JCW-5/15 I have no need to crucify the original people who twisted the gas saving NMSL (which was quite effective for a brief time) into something that proved to be a dismal failure after about a year or so for the new purpose. I have no need to crucify the people who used, and continue to use, the false NMSL rhetoric for their own purposes after about 1976, knowing full well that the attempts to change travel speeds by any notable amount with the methods used in the 1970s of enforcement and education on why we should all drive slower have no chance whatsoever to attain their publicly stated goals. What I DO have a need for is to help people see that the NMSL-style methods are false, worse than useless from a safety point of view, in need of immediate change — and to show how to recognize the false methods and the false “research” and the biased sources that are used to promote the methods for their own purposes (NOT including safety). If, magically, the personnel at NHTSA, IIHS, Advocates for Highway Safety, Public Citizen, etc., etc. decided to adopt real traffic safety engineering science and supported 85th/top of pace limits ti assist safety and end predatory enforcement against safe drivers, then I would be supporting all their efforts. The reality is that these people generally still support NMSL-style methods and those methods need to be debunked and the citizens need to learn the truth of traffic safety engineering.

Phil May 14, 2009 at 7:13 pm A big part of what separates us is the respect for the law issue. I think it is ridiculous that I can’t throw my trash out the window after I finish my Big Mac but the law prohibits it. The law has always prohibited it yet in the 70s there was trash everywhere did the ingoring of that law make it a bad law and if the government had taken your approach to it we’d be waste deep in trash today because the law would have been repealed rather than have punishment for breaking it increased.

JCW 5/15 I understand, but do not agree with, Phil’s objection here.
When posted limits are set far below the normal speeds of traffic — whether out of ignorance, greed, stupidity, political pressures, or any other rationale — I find no reason whatsoever to respect them. The laws about trash help society and should be obeyed. Laws about posting artificially low speed limits that make the safest drivers illegal and tend to slightly raise the accident rate have no societal benefit and no basis on which to be respected — in my view.

Phil May 14, 2009 at 7:13 pm I disagree with the rationalization that 85% of the people driving feel they can go this fast so that is where the speed limit should be set. Then when 85% of the drivers go faster yet the speed limit should be increased again. At some point simply increasing the limit to meet what 85% of the drivers are doing is going to become counter productive and the NMA, you and anyone who pushed so hard for the limits to be increased each time drivers voted with thier speed, will be faced with ridicule like that which you issued to those you refer to as the Safety Cabal.

JCW 5/15 This is the essence of 85th percentile methodology, that about 85% of the public can be relied upon to accurately choose safe, sane, proper, competent speeds of travel. I do not consider this to be any sort of a rationalization, I consider it to be proven science. I do not believe it will ever become counter productive to use 85th percentile methods and the creep in freeway speeds is so slow and gradual that I find it completely unnecessary to worry about it. We have gained perhaps 10 to 15 mph on freeways in 45 years (from about 10 years pre-NMSL until today), something I find to be a positive, not a negative, overall.

Regards,

Jim Walker

This is just silly on its face. Nobody in the enthusiast community is suggesting that all traffic control devices or rules be rescinded. Our original traffic laws, known as URROW [the universal rule of right-of-way] were and remain a legal solution to an organizational problem. They provide much needed information as to the determination of who goes where and when. Speed limits have never been a part of URROW, provide no information – in fact, providing misinformation – and provide no discernible benefit to drivers at all.

Not only have you missed the point of traffic law, you have also misused “Darwin” in your attempted satire but now I’m merely being pedantic.

{When some of those who claim to be helping with the speed limit issue drop the “we must crucify those who labored us with the NMSL era” and get on with the fixing of the problem I’ll lose the anyone who exceeds the posted limit is an idiot attitude.}

Aside from the fact that nobody is asking to crucify the perpetrators of NMSL, nobody really cares what you think of 90% of drivers. With that said, I am in favor of undoing the damage foisted on American drivers for 50+ years by having the perpetrators return the ill-gotten gains from traffic fines and insurance surcharges.

