Frankie Cordeira Jr.

Description: CROSS NEVADA IN BLUR: 80MPH FOR 130 MILES! Bulgaria and Poland have limits as high as 140 kilometers per hour about 87 m.p.h. Of course such numbers seem paltry when you look at Germanys fabled autobahn where some stretches have no absolute limit and speeds above 100 m.p.h. are common. In fact there are several documented instances of drivers exceeding 200 m.p.h. on the autobahn some of them with video evidence or automotive magazine writers as witnesses. Why bigger might not be better. About 35000 people die each year in traffic accidents in the United States and nearly 2000 of those deaths are attributable to increased speed limits according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. But driving has become much safer thanks to technological innovations like airbags electronic stability control and antilock brakes and to other factors like mandatory seatbelt laws and a decline in drunken driving. In the 1960s the national traffic fatality rate was above five per 100 million miles driven. In 2014 it hit the lowest level ever recorded 1.08 per 100 million miles. As for the benefits of added speed? On that desolate 130-mile span of I-80 northeast of Reno going 80 m.p.h. rather than the old limit 75 saves 6.5 minutes. Sammy Hagar cant drive 55. In most places he doesnt have to. In 1974 the federal government imposed a nationwide 55 m.p.h. limit not out of concern for safety but to save fuel a reaction to the OPEC oil embargo. Plenty of people ignored the limit and many more chafed at it especially in the wide-open West. In 1987 a new federal law let states set higher limits though it still discouraged speeds over 65 m.p.h. Then in 1995 the federal government removed all restrictions and over the years posted speeds of 70 and 75 m.p.h. cropped up in most states. But there have been a few holdouts. Alaska and the District of Columbia still limit drivers to 55 m.p.h. and Hawaii to 60. What you and Ulysses S. Grant may have in common. Speeds limits were around long before cars; city ordinances against driving a horse-drawn carriage at a gallop go back at least as far as the 17th century. A British law in 1861 limited carriages on open roads to 10 m.p.h. though in the absence of speedometers enforcement was haphazard. Ulysses S. Grant who liked to drive himself was known as a speed demon both before and during his presidency and he was cited more than once. In 1872 toward the end of his first term he was pulled over in Washington by William H. West one of the first black officers for going recklessly fast and fined. Continue reading the main story
By Frankie Cordeira Jr.
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