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AP reports that Montana lawmakers are drafting bills that would raise the daytime speed limit on Montana interstate highways from 75 to 80 and possibly as high as 85 mph. “I just think our roads are engineered well, and technology is such we can drive those roads safely,” says Art Wittich noting that Utah, Wyoming and Idaho have raised their speed limits above 75, and they haven't had any problems and drivers on German autobahns average about 84 mph. State Senator Scott Sales says he spent seven months working in the Bakken oil patch, driving back and forth to Bozeman regularly. “If I could drive 85 mph on the interstate, it would save an hour,” says Sales. “Eighty-five would be fine with me."
A few years ago Texas opened a 40 mile stretch on part of a toll road called the Pickle Parkway between Austin and San Antonio. The tolled bypass was supposed to help relieve the bottleneck around Austin but the highway was built so far to the east that practically nobody used it. In desperation, the state raised the toll road speed limit to 85 mph, the fastest in the nation. "The idea was that drivers could drop the top, drop the hammer, crank the music and fly right past Austin," says Wade Goodyn. "It's a beautiful, wide-open highway — but it's empty, and the builders are nearly bankrupt."
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday December 02 2014, @04:01PM
Denmark raised the speed limit on many of its motorways to 130 km/h (~80 mph) about 10 years ago, without increasing the accident rate. The 'deal' was that the speed limit was raised, but enforced more strictly.
One of the things to be aware of is that the kinetic energy of a vehicle increases as the square of its velocity (this is basic physics/kinematics), so the difference between a car travelling at 70 mph and 85 mph is a ratio of kinetic energy of 1:1.47. This means your brakes have to dissipate a great deal more heat to stop in the same distance at at 70 mph (or you plan for considerably longer stoppping distances), and the energies involved in accidents are also correspondingly higher. This can transform a survivable accident into a non-survivable one. Higher speeds require drivers to adapt their driving style to the higher speed, and be aware of what the engineering limits of their vehicle is.
I have driven entirely legally at just over 130 mph on German autobahns - it is tiring, and you need to be very alert for vehicles pulling out in front of you overtaking even slower vehicles in front of them, as the speed differential between you and heavy goods vehicles (trucks) is huge. Even supposedly disciplined German drivers don't always check their mirrors before pulling out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 02 2014, @05:36PM
Germans kill people.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 02 2014, @06:03PM
And air resistance is to the 3rd power. So traveling 2x the speed costs you 8x the horsepower. This is why 90km/h is the most economical speed for most road passenger vehicles, where the fixed and linear friction (eg. tires) vs. air resistance is at optimum vs. fuel consumption.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_%28physics%29#Power [wikipedia.org]
If you bike around or even have a motorcycle, you can really feel air resistance. Going 50km/h creates a lot less drag than 100km/h.
Drivers in their cages have a perverted sense of speed and most don't really know how fast and deadly their speeds are. Highway deaths continue to be the main place of road fatalities despite them accounting for less than half of distance driven. These are the facts. Raising speed limits is counterproductive to both safety and energy efficiencies.