The signs pepper the streets and highways. Speed Limit: 65 Miles Per Hour. Yet, looking at the road, one can't help but notice that every car is traveling at its own pace.
Cautious drivers grip their steering wheels tightly, slowing down to a crawl. Reckless, rushed drivers zoom ahead, fifteen to twenty-five miles over the limit. Then there are those who hover somewhere in between, but never exactly at the requested speed.
Why is it that everyone driving faster than you is considered a maniac, and everyone driving slower than you is a moron?
With a change in the driver's speed, all the surrounding cars seem to go either too slowly or too quickly, so personal observation is often skewed. The only way to accurately decode the speed limit is to look at the track record.
In 1974, the federal government established a national highway speed limit of 55 miles per hour, meant to save oil and save the lives of those who die every year on automotive accidents. All too quickly, however, this became one of the most openly defied and detested laws since Prohibition. Not until 1995 was this law abolished, and states were allowed to decide on their own specific speed limits.
It is a widely accepted fact that higher speeds result in a greater number of accidents. However, highway death, crash and injury rates have steadily declined, despite high speed limits. The sole exception to this trend being the period of time where there was an official federal speed limit.
Along with speed limits, there is also a speed minimum on some roads. Utah freeways mandate a minimum speed ranging from 65 to 75 miles per hour, depending on the specific freeway. What this means is that those drivers trundling along at 45 miles per hour in the left-hand lane are both breaking the law and endangering other drivers.
Driving slowly does increase fuel efficiency (albeit a small amount), it may appear oxymoronic to ticket a driver for this, but the speed limits are there for a reason. According to the National Motorists Association, a realistic speed limit is at or below the speed that 85 percent of the population is driving, so that the police can distinguish outliers.
This seems like an odd choice to make. Rather than simply selecting a rational average speed, it is established as lower than the median. No wonder drivers seem to be constantly disobeying the law: if people started driving at 25 miles per hour on the freeway, the speed limit may eventually be dropped to 20. That is, if they haven't first been ticketed for driving slowly.
Understandably, driving slower than the flow of traffic is equally as dangerous as driving maniacally fast. So, while most drivers know better than to endanger others by racing through lanes and tailgating, they should also take into account the impact of slowing down everyone behind them. It is always important to feel secure in one's driving, but in some cases it is more important to accommodate fellow drivers.
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