Reactions to story from http://cbsnews.com

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  We Have Seen The Enemy

  http://dave-lucas.blogspot.com/2008/07/we-have-seen-enemy.ht...
  151 days ago in Dave Lucas · Authority: 69

  "They'll do anything they can to make the average middle class citizen miserable and cause hardship."-Paul Dewey, Jr. (who remembers when the National Speed Limit was 70!) US Senators and Congressmen - their lack of action being interpreted as
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  Speeding Does Not Cause Accidents

  http://plancksconstant.org/blog1/2008/08/speeding_does_not_c...
  105 days ago in Planck's Constant · Authority: 129

  Camel Crossing Sign Photo Credit: Treppenwitz Last month John Warner, Republican Senator from Virginia, asked Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to look into what speed limit would provide optimum gasoline efficiency given current technology. He said he wants to know if the administration might support efforts in Congress to require a lower speed limit. A week later California's newest member of Congress, Democratic Congresswoman Jackie Speier, in her first bill proposed a new national speed limit of 60 miles per hour in an effort to combat high gas prices and lower traffic deaths. What is it about idiots that makes their minds work like this? Next I suppose they will be passing legislation to make us eat less to help lower high food prices and help us live longer (yes, thin people live longer). But the way to lower food or gasoline prices is not to attack the consumer but to remove barriers on the producer. Remove the restrictions on domestic drilling. A national speed limit as a solution to our oil problem is as efficacious as cleaning our windshield wipers to reduce air drag or checking our tire pressure, etc. It's silly to try to legislate lifestyle changes on Americans when plain economics will do the trick: the high price of gas has already reduced demand dramatically. Typically in summer months we expect gas prices to rise but instead they have fallen by more than 40 cents. There is no need to force Americans to conserve by legislative fiat. As for the silly notion that speeding kills, the German Autobahn (with minor exceptions) does not have a speed limit although they recommend (can you imagine Germans actually suggesting instead of demanding?) going about 81 miles per hour. No speed limit? The highways must be littered with dead Germans! We should expect a higher traffic death rate on the autobahn than on American roads, no? No. The death rate on the autobahn for 2005 was 3 per 100,000 [Wiki]. The US traffic death rate in 2006? 14.7 per 100,000 - almost 5 times worse. It isn't speed that kills it's our poor roads. And what causes poor roads? Unions. That's right, unions. Take New Jersey - please. Joking aside, take New Jersey for example. We have the highest cost for road maintenance in the nation yet our roads are the worst in the country. The single reason: unions. If we instead hired cheap labor to do our roads we would have enough money to have them done by the Germans who know how to lay down road. If we made our roads like the autobahn we could save tens of thousands of lives a year. That's what union road labor really costs us - thousands of lives yearly. So if the oh-so-concerned legislators are worried about road deaths, they should ban the use of union labor on road maintenance. Related: If you're a Muslim and need to service two wives then breaking the speed limit is excusable: Fausta's Blog, 5 Apr 2008, UK: Polygyny now a good reason for speeding He was going 65 miles an hour on a 30 mile zone, but it's OK because, as his lawyer says,"He has one wife in Motherwell and another in Glasgow and sleeps with one one night and stays with the other the next on an alternate basis. "Without his driving licence he would be unable to do this on a regular basis." I wonder if Saudi Arabia's restrictions on proper headgear contribute to one of the highest traffic death rates in the world (21 deaths per 100,000 people)? Infidels Are Cool blog, 29 Apr 2008, Sad reality for women in Saudi Arabia Roads in Saudi Arabia are among the most dangerous in the world, with a high rate of traffic accidents. But one type of victim stands out: female teachers, who are dying at alarming rates because of long commutes through the desert to reach schools in remote locations. The Saudi government appoints teachers to work in small villages where local staff cannot fill all vacancies. But unlike their male counterparts, female teachers in this conservative Muslim country have difficulty living alone in the villages, forcing them to drive each day; they need permission from a male guardian to live alone and have to find a landlord willing to rent them an apartment. Has Everyone Gone Nuts blog, 11 Mar 2007, Big Government Encroaching Big government knows no bounds. Recently, we've discussed speech codes, forcing a total switch to flourescent [sic] lights, in Australia they want people to cut down on showers (unlike France where showers are rare), and now they are coming back to reduced speed limits--this time on the sacred German autobahns where no speed limits exist--all for the environment. Maybe the E.U. was worried that Germans could invade France before France had time to raise the white flags.
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  http://lynnsamuels.typepad.com/lynn_samuels/2008/07/senator-...
  151 days ago in Lynn Samuels · Authority: 4

