Free Republic

THURSDAY, July 16 (HealthDay News) -- Deaths and injuries on America's interstates have increased since the repeal of the federal 55-mile-per-hour speed limit in 1995, a new study finds, and some believe it's time to slow down again. Researchers tracking fatalities attributed 12,545 deaths and 36,582 injuries in fatal crashes to higher speed limits implemented during the 1995-2005 study period. "Our study clearly shows that policy can directly result in more deaths as well as reducing deaths on our country's roads," said lead researcher Lee S. Friedman of the division of environmental and occupational health sciences in the School of...

SH 130 Concession Company LLC finalized the legal details of a financial close with Texas DOT on a $1,360m toll concession to build SH130 segments 5&6 Thursday and Friday last week in bankers' offices in New York City - at Orrick, 666 Fifth Avenue. The actual money flows should occur on Thursday or Friday (Mar 13 or 14) this week, Jose Maria Lopez de Fuentes, president of Cintra North America, told us this morning. Hundreds of documents and over 20 lawyers were involved last week representing TxDOT, private equity people, banks, mostly European, the TIFIA loan group from FHWA, and...

Ever wish you weren't right? In 1997, the notion of selling off publicly owned infrastructure to private sector operators was coming into its own. After the city hired a consultant to determine the value of the publicly owned CPS Energy, it raised red flags. CPS consistently charges some of Texas' lowest utility rates while providing a significant chunk of the city's revenue, I argued. Profit motives can produce wondrous results. But uncontrolled, they can also produce costly disasters. Some things — especially those that efficiently deliver services that are essential — are best kept in the public sector to assure...

North Texas toll roads ignore safe engineering standards to allow the state to set up speed traps. Toll road operators in North Texas are ignoring state law by imposing arbitrary speed limits that are set far below the safest level suggested by engineering surveys. A WFAA-TV investigation discovered that the North Texas Tollway Authority set speed limits on portions of the Dallas North Tollway and all of the Bush Turnpike without performing the scientific studies required by state and federal law. "Statistics show that 85 percent of the people drive at a prudent and reasonable speed," Kelly Selman, TxDOT director...

Share this with All your Friends... And SHOW this to your children and grandchildren !!!! THE YEAR 1907 This will boggle your mind, I know it did mine! The year is 1907. One hundred years ago. What a difference a century makes! Here are some of the U.S. Statistics for the Year 1907: ************************************ The average life expectancy in the U.S. Was 47 years old. Only 14 percent of the homes in the U.S. Had a bathtub . Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone. A three-minute call from Denver to New York City Cost eleven dollars. There...

(AP) CAMDEN, N.J. -- Gov. Jon S. Corzine was in too much pain to breathe without a ventilator, doctors said Wednesday, as he approached a week in an intensive care unit following an April 12 car crash. An anesthesiologist at Cooper University Hospital inserted catheters near Corzine's 11 broken ribs Wednesday to give him a different type of pain treatment in the hope that would help him breathe completely on his own sooner. When doctors described that procedure Wednesday, it seemed clear that Corzine, a one-time Marine they described as a "pretty tough guy," was not likely have a miraculously...

With gasoline prices approaching an average of $3 a gallon and Middle East strife escalating, it might seem like a bad time to encourage drivers to burn even more fuel. But speed limits on stretches of freeways around the country are rising -- just in time for summer road trips. States around the country, including Texas and Michigan, have recently increased speed limits on hundreds of miles of interstate highways and freeways. Other states are expected to follow soon. Near Detroit, drivers long confronted by signs telling them to go no more than 55 miles per hour or 65 mph...

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...

Two weeks ago I wrote that my traffic pet peeve is slow drivers using the left lane of a freeway and refusing to move over to let others pass.This comment generated a flurry of e-mails and phone calls, with about a third of respondents agreeing that police should focus on ticketing these lane hogs who disrupt the normal flow of traffic, not speeders. The majority was critical, however, contending I was encouraging dangerous driving.David Woerner of Houston called me "arrogant" for asking slower motorists to clear my path."If I am in the left lane and going 5 or 10 mph...

Speed limits on P4 could open window for AMD Can Barton scale to high speeds fast? By Mike Magee in San Jose: Sunday 08 September 2002, 23:47 THE MOST RECENT roadmap we saw from the Intel Corporation warns motherboard makers that with the introduction of 3.06GHz Pentium 4 in Q4, the designers are creating a somewhat new die layout for the Northwood process. This new layout might well be related to some significant errata in the processor, which we reported a few weeks ago. But with the introduction of 512K cache "Barton" AMD XP chips, we think that Intel may...

<p>Reasonable speed limits are in everyone's best interests. The question is, how do we agree on what speeds are "reasonable"?</p> <p>By observing traffic flow on any given stretch of road, traffic safety engineers can arrive at a scientifically objective speed limit that corresponds to the rate of travel the majority of drivers naturally gravitate toward. This so-called "85th percentile" speed is based on the altogether sound idea that most drivers are neither reckless nor suicidal – and usually drive within safe limits.</p>