Posted on 03/02/2006 7:29:00 PM PST by Turbopilot
They knew it was dangerous.
"We could have really been hurt," said one of the Atlanta college students after their experiment.
It won't win an Oscar, but 'A Meditation on the Speed Limit,' a short film that was the brainchild of college student Andy Medlin, is quite a hit.
Some strange scenes, including a car passing in the emergency lane, were the product of Georgia State students simply following the speed limit.
"I was pretty sure that I was doing something stupid," said another.
That may be true. But, young and brash, they had a plan.
They wanted to go the speed limit on I-285.
In four cars, on all four lanes, the students from Georgia State University and other local colleges paced the entire midmorning flow of Perimeter traffic behind them at 55 mph for half an hour. They call it "an act of civil obedience."
"I get a lot of tickets," said Andy Medlin, 20, the Georgia State student who came up with the idea. "The best way to expose the flaws in the system is by following it."
Thankfully, they survived unharmed, though much maligned. The eight students captured it all on video for a student film competition, and the five-minute piece has fired up the country this week on blogs, talk radio, and national news broadcasts.
"NPR was the first biter," said Jordan Streiff, 21, the group's experienced filmmaker and an Asian Studies major at Georgia State. "Initially, we were going to be on ABC's cable network and Web site, but overnight the traffic to the video spiked so they put it on World News Tonight."
The film, "A Meditation on the Speed Limit," was intended as a drama, but won best comedy for Georgia last month at the Campus MovieFest, a traveling movie competition. It will compete against other states' winners for a national title later this spring, said David Roemer, one of the film festival's founders.
In the meantime, driven by blog attention to the video that Streiff posted on Google, a national discussion has bloomed about what is legal and what is right. One of the filmmakers, Georgia State student Amanda Hunter, was interviewed about it on Neal Boortz's radio show on WSB.
"It's just so overwhelming," Hunter said Thursday, after leaving a midterm exam on Sufism and Islamic mysticism. "Jordan's calling me today like, 'Do you have time for CBS?' I called him back and he said, 'Don't worry about that now, just take your test.'"
David Spear, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation, said if the students weren't blocking emergency vehicles and were going the speed limit, "they didn't do a thing wrong." Spear added that the speed limit was lowered to 55 because it saves lives. "In Atlanta, the actual effect of it is we expect the people going 75 to move over so the people going 95 can have the right of way," he said.
There was little doubt what the students' companions on the road thought that sunny Friday in January. The video shows drivers' steadily mounting hostility to the blockade. Cars honk. They drive onto the shoulder to speed around the students. Obscene gestures are made. The money shot, however, was captured beautifully by Hunter, who stood with her camera on the Church Street bridge over I-285 to watch the approaching traffic.
What she saw was ... nothing. An empty highway, with one or two stray cars. And then, like the hordes on the horizon, over the rise come the students backed by a phalanx of cars, cars, cars. The film plays it for all it's worth, bouncing the image back and forth to the funky beat of the Guru Fish song "Plush."
"It was so fantastic," said Hunter. "I just started jumping up and down and going crazy. There's beeping horns and craziness."
Then it passed, Hunter said, and a woman driving on the bridge stopped and asked, "What was the point of all that?"
Hunter explained the project. It was to make people think, she said.
The woman amicably rolled her eyes, Hunter recalled. "It was kind of like, 'Oh, you kids and your statements.'"
All states should set the speed limit independently. That limit should be 60, in my opinion.
When all is said and done, they are both authors of fiction.
Based on what?
ping.
God told me.
"Not 55, not 65.... 60."
The only people I see driving that slow are old people with bad eyesight and stupid people who can think fast enough to drive any faster.
According to the article, they were going to the maximum speed allowed by law in all lanes.
What can I say. Crash and die. It's just that attitude that kills.
I drive faster. I have to get to work. I get little sleep as is. I'm not getting up a half hour earlier. Highways were designed for rapid travel. 80 is normal for me.
In this matter, Sammy Hagar speaks for me..
That doesn't make any sense. You can't be cited legally for impeding someone's "right" to go 25 MPH over the speed limit especially if you are already going the maximum allowable speed.
If the flow of traffic is faster than you are driving, regardless of whether or not you are driving the speed limit, then you are impeding traffic. The 55 MPH speed limit is bull. I will not abide by it.
I always though it to be "Warp Factor 7" on the open road..
Your words. However if you believe the states should set the limit I have no problem with it. The thing is there are some areas of the country that 60 is not reasonable. Some areas it would be quite safe for the limit to be 80-90 or even up to the driver. Today's cars are quite safe at higher speeds
Are you so sure of that? That quote from Rand at the top of the thread sure seems like what is happening in the USA. Making all this silly stuff illegal (airing out your ride, growing what you smoke, making your own whiskey without permission from the feds, making strippers wear pasties, taking responsibility for your own protection, etc.) is evident in real life. Rand writes as a reflection of society. Chomsky is a parasite who accepts funding from the same entities he wishes to destroy.
They misspelled "obedience" in the title.
I stand corrected.... sorry I made us both waste keystrokes.
It also seems to me that the law requiring slower traffic to the right was being violated."
Well, you live in California, so you know that one.
Many, many morons in the fast lane who do not have a clue.
Flash the highbeams at them and get the bird.
Get too close and they hit their brakes.
Honk at them and get shot.
ping
In any case, I see fiction as a wonderful reflection, or the creative end-product of a society.
Never should it be used as the basis or starting-point of any law, culture, or ideal. That's plain sensationalism... dramatics.
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