Need For Speed

I’ve talking about cars and driving a lot on this blog already and I’m sure to do it a decent amount more, but today’s post focuses on speed limits.

There was a time when speed limits were about safety. Now it’s almost strictly a money making enterprise for state and local officials.

I was going to make this very scientific with facts and figures, but I don’t have that kind of time and likely you don’t want to read 6000 words. Instead I’m going to make some blanket statements (with a ‘fact’ or 2 thrown in) and hope to maybe initiate some thought, discussion and maybe even some individual actions (aka letters to your elected officials).

Like all statistics you can manipulate the ‘facts’ any number of ways. There are studies that say speeding causes more accidents and there are others that say there is no correlation between the two. Truth is, and there is no denying it, speed is a factor in motor vehicle accidents. The faster you drive the less reaction time you have; the faster you drive the less room for error there is. BUT, (and this is a big but) speed alone doesn’t cause accidents. Reckless driving is much more of a factor. It’s tailgaiting, cutting people off, slamming on the breaks, etc. that cause the accidents. It’s talking on a cell phone, texting, and playing with an iPod that causes accidents.

If speed itself were so inherently dangerous would we have NASCAR? I mean, congress is starting to get involved in the helmets football players wear, but they haven’t said a peep about NASCAR drivers. (Yes, I know there are accidents in racing and they have safety in place, but you’re smart people. You know what I’m getting at.)

The bottom line is that, like many of our laws, it’s about money – and it shouldn’t be.

Speed traps are not a myth. And they aren’t set up to protect and/or serve the general public. They are set up in places cops know people ‘speed’ so they can write a ticket and earn their salary (I support police and the work they do, but just as we don’t like getting tickets the majority generally do not like issuing them – it’s just a part of their job). If people are known to ‘speed’ on specific roads, but the incidence of accidents is non-existant wouldn’t it make more sense to review the speed limit?

There is no reason that a 3 lane highway should have a 55mph speed limit. There is no reason cops should pull people over for going 80mph on a highway if there isn’t another car on the road. I guarantee that 100 out of 100 times you drive on the highway (in normal traffic conditions) the flow of traffic is moving at at least 10 mph above the speed limit. Isn’t it more dangerous for the cars to slam on their breaks (which can cause tailgating accidents) when they see a waiting patrol car than to continue on at their cruising speed?

Maybe I’m just rambling at this point, but the moral of this post is that speed limits are by and large a joke and our government is abusing their power. Didn’t we fight a whole war against ‘taxation without representation’? Well, isn’t this exactly the same thing? Speeding tickets are more or less a tax, and I want to know who is representing the driving public? I’d like to see that person’s driving record. I bet there’s a speeding ticket on it.