends. For most interstate roads, a speed limit of 70 mph feels most appropriate. In some areas out west with flat and endlessly straight roads, 75 mph or even higher might be appropriate (at one point Montana had some roads without a fixed speed limit similar to the German Autobahn, but my understanding is this is no more.)

Since speed limit setting is a matter of state and local laws, it really just depends, some places really do seem to have speed limits that are too low, often times there’s good evidence this is because of speed traps. There are long stretches of state highways where the road conditions don’t change meaningfully but speed limits can go up or down 10 MPH pretty frequently, it’s not unusual for this to happen when crossing into the borders of some small town that gets the vast majority of its municipal budget from speeding fines. I think there’s been a concerted effort to do away with these modern day highwaymen in the guise of municipalities, but they do still exist to varying degree.

I also think America has a historical/institutional reason for wide speed limit non-compliance. For 20 years starting in the 70s we had the “National Maximum Speed Limit” of 55 miles per hour, any state that didn’t obey would lose Federal funding to aid with highway repairs (usually a significant portion of the total state budget for said purpose.) This was an extremely unpopular law, and if anyone here lived through it you know it was widely ignored. Many studies done during the period the law was in effect showed that noncompliance rates were as high as 85% in some areas. Both State governments and law enforcement agencies took legal actions to mitigate the law (some replaced speeding offenses, as long as the car was moving below the old limit, with an “Energy Waste” charge of like $15, far less than a typical +15mph speeding ticket would be), and many law enforcement agencies had policies in place that simply deemphasized enforcement of speeds above the NMSL but below the old posted limits. So for 20 years the entire country basically learned “you can ignore speed limits, because they’re nonsense and the roads are made to be traveled at a higher speed.”

3

Years ago when I was living in San Jose, Palo Alto had speed limits which were 5 or 10 mph lower than usual, to a minimum of 25. A street that would be 45 in other cities would be 40 or even 35. Nobody paid attention to those limits . . . except me. Just to annoy people I’d drive my beat-up ol’ VW* strictly at the limit and watch the steam coming out of the BMWs and SUVs snugged up behind me.

I liked to go to the Stanford Theater, a restored 1922 movie palace that showed vintage movies, and the way back to US-101 was about a mile and a half down a two-lane (plus parking) residential street so the limit was 25 – It could have easily been 30. So about 9pm one night I’m tooling at 25-per with a guy in a high-headlight SUV on my tail. He gets impatient, crosses the double yellow, and guns it, right in front of a cop car sitting dark in one side streets. The cop car explodes into life (scaring the bejezus out of me and I wasn’t the target) and has the guy stopped about a quarter-mile ahead. The cop was just climbing out when I sailed serenely by at 25-mph.

*Another reason was that with the ol’ VeeDub I obviously was not Palo Alto material and thereby became cop-bait.

4

Despite Martin Hyde’s guess about the reason people feel it’s ok to break the speed limit, people have been breaking speed limits probably as long as they have existed. I know that they were routinely broken in California (where they were fairly liberal, at least in rural areas) prior to the 1973 national limit. In my opinion (and it’s strictly that), the reason people break speed limits is because Americans have an ingrained impatience with life; we want to get on with things as quickly as we can. After all, in most cases, the time you save by going 5 - 10 mph over the limit while driving doesn’t save you any significant time in getting to your destination; what’s a couple minutes either way going to cost you in most cases? But that calculus rarely seems to factor into the thought process when driving.

5

Let’s say I drive 15,000 miles per year.

If I were to average 45 mph instead of 35 mph, I would save approximately 95 hours of driving each year. This is basically like getting an entire extra week of vacation time each year.

Along the same lines - if I’m driving on a 700-mile cross-country trip, driving 85 mph instead of 75 mph will save me over an hour. After you’ve already been driving for 9 hours, there’s a big difference between finally being at your destination by 11:00 PM, and still having another hour to go.