{A big part of what separates us is the respect for the law issue. I think it is ridiculous that I can’t throw my trash out the window after I finish my Big Mac but the law prohibits it.}

First, you confuse complying with a law with respect for that law. They are not the same thing. More importantly, for a law to be proffered respect, it must be worth respecting. Littering or damaging our common asset is clearly damaging to everybody. An anti-littering law is therefore worthy of respect. A speed limit law – particularly one with the numerical limits set absurdly low – provides no value to anybody, not to drivers, not to pedestrians, not to passengers, not private citizens or private businesses. Nobody gains anything from such a law but many are damaged. The economic costs of NMSL are documented at over a trillion dollars, not to mention the loss of respect for legitimate laws and those who have not prostituted themselves to the almighty traffic fine.
This should be obvious .

{At some point simply increasing the limit to meet what 85% of the drivers are doing is going to become counter productive and the NMA, you and anyone who pushed so hard for the limits to be increased each time drivers voted with thier speed, will be faced with ridicule like that which you issued to those you refer to as the Safety Cabal.}

This is silly on its face. First, there is no point at which increasing the limit will become counterproductive because it will simply become irrelevant before that. Were we to raise the posted limits to, say, 250 mph, compliance would be 100% because not a single person would drive 10 mph over. I am curious, however, as to the source of this predicted ridicule: who will be ridiculing whom and why?

JCW 5/14 We touched on this at least once before. A very bright engineer in the Netherlands has tried this in a few VERY carefully chosen low speed urban areas. The results have been excellent. Is it right in most places, of course not. Do we have too many signs overall and could we do better with fewer signs, many engineers think we could. We have sign pollution in many places and fewer signs would make the remaining ones more meaningful and more noticeable to more drivers.

I did go through Palermo, Sicily on a Sunday with most traffic lights turned off. If you hesitated for about 3 nanoseconds when it was your turn to go, you got several loud horns telling you off — but it actually worked OK in moderate traffic. People watched very carefully and took turns with a LOT more care than I would have expected from hot blooded Sicilians. I thought it was great fun. Somebody from rural Iowa might have almost had a heart attack.

Regards,

Jim Walker

I don’t think we will ever stop the creep of freeway speeds due to the intervention of organizations like the NMA. You can reset every speed limit in America to the 90th percentile and only cite the top 2% of drivers and the NMA will be there screaming that the 2% of drivers who recieve citations are being persecuted for safe, sane and normal behavior and that it is somehow the fault of the government that these individuals choose such a speed. I hope my fears are unfounded but I don’t think they are but we will see.

JCW 5/14 With respect, Phil, that is poppycock. The natural very slow creep on freeway speeds with better cars and better road environments existed long before the NMA. And the belief that our little organization influences millions of drivers’ behavior is utter nonsense. Most people don’t know we even exist. Speaking for myself, and I believe for most NMA members, we just want proper 85th limits so the predatory nature of speed enforcement will end and more police will be reassigned to do things that truly benefit safety. Most of us in the NMA genuinely love driving and want to get where we are going efficiently and safely. 85th limits will accomplish all those goals. Then we can turn more energy against predatory red light cameras used where yellows are 1 to 3 seconds too short and the mis-engineering of the lights actually promotes a higher accident rate.

Regards,

Jim Walker

Phil commented — Michigan is, according to Jim Walker, in the process of resetting it’s limits to the 85th percentile. It has been told to me that by doing this a natural compliance rate can be expected and overall more people will be willing to be compliant. I don’t believe it so I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

JCW 5/14 Wherever this has been allowed to be done, not modified with an arbitrary and engineering-invalid statutory limit, the results have been excellent. Washtenaw and N. Main that started this thread are typical examples of a great many urban area trunk lines that have been fixed. Many urban freeways formerly with 55 or 65 limits now have 70 limits and the results have been excellent. If Phil ever makes a trip to Michigan, I would invite him to spend a day with me and I will show him many examples of how it has worked so well. Please note that the 2 principal state police officers involved in this overhaul of limits received a Governor’s Traffic Safety Advisory Commission Award for their work in this area. There is one glitch that remains unfixed, the statutory 70 limit for freeways which is 10 low in most places. The state police and MDOT are not legally allowed to set the safest limits on rural freeways.

Regards,

Jim Walker