Free Republic

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- A man has proof you can beat a speeding ticket, but it's not easy. Even if the state admits it put up the wrong speed limit sign. A retired police officer figured his wife was guilty when she got a ticket, until he drove through the intersection where she was ticketed. That's when he decided to fight the ticket she got at FM 1314 and Old Sorters Road in Montgomery County. When his wife told him she got a speeding ticket, Joe Gadus figured she deserved it, she'd pay for it, and they'd move on. "Like all...

Regulating Trucks by: Melinda Zosh, July 08, 2008 When Atlanta residents Stephen and Susan Owings ate breakfast, prayed and said good-bye to their two college-age sons after Thanksgiving, they had no idea that only one of their sons would return for Christmas. Nearly six years ago, on Dec. 1, 2002, 22-year-old Washington and Lee student Cullum Owings, a business major, died when a 70,000-pound tractor-railer driving 72 m.p.h., the equivalent of a car driving more than 300 m.p.h., slammed into his door. “My rear-view mirror has turned into a time machine,” said Stephen Owings. “Every now and then when I...

Cutting the speed limit from 30 mph to 20 mph on the wrong roads can pump up CO2 emissions by more than 10 per cent1, AA research has discovered. The UK's leading motoring organisation is now warning local authorities that some well-intentioned safety schemes may backfire in environmental terms. On average, petrol car fuel consumption on longer and relatively free-flowing 20mph urban streets can worsen by 5.8 miles per gallon (1.3 miles/litre). Over a year this will significantly increase CO2 emissions. In the first piece of research for its new Fuel for Thought campaign, updating widely-used test results from 1999,...

If there's one thing that's worse than paying $4 per gallon for gasoline, it's the resurgent talk of lowering speed limits to conserve fuel. Because, of course, these lowered limits won't be enforced as a "conservation" measure. Any curtailment of speed limits will be treated as a saaaaafety issue -- just as happened during the Dark Decades of the 55 mph National Maximum Speed Limit. "Speeding" tickets will be issued and "points" assigned. At the stroke of a lawmaker's pen (and the cop's, too) driving "x" MPH will suddenly become "unsafe," rather than merely wasteful. This is the most intolerable...

Toll road contract in Texas allows state to lower speed limits on nearby interstate freeway to avoid paying penalties to a private company. The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) has agreed to consider lowering the maximum speed limit on a stretch of interstate highway that competes with a planned toll road. Cintra-Zachary, a joint Spanish-US venture, paid TxDOT $1.3 billion for the right to collect tolls on 40-miles of State Highway 130 set for construction beginning in 2009. Although TxDOT suggested that free market competition was part of the goal of using a public-private partnerships to construct and operate roads,...

FReep this Poll! "When driving on the freeway, do you most often move over to the right lane to allow faster drivers to pass or do you maintain your speed and lane?" Move over Maintain

Lefties launch 'Move over' campaign By: Dave Downey - Commentary Sunday, June 17, 2007 Look out, all you left-lane campers. Soon, you could be approached from behind by an impatient commuter with the words "move over" and a giant arrow pointed in the direction of the No. 2 lane pasted across his or her windshield. Those drivers who routinely get irritated when you create those mile-long backups now have a polite way of communicating with you. For $29, they can buy their very own "move over" windshield decals through the Web site leftlanedrivers.org. The site was set up earlier this...

KINGSPORT, Tenn. Motorists are warned to watch their speed on Interstate 81 after they cross into northeast Tennessee. The speed limit has dropped there, starting today. The Tennessee Department of Transportation is posting new lower speed limit signs. The speed limit for truckers will drop from 70-to-55 miles per hour. The new speed limit for everyone else will be 65 miles per hour. The reductions will affect more than 22 miles on I-81 and 12-and-a-half miles on I-26, from the Tennessee-Virginia border to the Sullivan-Washington county line. Local officials requested the change to help bring the county into line with...

“Texans have a problem,” State Representative Larry Phillips said about the current statewide transportation system and its government-proposed solution, the Trans-Texas Corridors. “We can either address the problem, know what’s coming, and plan accordingly, or we can stick our heads in the sand and pretend it will go away.” Texas Governor Rick Perry proposed the corridor system in 2002. Texas Department of Transportation and other officials echo that sentiment and are looking at the TTC to offer long-term solutions for the masses. The TTC plan to date The Trans-Texas Corridor is a proposed multi-use, statewide network of transportation routes in...

It's another summer weekend, when millions of families pack up the minivan or SUV and hit the road. So this is also an apt moment to trumpet some good, and underreported, news: Driving on the highways is safer today than ever before. In 2005, according to new data from the National Highway Safety Administration, the rate of injuries per mile traveled was lower than at any time since the Interstate Highway System was built 50 years ago. The fatality rate was the second lowest ever, just a tick higher than in 2004. As a public policy matter, this steady decline...

