Isn’t Government Supposed “To Get Out Of The Way?”

Joseph White, in The Wall Street Journal:

…Exceeding the speed limit is customary on American highways. Three quarters of drivers surveyed by researchers for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said they’d exceeded the speed limits on all types of roads within the past month. A quarter said they’d been speeding the day of their interview with the researchers. I’d wager the other 75% were lying.

During the “Drive 55″ years, American cars got by with an average of 118 horsepower, and 0-60 times that averaged a stately 13.1 seconds. By 2007, with highway speed limits typically 70 mph and real speeds much higher, Americans were buying vehicles that had an average of 223 horsepower and a 0-60 time of 9.6 seconds. Many buyers may now wish they had a fuel-efficient, underpowered 1980s car (albeit better looking than most of the drab models of that era.)

Speeding has a social cost. The NHTSA estimates that speed-related crashes cost $40.4 billion annually. The agency puts the number of speeding-related fatalities at around 13,000 a year. During the years that the national speed limit was in effect, speeding-related fatalities declined, according to the NHTSA, although it’s not clear whether that was directly related to speed limits, or other factors such as improved vehicle design…

A return to “55 MPH” for “conservation” and “safety?” Oh, God, what is wrong with us? Although still waiting for Sigmund, it is really starting to look all 1970s, again.

Highway speed limits are “typically 70 MPH?” Where? In 30 states, in predominantly “rural” areas, yes. Does that make it “typical” then? No highway in New York State is more than 65 MPH (the Thruway). 55 MPH is still very routine. And you see 60 MPH in some places in the country, too.

All of those varying 55-65 MPH limits on too many major U.S. highways likely are a main contributor to accidents. For we are saddled with a roadway situation in which many naturally do try to “abide by the law” and maintain, say, 55 MPH. In turn, scattered among them are many drivers intent on going faster, and usually in cars that are perfectly capable of safely doing so.

Obviously, there is then loads of room for “conflict.” To do more, “speeders” are usually weaving in and out, passing slower moving vehicles any which way possible, with everyone then tapping brakes only to then speed up again. Talk about dangerous, fuel wasting and unnecessarily polluting.

Indeed, passing on the right on U.S. highways is now so common, one can only assume Americans think it is both legal and normal. But it is near insanity. To compare, “highways/”freeways” in the U.S. usually denote limited access roads of at least two lanes moving in each direction. They are known here in the U.K. as either “dual carriageways” or “motorways,” with the essential difference being the former have intersections, whereas the latter don’t.

On both, unless otherwise posted (and usually only for short stretches), the speed limit for private cars is (that’s right) 70 MPH. Police will pull you over and hand you a ticket for undertaking — meaning passing on the (blind) left side. (The roads being “reversed,” the right lane in Britain is the passing lane.) So owing to law enforcement and “driver education,” lane discipline is far better here than in the States. Is lane discipline still even enforced in the U.S.?

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“Speed” is therefore not in itself the primary reason driving on U.S. 55-65 MPH highways is some of the scariest driving you’ll encounter anywhere in the developed world. Because everyone knows “the rules,” British motorways and dual carriageways, where most are doing legally 70 MPH — and yes, maybe more: people do speed here certainly, but they also usually pass legally, and slower vehicles tend to stay in the “slow lane” — makes them less dangerous to drive than, for instance, the ostensibly 55 MPH Long Island Expressway. (That would be a 70 MPH road in Britain.) Real safety and fuel economy is about getting everyone to learn sensible, real-world rules and (mostly) understand and then abide by them. Setting an artificially low speed limit merely invites law-breaking, and encourages ridiculously dangerous driving habits.

In fact, local traffic “stop/start” driving is a less-considered fuel waster. If anything, in the U.S. there ought to be a massive program of roundabout (meaning traffic circles/ rotaries) and mini-roundabout construction on local roads. Not only do they keep traffic “flowing” and thus cut down on idling, but they also “slow” up traffic, as cars have to slow down somewhat on approach and if necessary yield completely. That is far more rational for “traffic calming” than forests of “Stop” signs.

Ah, “Stop” signs. Of course, most roll through them (which is also illegal). Why? Because there is often really no need for them: they are often put in place merely to “slow” local traffic. Here, if you see a “Stop” sign, you reflexively know that you had probably actually better “stop.”

The “start/stop” attitude of American local road planners is absurd in the extreme. On local streets, there are not just infuriating “Stop” signs erected seemingly every 20 ft, at every dinky corner (and often where there isn’t even a corner), but there are also all of those traffic lights (and, incidentally, how much electric do they consume?) positioned at even the quietest of intersections. The list could go on: traffic laws seem designed to keep drivers stationary whenever possible, all while their cars are burning (ever pricier) fuel.