  SENATOR SUGGESTS NATIONAL SPEED LIMIT
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  Weird Senator Suggests Return to National Speed Limit

  http://www.benkepple.com/archives/001438.html
  151 days ago in Benjamin Kepple · Authority: 13

  Then Jove resolved to send a curse and all the woes of life rehearse; Not plague, not famine, but much worse -- He cursed us with a Congress. -- Loyalist anthem VIRGINIA, WE EXPECTED BETTER. You are the cradle of American Government and as such should be cognizant of the value of freedom. Despite this, one of your senators has made the impudent and wretched suggestion that Congress might want to consider again establishing a national speed limit. The Rant has a two-word response to this idea. Well, actually, two two-word responses. The first response readers should be able to figure out on their own. The second one, however, is a bit more obscure but one I am sure the Rt Hon Senator will recognize. Those two words are: Danny Rostenkowski. As Washington has a long memory, I am sure everyone there still vividly remembers that whole debacle, in which an angry mob of senior citizens chased the Illinois Congressman to his car over changes to Medicare. I would suggest that imposing a national speed limit would make that look like a walk in the park. This is because the only people who would actually support a national speed limit are incompetent drivers, who support a low speed limit because they are incapable of operating a motor vehicle in traffic. Nothing would give these tired prudes more satisfaction than being able to joyfully saunter in the passing lane going 60, and being able to do so with the full force of the law behind them. Perhaps the senator in question is an incompetent driver. Perhaps the senator has forgotten how miserable trips on the freeways are when you can only drive 55 or 60 miles per hour. I have not forgotten. When I was a boy, my parents would annually gather the family together in a car for a trip to western Pennsylvania, a trip that involved traveling 420 miles from home. I can assure readers this trip, which should have taken about six hours -- seven hours at tops -- took eight hours to complete -- and sometimes more, if bad weather or road construction complicated matters. Do you have any idea how grueling that is? Staring at marker miles along the way and finding you're still in Ohio, and even worse, have 123 miles to go before you get out of it? If you're not sympathetic to that, then never mind the effects it had on me -- think about my poor parents, who had to put up with me for eight hours. Speaking of Pennsylvania, here's another two words the senator might want to consider: Whiskey Rebellion. I'm not saying, I'm just saying. The last time we had a national speed limit imposed, it took twenty-one years for it to get repealed. This was despite the fact the original reasons for the national speed limit had faded out in the early Eighties. I do not want to wait until 2029 to travel at a reasonable speed on the freeway, particularly as by that time I'll be driving a spiffy hydrogen rocket. Besides, with the price of fuel, even inveterate lead-foot drivers like me see the wisdom in traveling at a moderate rate of speed, like 60 or 65 miles per hour, as in my car doing so saves $1 per 20 miles driven compared with ... uh, my normal traveling speed. The savings per tank of gasoline is more than $20, which is more than enough incentive to ease off the accelerator a little bit.* All it requires from me is a bit of courtesy to my fellow drivers, which involves me traveling in the slow lane and not in the travel or passing lanes. I'm happy to do that, and I would suggest more drivers are doing so as they too realize the economic benefits of slowing down. Gee, there's a concept; the free market working. That said, there are times when traveling at a normal rate of speed (somewhere in the eighties) is a good idea. Like if I'm traveling through northern Ohio, particularly that awful stretch of I-80 east of Toledo. Americans' freedom to travel fast on the freeway when they want and need to do so cannot and must not be abridged, and I am confident all right-thinking Americans will resist any attempts to have this wretched, miserable boondoggle of an idea -- an idea from the Seventies, no less -- imposed upon us again. ------------ * My trusty Ford Taurus has an 18 gallon gas tank. If I use 17 gallons while driving on a trip, I can travel 340 miles doing my normal and customary speed, but 486 miles traveling at 65 miles per hour. This works out to a difference of 146 miles, the equivalent of saving 5.4 gallons of gasoline. At $4 per gallon, this works out to a savings of $22 per tank.

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