A New Way To Set Speed Limits?
Many drivers assume that speed limits are set scientifically using reason and logic, but the reality is that speed limits are highly political. Particularly in smaller towns.
According to WDXE News, Lawrenceburg, Tennessee has decided to change some of their speed limits:
The Lawrenceburg City Commission has proposed several speed limit changes for city streets.
Lawrenceburg Mayor Keith Durham told WDXE News that he “drove around the city checking on the speed limits and felt like some changes needed to be made.”
Hopefully the mayor is also a traffic engineer or at least consulted with one. Unfortunately, with the overabundance of incorrectly posted speed limits across the country, it wouldn’t surprise us if the mayor “driving around the city” was the beginning and the end of the speed limit posting process.
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I will not dispute the presence of under posted speed limits. However, it is an outright lie to say that speed limits are purely political and have no scientific basis. There have been studies that showed a large majority of municipalities in the USA use the criteria of the 85th percentile to set speed limits. However because these municipalities use additional criteria other than the 85th percentile speed like Crash experience, # and frequency of intersections, grade, shoulder width, presence of railways, # of businesses, # of homes and driveways and information from the speed study like 10mph pace(where the largest percentage of drivers, the majority of drivers have chosen to set thier speed)and mean speed of traffic. The NMA would like those who read these articles to believe that politicians decide how much money they need as revenue then purposefully go out and lower speed limits to a purely arbitrary number without considering anything other than how many speeders this new limit will yield and consequentally how many citations it will yield to bring revenue into the municipality. While I recognize the speed trap mentality and that there are still many places in America where it does exists, they are by far in a minority. Most readers here will just take the NMA and some of it’s frequent posters at thier word and not question why they tell you these lies. The NMA claims that “The National Motorists Association (NMA) was founded in 1982 to represent and protect the interests of North American motorists”. In fact the NMA was a grass roots organization geared towards obtaining higher speed limits accross the USA at any cost. One such cost is the cost of the rights of those drivers that don’t have a need to travel coast to coast as fast as possible. They have repeatedly portrayed that if motorists didn’t want to drive that fast or were incapable of driving that fast they could be required by law to use roadways other than the interstates. How does requiring some of the motorists to use secondary roadways, instead of the interstate, so that a minority of motorists can drive at higher speeds represent or protect the interests of North American motorists? Since it’s inception in 1982 the NMA has expanded it’s agenda to include the relaxing of DUI/DWI laws and or the punishment for the breaking of those laws. They go so far as to give examples of how to fool the breathalyzer into reading a lower recorded level of your BAC. Thier site is filled with inaccuracte statements, myths and 1/2 truths to gain support of those too lazy to check the facts and truth themselves. Personally I don’t care if you support this organization but I would like to see thier support base to include only those who support thier agenda and not those who have been tricked into thinking the NMA is here to help them. Make an informed decision(do a little research) before you support this organization.