OBleedingMe

Yep They did it before. TN and KY were making a killing on fines. Funny thing. The fuzz did not pay much attention to trucks and station wagons back then. So a truck with a few hay bales in the back and station wagons could go like a bat as long as you were not passing cars but two door hardtops got a close eyeball and if it was red they tailed you at a distance. If it was a Vett they radioed your position ahead. They even set up pay your fine on the spot and no ticket. Good ole boys for sure. Been there done that! They are still doing it today. I was doing 85 in a 70 on the interstate. State trooper tried to do a Make Your own case deal on me saying I was doing 95 in a 70. I said not a mile over 80. I paid for doing 80 on the spot.
[/b][/quote]

They can give out as many tickets as they want... PAYING them is where the general public can win out. If everyone in the entire state is breaking the speed limit and everyone is refusing to pay the tickets or even show up in court, they can't do a darn thing. They can't revoke the driving privelages of everyone in the state! They may throw 100 or 200 people in jail, but their court system will soon be hopelessly clogged and they'll be forced to change the laws. But most people are cattle. They'll pay.

TBird Ted

I don't think the national 55 limit back in the 70's did much positive - was a real pain. Our elected would have a tough time pushing that through again.

Better was when they had NO speed limit on the highways here in Michigan other than "reasonable and proper." This worked fine back in the 1950's. Almost no speed limits on state highways and "Speed Zone Ahead" signs for cities and villages. Drivers reached a top speed of 65 or maybe 70 on good two lane roads. There were no Interstates then and far less traffic.

Sure, there were some crazies on the road then as now but it worked fine until the politicians got involved and set the limit at 65 day and 55 night. Michigan still allows 65 mph on limited access non-Interstate both day and night but now is 55 day and night on county roads, etc.

Speed limit on the Interstates is 70 here but most drive 75 to 85.

Ted

Kluski

Here in conservative PA, they just raised the limit on the Turnpike to make it a consistant 65 mph.

I still won't drive that road though. There are other roads that are way better, have less construction, and don't cost anything.

mr-mstng

Turnpike? 65? I thought that was the autobahn.

Seriously, on the NE extension, I've been passed regularly doing 75.

Kluski

Oh yeah, near Pitt it was recently 55mph legally, but that did not deter too many.

Of course all the construction was a good deterent from going over 35 mph.

RottenRonny

I am a proponent of raising speedlimits for a number of reasons, including safety concerns. In Saskatchewan, groups of such people recently succeeded in convincing the government to raise the speed limit by 10kph. Thats not much, but a move in the right direction.

I am always on the lookout for studies and articles related to the topic. I came across this one the other day. Very interesting read.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

The American Autobahn
By Eric Peters
4/21/05

We're picking up speed, in case you hadn't noticed.

Since Congress finally ditched the Nixon-era 55-mph National Maximum Speed Limit (NMSL) back in 1995, most states have raised their highway limits to at least 65 mph; more than than two dozen states have raised them to 70-mph -- and in Texas, it's 75. For the most part, posted speed limits have been posted to reflect the natural flow of highway traffic -- in the 70-80-mph range -- just as the designers of the Interstate system had planned, back in the 1950s.

Most of us were driving that fast before, of course -- but we had to live in constant fear of being ticketed for "speeding " -- jamming on the brakes at the first sign of a suspicious-looking Crown Vic or Chevy Caprice.

Now we can drive at the speeds for which our highways were designed -- without risking a a fat fine and "points" on our DMV record.

But for more than 20 years, we had to live with the dumbed-down "double nickel" -- a federal law enacted during the energy crisis as a fuel conservation measure. But when the gas crisis ended, the double nickel stayed -- morphing from a temporary conservation measure imposed at a time of national emergency into a supposed "safety" issue.

"Speed kills" became the mantra -- and the radar trap a fact of American life.

All of a sudden, virtually every driver on the road was guilty of "speeding" -- because the dumbed-down limit was so unnaturally low that complying with it was not only tedious but difficult and awkward -- like forcing oneself to shuffle down the street at the pace of an 80-year-old rather than walking normally. Driving at speeds previously considered perfectly safe and reasonable -- 65, 70, 75 mph -- was suddenly not merely illegal, it was "unsafe." Doing so exposed one to large fines, DMV "points" -- even a "reckless driving" charge if you got caught doing more than 20-mph over the limit (i.e., 76-mph in a 55-mph zone).

It was all nonsense -- and everyone, from the cop pulling you over to the judge levying the fine -- knew it. But the NMSL generated enormous sums of money for local and state governments -- a "revenue stream" they quickly became addicted to and would not give up easily.

Hence the 20-year legacy of double-talk about "safety" and "speed kills" that was used to prop up the corrupt system of absurdly under-posted speed limits -- and the gauntlet of radar traps set up to exploit motorists at every turn. We're still living with much of the after-effects today -- even though the NMSL is history and highway limits have been raised back to reasonable levels.

With the exception of a minority of hysterics who actually believed driving 65 or 70 on a major interstate in a modern car to be "dangerous" (despite abundant evidence to the contrary), most Americans knew in their own minds they were doing no wrong ignoring the double nickel -- and accordingly felt no moral guilt when they did so. Evading cops -- with radar detectors, by "flashing" other motorists to alert them to the presence of a smokey up ahead -- became a national pastime. But the corrupting of traffic safety enforcement was no laughing matter.

As with Prohibition, police were compelled to enforce unjust laws on absurd pretexts -- harassing sensible and otherwise law-abiding people for no good reason. This created an ugly rift between ordinary citizens and the police that has yet to be healed. Ordinary motorists rightly resented the cop lurking in a cut-out with his radar gun, ready to hand out a $100 piece of payin' paper. Instead of focusing on genuinely dangerous driving (inappropriate speed for conditions, tail-gating, weaving through traffic, etc.) the majority of time and effort was spent radar-trapping -- because it was the easiest, fastest way to generate "revenue." Many departments had (and still have) explicit performance quotas -- each traffic patrol officer being strongly urged to write a certain number of tickets per month or face some sort of sanction.

The abandonment of the NMSL was a great leap forward in restoring sanity to America's traffic enforcement system. But a great deal of work remains to be done -- starting with a shift in emphasis away from enforcing "technical fouls" (such as "speeding") that do not necessarily involve dangerous driving, to a laser-like targeting of the handful of genuinely unsafe (or incompetent) motorists who are the biggest threat to themselves and other drivers.

It might raise less cash -- but it would make our roads much safer

Taxidad

Speeding should not be illegal. Slow drivers obstructing traffic is already illegal, but never enforced, and they cause most accidents. All speed limits are un-natural, un-needed, and therefore, only for revenue collection and for the satisfaction of Control freaks who can't stand the idea of people being free. If the rest of the traffic laws remained in effect, and there were no speed limits, the roads would probably be safer, because there would be fewer people on them at any given time. JMO :bang:

holderca1

Why can't they?

Kluski

I guess I have noticed this. As I drive in a 55mph zone, people are flying by. But when I drive in a 70 mph zone, there aren't too many poeple flying by you.

holderca1

I guess I have noticed this. As I drive in a 55mph zone, people are flying by. But when I drive in a 70 mph zone, there aren't too many poeple flying by you.
[/b][/quote]
Slower speeds on interstates only causes congestion. For anyone that has driven the I-10 bridge in Louisiana through the swamps. I hate that bridge, traffic is usally terrible in both lanes and you can't go anywhere near a decent speed.

SurfnSoCal

and this thread has to do with the 05 mustang......how?