Sorry I don’t have more details, but while listening to the local news this evening, I heard about a non profit group that, among other things, is pushing for governors to be installed in 18-wheel trucks that would limit their speed to 65mph.
At first, this sounded like a great idea. Without researching statistics, it can be agreed that a great many people die each year due to accidents with semis. In addition to their incredible mass, there is the consideration that more than a few drivers run ‘two sets of books’ to enable them to drive for more hours than legally permitted and there is occasional drug use to help them stay awake, making the roads even more safe.
But then, as I thought about it more, I considered the fact that if the speed limit throughout the country was 65 (which it isn’t, but that could easily change), then wouldn’t putting governors in ALL cars make the roads safer? I love my little Saab and the speeds that it can handle, but wouldn’t I be making everyone safer by not being able to go over the new national speed limit? While we have no laws about the size of a vehicle (which makes huge gas guzzlers okay although they too are unsafe), we clearly have laws in place regarding speed limits. Governors would be an easy way to ensure that these laws are enforced while reducing the need for officers to set up speed traps.
I don’t think it’d be a good idea. The “common speed” that is the speed most traffic will be travelling at on the interstate is often 70 mph +, and a semi truck with a governor set to 65 mph would interrupt traffic flow, and probably cause more accidents (I have a cousin who owns a trucking company and when he started out he drove himself, he says in his experience most accidents involving semis are when cars attempt to pass a semi without proper regard to safety.)
Plus you’d have the enginge switching off anytime the driver couldn’t control momentum going down a hill on an interstate, semis can’t stop or slow down near as easily as a regular car.
There are also times when a semi truck needs to gain some speed when approaching a somewhat steep hill or they may not be able to make it up without having to downshift significantly (we’ve all seen the semims that have to sputter along at like 30 miles per hour going up a hill.)
Add to that the need for acceleration in an emergency situation, and governors are a very bad idea. Any car company that installed one would get their collective butts sued off within a week. All it would take is one death or injury because someone couldn’t speed up to get clear.
I’ve never had any experience with a governor before. However if the fuel supply is cut the engine would stop running, doesn’t it? I’m pretty much completely in the dark about anything relating to automobiles.
I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed to governors if they were set to a certain level well over the speed limit (say 85 miles per hour.)
A “national speed limit” sucks! I lived through one already! As both a driver and a cop I hated it! There were quotas & bureaucracy to deal with. The U.S. government supplied a bunch of radar guns in the early 80’s, then made you keep a matrix and all this f**ked up paper work about their use: a HUGE pain in the ass that neither the state nor the police department required but the NHTSA did!! I was doing work for the federal government even though I was not empoyed by them nor did I get paid by them! And then they would dock highway funds from states that were spending law enforcement dollars fighting real crime instead of speed enforcement. It was miserable having the feds stick their nose where it doesn’t belong! I see no problem with obeying the 10th Amendment and allowing states to set whatever limit they see fit.
They are? How? CITE? Is there a mechanical flaw in them? Or did you mean to say that some people are driving them unsafely? Please clarify your post and then back it up!
:dubious:
What if the speed limit is lower than what the governor allows? Highway speed limits vary up & down. Even if the limit were back to 55 or 65 nationally ( :mad: ) there would still be some areas of road where it was lower.
Your plan would let a car drive 65…on downtown main street, speed limit 25. How would you prevent that? Wait…what about…police speed traps?
Yes. It’s a bad solution to a problem I’m not worried about. Why don’t we all just ride horses and then traffic fatalities involving cars & trucks will drop to 0? Your OP doesn’t mention who this non profit group was. They sound like a bunch of ninnies, or someone whos going overboard in response to a recent accident.
Hey, do you think they heard that Texas recently raised the limit on some roads to 80 MPH!. Bet that made them run & hide in their gingerbread house on Lollypop Lane and hide under their marshmellow bed! :rolleyes:
I meant survivability for those they collide with, similar to a collision with a semi. I hope I don’t need to dig up stats that say you are more likely to survive a head-on collision with a Prius than an H2. I did not intend to open up the can of worms on the SUV debates of reknown here.
I’m sorry for not catching the group name. It was part of a local news story that I wasn’t paying full attention to that talked about the standard fatalities/accidents on the roadways over holiday weekends. The spokeswoman on the news had lost her son to a collision with a semi, so your assumption above is correct. Of course we can talk to Christopher Reeve about the safety of horses, oh wait, we can’t.
Don’t Semis already have governors that top out around 85 or so? Or at least some companies have put them in.
However, how are you planning on installing them in all cars? I’ve got four vehicles in my family, two cars two motorcycles, that’s going to cost someone a lot of money to do. Plus some poeple will take them out so that does you no good.
I wish I had a good cite for it, but Motorcycle Consumer News a couple of years ago had a study done by DOT that said accidents happen more because of speed differences in cars rather then the speed itself. So if one person is doing 85 and another is doing 55 is much worse then everyone doing the same speed.
