Senator John Warner (R-VA) recently suggested that the nation reexamine a 55-mph national speed limit. Supposedly, this measure would save 167,000 barrels of gasoline a day -- 2% of America's daily usage -- and even diminish traffic deaths by 4,000 per year. It will also help maintain our nation's highways, abate global climate change, and quite possibly, win us the War in Iraq and the one in Vietnam retroactively. Warner's enthusiasm comes from a Department of Energy study claiming that automobile fuel efficiency diminishes every 5 mph past 60. Like many people born in 1927, Senator Warner remembers the 1974 National Maximum Speed Law, as well as when ice cream used to cost only a nickel. Originally set at 55 mph, the national limit was raised in 1987 and repealed altogether in 1995. This is a solution that would only exacerbate the problem. The modern highway system depends on cars moving at variable speeds, individually fit to the variable demands placed on each stretch of road by the flow of traffic. In other words, slower traffic means more gridlock and more time on the road, which means burning more gas, at a slower speed indeed. And every car engine works differently -- 55 is not some magic number. The most efficient speed of a Prius is different than a Ford pick-up's. Or maybe it's even more efficient for the pick-up to be carrying the Prius; let's mandate that. If Senator Warner's limit were properly enforced, the fender ...
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Senator John Warner (R-VA) recently suggested that the nation reexamine a 55-mph national speed limit. Supposedly, this measure would save 167,000 barrels of gasoline a day -- 2% of America's daily usage -- and even diminish traffic deaths by 4,000 per year. It will also help maintain our nation's highways, abate global climate change, and quite possibly, win us the War in Iraq and the one in Vietnam retroactively. Warner's enthusiasm comes from a Department of Energy study claiming that automobile fuel efficiency diminishes every 5 mph past 60. Like many people born in 1927, Senator Warner remembers the 1974 National Maximum Speed Law, as well as when ice cream used to cost only a nickel. Originally set at 55 mph, the national limit was raised in 1987 and repealed altogether in 1995. This is a solution that would only exacerbate the problem. The modern highway system depends on cars moving at variable speeds, individually fit to the variable demands placed on each stretch of road by the flow of traffic. In other words, slower traffic means more gridlock and more time on the road, which means burning more gas, at a slower speed indeed. And every car engine works differently -- 55 is not some magic number. The most efficient speed of a Prius is different than a Ford pick-up's. Or maybe it's even more efficient for the pick-up to be carrying the Prius; let's mandate that. If Senator Warner's limit were properly enforced, the fender ...