6

Oregon speed limit for trucks is still 55 mph even on rural interstates … oh man do the police zero in on these poor guys … I’m told it’s for safety … mind you, straight and level freeway is a rarity … but still …

65 mph for cars … and I’d say half comply … just finished a two hour run at 70 mph and I passed twice as many cars as passed me …

But I remember the 85 mph speed limit on them narrow two lane highways up on the high desert … and of course my braggart brother running 280 miles in 2 hours 45 … crazy shit …

7

  1. I never said that speed limits were never broken before the implementation of the 55-mph NMSL. What I actually said was studies conducted during the NMSL period showed very high noncompliance rates (83%) which were higher than non-compliance rates prior.

  2. Please cite that Americans are more likely to violate the speed limit than other countries, otherwise I find it fairly silly to suggest “Americans have an ingrained impatience with life” as a meaningful reason for speed limit noncompliance.

8

Here in the UK people generally drive 5-10 mph over the limit. If you drive at 30 around town you will very quickly have a queue of people trying to get past you or tail gaiting you. So it’s not just an American thing.

The annoying thing about the 30 mph limit in towns is that the majority of our cars are manual. 30 is just about when you would change from 3rd gear to 4th. If you leave it in 3rd the engine revs will be too high and you’re wasting fuel. Stick it in 4th and you’ll be labouring every time you come to a slight hill. So instead of changing gear every few minutes, people just drive at 35 in 4th.

9

Save for when there were speed limits set to try to reduce gasoline consumption back in the seventies, what speed limits are designed around, is a few basic considerations:

1: physics. You can pretend to yourself that under your guidance, any car will behave as you intend it to, but you are lying to yourself and everyone else. It’s a matter of weight, mass, speed, gravity, traction, and the exact mechanical design of each vehicle, road conditions, and so on.

2: the existence of society. Specifically, the fact that each person has different skill levels, physical capabilities, and so on; and that these very different people all have to use the same roads.

3: people aren’t trustworthy. We have to have laws and enforce them, because as a group, too many people can’t be trusted either to watch out for each other, or to know their own limits.

All that adds up to, that although you, who have a car designed to turn corners on a dime can make it around a bend at a speed  that would cause a large truck to tip over, because you both have to use the same road, and because having everyone at different speeds would directly cause collisions, we have to set the speed limit for the truck.

Anyone who refuses to include all of those considerations (and perhaps more) into how they drive, is at least too ignorant to be allowed behind the wheel, and at most, sociopathically selfish, and therefore too dangerous to allow anywhere in society.

10

Didn’t know that about Oregon. Funny, it’s dangerous when vehicles are traveling at different speeds. Best to keep everyone going the same speed.

11

But if you go faster you will be done for speeding by a camera. Especially if you’re near a school.

The 30 mph limit in town is there to protect the lives of pedestrians. Speed kills.

Now, outside town, on dual carriageways and motorways, the speed limit is a pain.

This link from ROSPA may be of interest:

12

There are definitely roads where it feels like the speed limit is off, sometimes even too high. Although I probably notice it more when it feels too low. Westbound on I-66 out of DC doesn’t increase from 55 to 65 mph until around when you leave Fairfax county. That increase feels long overdue by the time I get to it. It’s probably low for rush hour, which I try to avoid. They do have variable limits farther east, but not there.

For limits that feel too high, last time I drove west out of Carlsbad, NM, some downhill portions of 62 were uncomfortable at the posted (iirc) 70 mph.

13

Mostly, speed limits are set so even the stupidest drivers won’t kill themselves and others. Montana is a good case in point. They had no limit on interstates after the feds suggested everyone go to 55mph - just a vague “safe for conditions” advisory. Then some knucklehead was ticketed for doing over 100mph in a thunderstorm, and argued in court that it was perfectly safe. It obviously wasn’t, but the court said leaving to people’s judgment meant taking the bad with the good, so they changed it.

We could raise limits here, but it would require doing what other first-world countries do - inspect all cars regularly and certify they were safe to operate at those limits. The American people would never stand for that - our most cherished freedom is the freedom to be idiots, especially as it regards driving. It’s second only to our right to be stupid about guns. I can imagine the outrage at being told they had to fix their brakes, replace their bald tires, repair damaged body panels or rusty frames, stop leaks of various fluids. I’ve counted as many as 25 cars with non-working headlights in a night of driving.

