Okay, so I’m driving through St Louis this weekend, I’m on a 6 lane (3 each way) state highway (not the interstate), and I notice as I’m driving past the “Speed Limit 60” sign that there is another sign right next to it that says “Speed Limit 25 Except Where Posted.”
The first thing I think is, well heck, I’ve passed the sign, the speed is not posted anymore. Better drop to 25 until I see the next one. However, since every other car is doing about 70, I know this is nuts, and/or suicide. So I figure that there must be some state or federal regulation that specifies how often the speed limit must be posted. (More likely state, since I never saw this sign on the interstate.) I always assumed that the speed limit was what was posted until you saw another speed limit sign that said something different. What’s the scoop here?
Hmmmm. As long as there was a sign that said the speed limit was 60, you should be safe from legal trouble. My suspicions would be that either the “speed limit 25” sign was a prank of some sort, or else it was next to a turnoff and meant to signal to those leaving the highway that they were entering a city where the standard speed limit was 25. I certainly have never seen or heard any justification for making a short stretch of a six-lane highway have an abnormally low speed limit.
In New York State, cities have an internal speed limit - usually 30 MPH - unless otherwise posted. The signs don’t come right out and say this, but that’s the way the law is.
So my WAG is that the city of St. Louis has an internal speed limit of 25 MPH for all roads that don’t say something else, and that you saw the sign just as you were entering the city limits. It didn’t apply to the road you were on, because that already had an established speed limit. But if you got off the highway and went onto a surface street you couldn’t say you weren’t warned if you got stopped going 26.
I was on Hwy 370 in St Charles County – not actually in St Louis city or county – and I saw the sign posted several times, not just once. It wasn’t near an exit, it was just posted along side your regular speed limit sign. Yeah, it would make more sense if I was driving down just a regular street maybe, but not on the highway.