A new toll road is slated to open this November in Texas to relieve the congestion on the I-35 corridor between Austin and San Antonio. The speed limit on that road will be 85mph which is now the highest in the country. It was formally 80mph until Governor Rick Perry of Texas signed a bill to raise the speed limit. Many drivers like this development because they can now reach their destination faster.
However, are we thinking more about drivers’ convenience rather than safety? There is clear research that states as speeds increase, fatalities increase. A 2009 report in the American Journal of Public Health studied traffic fatalities in the U.S. from 1995 to 2005 and found that more than 12,500 deaths were attributable to increases in speed limits on all kinds of roads.
So what is the ideal speed limit then? If we decrease it, there are less fatalities and more driver frustration. If we increase it, it is the opposite. I am fine with the speed limit increase. As a driver I feel that speed limits are lower than what they should be. If a road is designed to do 85mph, then why not let drivers drive at that speed?
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20120906/us-texas-speed-limit/)
There is also the environmental and economic issue as well. Almost all cars on the market have an optimal speed of 55mph or bellow after which every 5mph increase decreases fuel efficiency significantly. As oil is a limited resource, whose use causes environmental damage, the cost of increased travel times might be less than the cost of using more oil.
http://snailrails.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/should-we-have-a-maximum-speed-limit/
While this can allow people to drive faster in a safer way, as this looks highway looks like it is a straightaway, chances are that the traffic flow could be in the 90’s…could even reach 100 MPH. I heard that the faster someone drives a car, the harder it is to control the car. Route 528 in Florida is a straightaway with 70mph speed limit but people were going about 100. Even if I went 80 on that highway, people appeared to go much faster.
I think that it won’t really affect the speed all that much, because many people don’t feel comfortable driving that fast, and won’t, while people who do, were probably driving that fast to begin with. A 5 mph speed limit increase is not all that much to me.