14

Appropriateness of speed limits varies a lot. One example near where I live is the Palisades Interstate Pkwy on the west side of the Hudson going from GW Bridge up into NY state through NJ, speed limit in most places 50mph, which is completely ridiculous and universally ignored. The general flow of traffic is in low-mid 60’s and the road is only slightly windy-er and narrower than plenty of roads with 65 limits.

OTOH when I drove on Interstates with 80mph limit in UT, ID, WY, MT in big rented SUV I felt no desire to exceed it even a little, in fact would sometimes drive a bit below as long as satisfied I wasn’t creating a hazard. My own car doesn’t feel different at 80 than 60 on a good road, this one did, some do. I know there’s more energy hitting something stationary at 80 v 60 in any car, but degree of control also matters.

Also highways, mainly what’s being discussed it seems, have to have a speed limit or a specific policy to allow people to go as fast as they want (no longer relevant in the US). But on other roads you could have a system and philosophy based on judgment of the police, without constantly changing posted limits, which are often politically influenced to be too low. In this case the problem is US tendency toward legalism, everyone the police say were driving recklessly relative to conditions would want a lawyer to fight it on the basis of ‘who says?’

15

On most highways in the Twin Cities the traffic is typically between five and ten miles per hour over the speed limit. This is so universal that I think epbrown01’s suggestion that speed limits are dumbed-down to the worst drivers/ weather conditions is probably correct. Fortunately the speed limits are rarely enforced during rush hour; you’re lucky if you CAN go over the limit, and if you do you’re getting out of the way of the people in back of you, which during rush hour is a public service.

16

Some states do actually require annual safety inspections. Virginia is one of them. They are relatively unpopular, the inspection sticker costs a little bit of money, and most people get their car inspected at a mechanic, who is also generally the one to do the work if they find problems. This leads to a lot of people complaining safety inspection sticker regimes are a “sweetheart” deal for the auto repair industry.

I don’t generally fully buy this, but I will admit ages ago when driving a beater whose driver side handle I had torn in half when the door was frozen shut, I was a little annoyed my car failed inspection for a damaged door handle. In my mind while that represented an annoyance to me, the driver, it didn’t make the vehicle unsafe on the roads.

17

In Ontario on the freeways, people regularly drive 20 km/h or more over the limit of 100 km/h. I remember one time I was on the 407 doing 120 on a fine sunny day, which was as fast as I felt comfortable doing… and I wa the second slowest thing on the road. Only one large truck was slower. In most areas, these highways were designed for speeds of 120-130, and slower often feels inappropriate.

In general though, I think the safest thing to do is to keep up with traffic speed, assuming that that speed isn’t dangerous. (I’ve been on the 401 in conditions when the traffic was moving very fast but very close together… that definitely felt wrong. I was very glad I wasn’t driving.)

18

IIRC the 407 is a toll highway, and I always suspect that they can issue you a ticket based on your average speed. I don’t know this, but the few times I’ve used it, I’ve been careful (especially without a transponder, they bill you based on the plate and charge you extra for it).

The 401 is a different story, especially between Windows and London. It’s the most boring, uneventful piece of road in Ontario, and I can’t bear to go slower than 140 (people still pass me at this speed). Of course the closer you get to the GTA the less traffic allows this to happen.

19

That’s bullshit. The speed limits are set by professionals who are the best to judge what speed is safe for which road. I always drive at the speed limit. I set my cruise control and stay all the way to the right. Everybody passes me. OK. It won’t be me the cop pulls over for speeding. Since I took up cruising at the speed limit in the right lane a few years ago, I have become ever so much calmer and peaceful and life feels better as a result. I can’t do a thing about other drivers speeding except stay alert and drive defensively. The roads are that tiny bit safer when I’m on them.

20

If “everybody passes you” because you’re driving slower than everyone else, you’re a hazard and the roads are definitely not “a tiny bit safer” with you on them.