Gotta Go, Gotta Go Fast

Over the years, America has lowered speed limits - it should instead raise them; in many cases, it should double them

Go on and write me up for 125
Post my face wanted dead or alive
Take my license, all that jive
I can't drive 55
-Sammy Hagar

It should prima facie be evident that higher speed limits will reduce travel time, thereby increasing productivity by allowing individuals to spend less time commuting and more time engaged in economic, entertainment, or leisure activities. This argument is particularly compelling in regions where the population is spread out, and public transportation is less viable. Clearly, in regions where traffic congestion is prevalent this is less impactful. But for nearly everyone on the road: travel time is wasted time; raising the speed limit will allow them to complete their journey more quickly and thus regain more of their life otherwise lost to the tedium of transit.

The primary objection usually raised involves increased risk correspondent with increased speed. This represents a more complicated concept to model than one might initially think, but let us address some of the prevalent concerns.

Modern vehicles are equipped with advanced safety features like adaptive cruise control, automatic braking systems, and lane departure warnings. These technologies mitigate some of the risks associated with higher speeds. Furthermore, improvements in road infrastructure, such as better road design and materials, can support higher speed limits safely. Roads have been designed for a particular speed, with a significant margin of error, but critically: based largely on 1950s vehicles and safety ratings; today’s safer vehicles and superior maneuvering, even simple advances such as better tires and road surfaces, have made motor vehicles far less hazardous to operate.

There's a theory of risk homeostasis which suggests that drivers adjust their behavior to maintain a constant level of risk. If speed limits are raised, drivers might not necessarily drive faster than they currently do under lower limits, especially if they perceive the new limits as the “norm.” This could mean that the actual increase in average speed might not be as significant as expected, while reducing the frequency of violations due to a more realistic setting of speed limits; alternately, an understood and predictable increase in speed is far more desirable than an unpredictable and erratic increase in road rage and lane-jumping as drivers try other means to “make up lost time.”

One should not overlook the issue of psychological comfort. Lower speed limits that are frequently exceeded can lead to a culture of non-compliance, where drivers feel the law is not reflective of real-world driving conditions. By aligning speed limits more closely with the speed at which the majority of drivers feel safe and comfortable, there might be an increase in compliance, potentially leading to safer overall road behavior.

A pragmatic analysis vis-a-vis other nations will reveal that an overly restrictive speed limit policy is counterproductive. Examining speed limits in different countries or regions can be instructive. For instance, some countries with higher speed limits have not necessarily seen a proportional increase in accidents. This might suggest that speed is not the sole determinant of safety but rather one of many factors including road design, enforcement, and driver education.

Surprisingly to many. there's an environmental angle to a broad increase in speed limits. For those of you who find this non-intuitive, consider the following: the primary source of pollution is not the velocity of the vehicle, but the idling and congestion; to the extent that improved speed decreases transit times, it asymptotically decreases pollution while only linearly increasing output by producing exhaust more energetically at higher speed. Stop-start traffic is not only bad for your blood pressure, but it is bad for the environment; fast, smooth traffic flow reduces fuel consumption, emissions, tire and road wear, stress on drivers and passengers - and accidents, more than compensatorially for the (increasingly mitigated) danger of higher-speed accidents.

Extensive studies of accident statistics and rigorous data analysis as regards modern vehicles have shown that the automotive industry has done an excellent job of making driving much safer for drivers and passengers alike in modern vehicles, even in high-speed collisions. We should not be seeking to lower road speeds in an effort to produce safer environments; instead we should be raising them to produce a safer environment for everyone. Thanks to the Car Allowance Rebate Stimulus (CARS) "cash-for-clunkers" program in 2009 and similar efforts, many older and less safe cars were taken off the road and replaced with newer more efficient and safer vehicles, capable of safety at higher speeds. While this program may have been societally regressive and inordinately hard on the poor (removing viable and affordable used vehicles from the market to support new high fuel efficiency vehicles as a boondoggle to benefit the automotive industry) it did have the effect of putting a generation of safer vehicles on the road and it is time to see this investment benefit society at large.

Many major metropolitan areas have seen speed limits lowered as roads initially designed as highways and rated for 55 miles per hour have been gradually ratcheted back to 45, 35, 30, and some cases even 25 miles an hour. Additions of bike lanes and bus lanes, road dividers and traffic flow controls such as roundabouts or extraneous stoplights have all served to slow traffic and reduce the number of cars (and thus, people) who can effectively transit the area in any given time frame; simultaneously, the populations of these regions have grown dramatically and housing density has increased. Increased population density and lack of enforcement for vagrancy, prostitution, and jaywalking laws have of course also led to instances where people will simply wander into the road, thus disrupting traffic further and leading to the common sight of the 15-mile-per-hour-bumbler driving down the road confused as to where they are going or how to navigate there; perhaps exacerbated by their mobile device or their dubious navigation system. It should be no surprise that between these various causes, traffic has become a blight on the urban and suburban dweller: a problem that was successfully solved earlier in American history has been reintroduced by government intervention and meddling on behalf of special interest groups (e.g. corruption). A concerted effort to raise speed limits - a 2022 study found that most roads would require relatively little modification to double them - and reduce impediments to road use at those speeds would greatly improve quality of life for Americans.

Sammy Hagar himself, still can’t drive 55 (yes, that’s his car)

Clearly, speed limit changes alone will not resolve America’s traffic problems - it will require a rework of the traffic lights and other flow control systems to adjust traffic patterns, and a change in emphasis on certain mindsets as regards the regulation of vehicular, cargo, and transit traffic. But with an eye towards a faster, safer, more pleasurable experience with less time on the roads and more time to live the lives we all want to live (rather than stuck in traffic), we should look to solve traffic congestion problems and zip on forward to a better tomorrow.