AUSTIN – Yeehaw! Texans who brag they do things bigger and better are about to go faster too. State transportation officials on Thursday boosted speed limits on two stretches of rural highway from 75 mph to 80, leaving wandering armadillos and feral hogs a split-second less time to avoid becoming roadkill. It will be the highest posted speed limit in the country. New speed signs should be up in the next few days. And while state officials say the roads can accommodate it, safety and energy conservation advocates warn it will cost lives and hit drivers in the wallet at...

- In a surprise move yesterday, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton called for "most of the country" to return to a speed limit of 55 mph in an effort to slash fuel consumption... "The 55-mile speed limit really does lower gas usage. And wherever it can be required, and the people will accept it, we ought to do it," Clinton said at the National Press Club.

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...

People could legally drive 75 miles per hour on Wisconsin's freeways and expressways under a plan pending in the Legislature. State Sen. Tom Reynolds, R-West Allis, the lead sponsor of the bill, said the move would save drivers time, save some drivers money on speeding tickets and bring Wisconsin's limit in line with a third of the nation's states that already have the higher limit. "Cars are engineered these days in a way which can better handle a little higher speeds," Reynolds said. "It's a slowly emerging trend." Wisconsin now has a 65 mph limit on freeways and expressways, which...

Drivers in Texas, Iowa, and Indiana will enjoy higher speed limits next month as legislation raising the top speeds on rural roads takes effect. On Friday, Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) signed HB 2257 into law making 80 MPH the maximum allowable speed in the state. Rural portions of I-10 and I-20 will enjoy the new top speed, while other rural roads could see the limit rise to 75 MPH. Both the state House and Senate adopted the legislation without opposition last month. On July 1, a law signed by Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack (D) creating a 70 MPH speed...

Doing a legislative U-turn, the Oregon House voted Thursday to revise a much-denigrated 2003 law that limits speeds to 20 mph in residential school zones 24 hours a day. The 2003 Legislature passed the initial law in hopes of improving safety for children. However, the law drew widespread complaints from drivers who said there's no good reason to impose the lower speed limits in the middle of the night when there are no children present.

<p>Arizona state senators may be sending negative messages on highway safety by clearing the way for 80-mph speeds on rural interstates and rejecting a bill to allow police to pull over drivers not wearing seat belts, activists say.</p> <p>"I'm perplexed at the Legislature. They are essentially saying 'no' to stronger seat belt laws and saying 'yes' to driving faster," says Michael Frias, deputy director of the Governor's Office of Highway Safety.</p>

Special Report Slowdown Artists By Eric Peters Published 2/10/2004 12:05:45 AM If you thought the 55-mph "National Maximum Speed Limit" (NMSL) was a dead letter -- gone and over with -- maybe you better grab a chair and sit down. There's a movement afoot to restore this Carter-era tool for mulcting motorists -- under the guise of "protecting public health" -- and by misrepresenting the truth about the safety of America's highways. An agglutination of bureaucrats calling itself the Governors Highway Safety Association -- "representing federally funded state highway offices nationwide" -- is beating the kettles about what it claims...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Reckless pulsars -- spinning searchlights in space -- might tear themselves apart if they whirled too fast, but ripples in the cosmic fabric first predicted by Albert Einstein may set a celestial speed limit. That limit is still extremely high, about 760 revolutions per second, astronomers said on Wednesday. But scientists figure some of the fastest pulsars could technically go two or three times that speed. Unfortunately, they would inevitably disintegrate if they did. What stops them is the phenomenon predicted by Einstein's theory of relativity -- the rippling of the fabric of space and time. Known...

Updated March 7, 2003 This Week's PollCheck back next Friday to see the results. The House of Delegates recently passed a bill requiring slow drivers who stay in the left lane of multilane highways to move aside for faster traffic; failure to do so could be punishable by a point on their driver's license and a fine of up to $500. What do you think of this? Good idea - this will reduce accidents Bad idea - it rewards speeders Neither - I'll email my thoughts

Houston will be lowering speed limits in an eight-county area to 55 mph in May 2002. Dallas area drivers have already had to endure this. Texas is the only state in the country implementing this nonsense. The EPA has forced it on us. It is the contention of the NMA that these speed limits are illegal. The state is superceding the Federal Highway Administration (FHwA) mandates because of EPA blackmail. The EPA contends that car emissions will be "substantially reduced" if people would drive slower. They manufacture these benefits using a computer model that the Government Accounting Office said had...

Caller.com   URL: http://www.caller.com/ccct/home/article/0,1641,CCCT_800_1127702,00.html New 55 mph speed limit hard to enforce in court, says DA May 4, 2002HOUSTON- Harris County's chief prosecutor says he expects to lose many cases involving violators of the area's new 55 mph speed limit. The reduced speed limit is one component of the state's plan to reduce ozone pollution in the eight-county Houston region to meet U.S. Clean Air Act limits by 2007. Ground level ozone is a major component of smog, and nitrogen oxides, which the speed limit is intended to reduce, contributes to ozone formation. Without the lowered speeds, the area...