Evidently, while waiting for green, drivers are supposed to strike up inter-vehicular chats, to pass the time. (No wonder they use cell phones illegally behind the wheel, read and even eat at red lights; they spend so long standing still, they could starve to death.) Surely that is still another reason some people drive like maniacs on highways? On those, they finally feel they have an opportunity to move forwards, and have to take advantage of that window, however briefly.

In Britain, congestion is usually owing to actual “congestion”: meaning too many cars on the road at any given time (including accidents). It is not usually a consequence of government having made it impossible to keep one’s foot on the pedal for more than 60 seconds before encountering the next “Stop” sign or red light. Case in point: we can drive from the in-laws’ front door to our house — about 130 miles — pre and post-motorway through numerous intersections (almost all roundabouts), and encounter exactly 1 traffic light controlled intersection, and not a single blessed “Stop” sign.

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Attacking the likes of idiocies such as those would go a long way towards both improving safety and miles per gallon. The thought in very high fuel cost Britain of lowering the national limit from 70 MPH to (a ridiculous) 55 MPH to enforce “conservation” or “enhance safety?” While Government here is willing even to urge everyone to switch to electric/hybrid cars, yours truly has as of yet seen no mention of trying to get British drivers to “drive 55.”

That even despite Britain’s far greater number of smaller horsepower cars having always been on 70 MPH roads. (And not just way back yonder, in the “underpowered” halcyon years of the 1980s, as in the U.S.) This U.K. Government will seemingly float every possible “reform” idea at least once. Apparently, though, we’ve found one even they won’t risk “floating.”

Still, near the end Mr White favors us with the required WSJ ode to American freedom reverie:

…The speed limit issue isn’t really about any of that. It’s a powerful, easily grasped symbol of the freedom, mobility and affluence Americans enjoyed when energy was cheap. Letting go of that sense of freedom won’t be easy, even if it is the sensible thing to do…

Okay, we’ll all recite the Pledge now. But regarding driving, let’s not be silly. Why do we view other matters hard-headed sensibly, but not driving?

Driving isn’t about fulfilling some “American dream.” Rather, it’s about getting somewhere in a reasonable period of time, in a vehicle built to do so, on a road that was built to facilitiate “travel.” America’s huge driving distances are well-known and, presumably, the WSJ would extol them as being the stuff of legend, the iron maker of our national character.

Well, what is it also about we Americans? We have built often magnificent roads, only to be determined to find excuses to guilt ourselves into setting speed limits so low that it makes getting to our destinations extra-dangerous, and, in having to start/stop navigate the maze of all of those unnecessary traffic lights and “Stop” signs, unnecessarily polluting? It is not unlike our weird view that 18 year olds are adults in every way accept one: heaven forbid legal alcohol should pass their lips until they turn age 21.

WSJ writer Mr White is sure that most people interviewed by the NHTSA lie about speeding. However, try reducing the limit to, say, 45 MPH, and one suspects “lying” will be far worse. And U.S. highways will then be even more dangerous, as some few desperately try to follow the law and do 45 MPH, while others are passing them from every side, doing 70 MPH, to say nothing of the non-verbal “communication” likely briefly to be exchanged from driver to driver in that situation.

As a former UK police officer living in NY noted in 2003:

…Britain, with a population of 59 million, lost 3,431 people in 2002 compared with 42,815 people killed on America’s roads. The population of the USA at that time was 285 million, only 4.83 times greater than Britain’s…

…from an American perspective the most saddening fact is that the countries that have a lower (i.e. more acceptable) death rate than the USA are often ones with additional dangerous factors, such as higher overall speed limits, much smaller cars (which are less protective in crash situations), and a much lower proportion of divided highways…

…It is fashionable, these days, for those with an engineering bias to claim that driver education plays little part in highway safety and that vehicle and road design are the most important factors, but in another recent article the American automotive journalist Eric Peters accurately identified a key problem when he wrote: “Lack of skill—not speeding—is the fountainhead of America’s traffic problems…

In its stance on “free markets” and “free trade,” government, the WSJ is always lecturing us, should “get out of the way.” Yet rather than demand better driver training and better local road layouts, Mr White champions government’s forever shackling Americans to laughably low highway speed limits, thus turning American drivers de facto into criminals. Funny, but we had thought only “socialist” governments were so cynical and manipulative. However, in at least this case, it seems European governments (speed limit laws are much the same throughout the EU) which the WSJ otherwise has near total contempt for economically, are far better able (literally) “to get out of the way.”