No, it was not. There was no federal statute mandating a national speed limit; as such, the 10th wouldn’t apply. Instead, Congress backhandedly created a de facto national speed limit by threatening to withhold federal highway finding for states which did not enact such a limit. Underhanded, I’ll grant you, but I will insist that it was not actually unconstitional, unless you can point me to decided case law.
I get a bit agravated at these simplistic solutions. Hey, I’ve made my bed and I will sleep in it, but don’t assume that it is not hard for some folks. I do need a 4x4. I don’t give a damn what anyone else needs.
How much time and energy have you put into the house you own? Do you love it? How much work will need to be done before you even begin to think about selling it? Is there a job closer to your home that fits your skills? Is there a home you would enjoy (or could begin to afford) closer to your job?
It’s not always as easy to do as you think. I’m not going to bitch about fuel prices here. But it pisses me off when someone glibly says that you should just move or get a different job.
The theoretical gas savings aren’t as clear as they appear on the surface. It is true that you will use more gas driving for an hour at 65mph than you will driving for an hour at 55mph. But people drive based on distance not time. If you drive at 65 as opposed to 55, you spend less time driving. So it’s not always true that a 100 mile drive at 55mph that lasts an hour and 49 minutes will use less gas than a 100 mile drive at 65mph that lasts an hour and 32 minutes.
Fuel efficiency is calculated in terms of miles per gallon. That figure generally reaches a maximum at somewhere between ~50 and ~60 MPH, depending on a large number of factors; driving time has nothing to do with it, so I’m not sure I understand what your point is.
Fair enough, except that you can’t really prove it’s not unconstitutional for the same reason. To the best of my knowledge there never was any such court case.
that’s too bad.
I do remember the state of Nevada planning to sue the feds one summer (either in 1985 or '86. I forget which). I recall them setting the stage for it by raising their highway limit to 70. The limit stood for one day and they took it down when the Feds followed through with the threat to cut off funds. I’m not sure what the strategy was, but this seems to be what that state wanted to set up a court case against the limit.
Then, in July of '87, the Feds bumped the limit up slightly to 65 and Nevadas case seems to have vanished.
If anyone remembers all this, or can provide a link to cite this, please post.
I ws disappointed at the time, as I wanted Nevada to go to court and kick the feds butt!
You obviously don’t live in LA.
LA conversation at a water cooler:
“How far do you live from work?”
“About 30 minutes, you?”
“About an hour, unless I leave late than 90 minutes”
Sure, I can.
And that’s why. A law or action isn’t actually unconstitutional until a court declares it so, as I understand it. Hopefully one of our lawyers can explain it better, or correct me if I’m mistaken.
Alright, then lets just say that in my opinion (and the opinion of quite a few legal experts that I read articles from back in those days) felt it was unconstitutional.
The economic blackmail that the feds pulled circumvented the will of the people in the individual states and therefore violated the 10th.
It’s really too bad the Nevada case never went forward. The case and the arguments made before the courts would have been absolutely fascinating. Had the state won it may have set precedent for blocking such current violations of state rights such as the drinking age, seat belt regs, and (one day) helmet laws. All which (and soon will when talking about helmets) are enforced by the fed in the same way 55 was.
I believe the Supreme Court’s stance on this is much like the pope’s: That which is unconstitutional has been unconstitutional since the adoption of the version of the constitution in question.
I seem to remember something similar to that from Bricker when he was explaining that nothing he did on his honeymoon in Virginia was a felony, due to a recent Supreme Court decision…
At the risk of veering outside of GQ:
There is perhaps nothing so maddenning as the idea of someone blackmailing me using MY OWN money.
Bricker had sex on the highway?
I’m thinking the conversation, which may have been with another of our resident DopeLawyers, centered around a hypothetical stay in a hotel during one’s honeymoon.
In some southern states prior to some recent Supreme Court guidance, it was hard to sneeze near your new wife without violating one or another of the state’s felony statutes on acceptable practices in marital relations…
Edit: Wow. I just worked vintage southern sodomy laws into a discussion on motor vehicle fuel economy. I don’t think I’ll mention this to my therapist…
It totaly sucked when we did it and I’d rather drive less places than slower to them. Everything takes much longer to accomplish due to the travel time added. It may not sound like much to you, but day after day, the extra time was something you begrudged the asshole that inacted the lower national speed limit. I garantee that since they can’t control the speed of vehicles now, after lowering the speed limit, they wouldn’t do any better. We’d be better off if the individual drivers just planed their trips better and didn’t go to the stores as many times each day. People jump in the car and get a bottle of pop instead of doing without until it’s on the way to work or it time to buy groceries.
Contour.
40-55 mph.
30 miles, 5 less than the freeway to the same spot. I checked. 
While reducing the speed limit to 55 did show a reduction in fatalities, there was also a corresponding decrease in fatalities when states went from 55 to 65. The reasons given are it’s not the speed that kills, it’s the difference in speed between the cars (having cars move at the ‘natural’ speed of the road lessens the differences in speeds between cars), better cars, better roads (those ‘wake up’ cuts in the shoulders that cause a noise as you drive over them, cat’s eye lane markings), and less driver fatigue (getting there in a shorter time).
In my case when I go to the office I drive 22 miles each way, with the bulk of it at highway speeds with the limit 65 mph. If I travel with the flow of traffic, 75 mph I get just under 20 mpg in my crappy minivan. If I just stay in the right hand lane and do the limit I get 23 mpg, an extra 50 miles per tankful.
It does cost me an additional 2.7 minutes per trip, but the 162 seconds is not that big a factor. The point is that the 65 mph speed limit makes for 75 mph traffic, and there’s a much bigger fall off of efficiency between 65 and 75.
If we wanted to slow traffic down we wouldn’t need to change any laws, just enforce the ones we have, but not brutally like Sam Stone said. If every time you drove over the limit you got a $10 fine, it would slow traffic down, as long as it was every time.
I agree completely with this. In Ohio we have some places where the speed limit is 65 mph for autos and 55 mph for trucks and large commercial vehicles. This is a law that if it were obeyed would make the highway less safe by forcing the differece in speeds you mention.
I believe the actual intent of the law is not to make the 18 wheelers drive more slowly, but to punish them more harshly when they do speed, so that when a truck doing 80 mph is ticketed it was going 25 mph over the limit, not 15 mph. They would never ticket a trucker for going 65 mph. This is the stupidest law imaginable.
The limit in New Mexico is 55 mph, or at least was 55 mph in the year 1999 when I drove through it.
Very, very frustrating.
-FrL-
The longest interstate highway drive I can find in the whole state on New Mexico is from Raton, NM to Chaparell, NM. It’s north to south and veers through Las Vegas, Santa Fe, and Alberquerque and covers 484 miles.
The difference between 55 mph and 65 mph, even assuming you could travel the speed limit the whole time, is one hour and 21 minutes. If you’re going east to west it’s a lot shorter drive, with correspondingly less benefit from the higher speed limit. Is a difference of less than an hour and a half across 500 miles enough to frustrate you?
Certainly. Especially if the roads are designed for higher speeds. I have no problem at all driving mountain roads a 45-50 mph that where designed for those speeds. I do it every day.
I would truely hate having to drive an interstate highway designed for 70 mph at 55.
And back in the 70’s I did a number of road trips from Colorado to Illinois and back when the limit was 55. It sucks.