Saturday, July 5, 2008

55 MPH Speed Limit: Wretched Idea Returning

Some of our 'liberal' senators are proposing that we go back to a national 55 m.p.h. speed limit -- supposedly to reduce gasoline consumption, which is in short supply as a result of their past and continuing unwillingness to permit the tapping of our domestic oil deposits.

The idea was a bad one the first time around and it is a worse one today.

Modern automobiles are as efficient at 70 and 75 m.p.h. as they are at 55.

Furthermore, in the western part of the country where major population centers are far apart, the lower speed limit would create real hardships and actually increase energy consumption. For example, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, I regularly drive to and from such places as Salt Lake City and Portland, Oregon, or Seattle, Washington, and between Salt Lake City and Denver. With a 70 m.p.h. speed limit, each of these is a trip I make in a single day, making only rest room/refueling stops, and en route, while driving, eat sandwiches and drink water brought from home. At 55 m.p.h. each of these trips would require an overnight motel stay and restaurant meals, entailing the use of energy for heat or air conditioning, lighting, television, cooking, etc. -- in other words a net increase in energy consumption.

However, reducing energy consumption is not the underlying reason for the proposal. Instead it is about asserting and expanding governmental authority and control over people, -- training us, getting us used to accepting and submitting to Big Brother dictating ever more aspects of our day-to-day lives.

Last time around the crawl along as prescribed legislation was widely ignored. A fair number of western states tacitly condoned flouting of the speed limit that the federal government bribed them to enact -- they enacted the prescribed speed limit but ignoring it was charged as "wasting fuel" or something like that, not a moving violation, not noted on a violator's driving record and not reported to a violator's insurance company or the home state of an out-of state violator. Only nominal fines were imposed -- a random form of taxation that was not burdensome yet provided a nice little revenue stream for rural jurisdictions.

The time around the proposal is for a federal statute with federal enforcement standards. Its enactment should be vigorously opposed and if enacted, it should be flouted. More about how that can be done and done effectively will be posted if, when, and as it becomes necessary.

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