If you want to see some nasty traffic because of speed differences go through Ohio sometime. Trucks can only do 55 IIRC, while cars can do 65. You can get behind a long line of trucks with one trying to pass and it takes forever. This is what’s going to happen if you try and do it everywhere in the country.
Well, there are only fifty governors in the U.S. I think they should be allowed to ride around in whatever they want, after they’ve put in a long day at the Statehouse.
I thought this was going to invoke Ah-nold’s Hummer at some stage.
I disagree with the proposal for speed governors. It’s an invitation for even more traffic clogs and I predict trucker protests where two or three semis roll merrily along side-by-side at their regulated 65MPH, creating a huge jam behind them. Personally, I’d rather see truck-only lanes built with long on- and off-ramps where semis can roll along in extended convoys at a steady 85 or so, rather like trains.
I have observed that it’s the difference in vehicle speeds on the highway that causes more problems than fast speeds. Example: you’re driving down the freeway where everyone is driving about 75. Then some jackass comes along going 90. He’s zigging in and out of traffic, darting in & out of lanes, people are changing lanes to get out of his way and let him by. Who’s causing the problem? All the cars going 75 or the 1 car going 90? Heres another one: You’re on the freeway where everyone is going about 75. Then the pack of cars comes up on some jackass going 50. Everyone has to pull to another lane around this guy, brake,etc… Who’s causing the problem? The cars going 75 or the slow car going 50? It’s the difference in vehicle speeds that caused problems.
Freeways were built with the 85th percentile in mind. What are 85% of the vehicles traveling at. Right now (and I’ve been to 48 states) it would seem that speed is between 70-75 on most rural freeway portions. Having a significant number of vehicles (trucks) travel below that would cause traffic problems.
I see this in Northern Illinois where the limit is 65 for cars but 55 for trucks. It sucks!
Well, that’s physics for you. Until such a time when automated highways get every vehicle coasting along at a set rate, limiting one class of vehicle (already the largest and slowest) will accomplish nothing.
The example of a trucker protest where side-by-side vehicles cruise at 65 and block all others isn’t going to create a perfectly smooth steady flow. Rather, frustrated car drivers will try to dangerously pass each other and frequently change lanes to (futilely) work their way forward in the stream and the density of cars will increase to the point where safely merging onto the highway is near-impossible. In any case, the truckers will point out they’re travelling as fast as the law allows and it would be unfair to punish them for it.
By way of proposing a feasible technological solution, equip trucks with inexpensive video cameras such as the ones on many police cars. If a car driver is recorded behaving in an unsafe manner (i.e. cutting in front of a semi), prosecute him under the same federal umbrella as created the national speed limit in the first place, seeing as his conduct is arguably interfering with interstate trade. It’s a reach, I know, but while the OP is satisfied “without researching statistics”, I’d like to confirm that there is a problem and see the right people punished for it.
Most vehicles built within the last 10 or 15 years are already governed so as not to allow them to exceed the maximum speed rating of the original equipment tires. This is a probably liability thing as manufacturers have reputedly settled suits out of court concerning tire failures at speeds in excess of the capacity of OEM tires.
I’ve never experienced this since I’ve never taken the Ranger anywhere near 99mph nor the Aztek anywhere near 112, but people have told me that at the limit, fuel flow is interrupted until the vehicle slows approximately 10 mph, then resumes.
In a thread about old people nailing the gas while thinking it’s the brake, I proposed modifications of the governor program to include sudden throttle movement and wide throttle opening relative to car speed as triggers for fuel interruption. I suggested that such modifications might be good for cars driven by young, inexperienced drivers, as well.
Some portions of I-40 have a 65MPH speed limit for trucks (Arkansas IIRC, for one), and all it does is cause traffic jams with the cars that have a 70MPH speed limit. I think a smooth flow of traffic is safer than bunches of traffic blobs caused by uneven speeds. If I had to choose between getting hit by a truck doing 65, or a truck doing 70, would it really matter?
Not a good idea, Zenith, because it would inhibit acceleration in emergency situations and cause more harm than good.
Speed, in my honest opinion, doesn’t kill. It saves lives. There is no, as I understand it, statistically significant difference between speed limits of 55 and 65 mph, insofar as highway fatalities and accidents. I’m willing to opine that on expressways, highways, interstates, and other long distance roads, a speed of 85 in clement conditions would be perfectly acceptable for safety’s sake. Mostly because my daily commute (Sprain, Bronx River, Cross County, Hutch, 678) or (Sprain, Bronx River, Deegan) averages a flow of traffic between 70 and 80 mph on a daily basis (Not my natural speed, the inherent flow of traffic on the road), and these are not horribly clear roads.
At least not per se. Zooming through a school zone at 55 mph, or driving down the highway right at the speed limit during a snowstorm, are plenty dangerous, but it’d have to be a pretty sophisticated speed governor to prevent you from doing stuff like that.
