Speed Limits. . . Don’t Need ‘Em

Some visitors coming to my home this morning complained of very slow traffic on the beltway at 10:00 a.m. Serious traffic this late in the morning may be a result of some truckers’ efforts to bring beltway traffic to a standstill. While I disagree with the protest’s objectives I think it’s a telling sign that the protest could even work in the first place: the truckers are simply planning to obey all speed limits without fail and travel in multi-lane convoys thereby further slowing down already bad traffic.

Thus, it stands to reason that the speed limits were obviously too low to begin with. Since the country rightly eliminated the federal 65-mph maximum speed limit in 1995 (after raising it from 55 a few years earlier) lots of less populated areas have set up 75 and, in a few places 85-100 mph speed limits. But best as I know, nearly all freeways in high-density areas remain stuck at 65 or less. Anyone have a good counter example?