Horizon

With all due respect, Bobby, some of us have farther to go on our interstates.

Agreed. But do you want to reduce gas prices? At 55mph, you can go 65 miles in 70 minutes, as opposed to 60 minutes (65mph). What's the rush?

Adds up. That's an hour added from here to Klamath falls. More, actually, because some of the speed limits are now 70, not 65.

But, so, OK, the train takes 10-1/2 hours in theory and 12 to 15 hours in practice.

And one should learn to live modestly, etc.

But can't we just drive less often instead of slowing down long-haul travelers?

I'd vastly prefer higher gas taxes to lower speed limits if you're looking to reduce pollution or consumption. We make the 1370 mile drive from Virginia to Texas once or twice a year, and artificially low speed limits would be abominable — five hours difference between 70mph and 55mph.

Higher gas prices likely wouldn't affect our decision to make the drive instead of flying, since for several of us it's still cheaper (and less polluting). They would make me more likely to take the bus to work, though.

In the uk the Greens and the Left of the New Labour have become maniacal about wind farms- even though they disfigure the countryside and, even when they've stuck them all over will only ever account for small percentage of power.
The answer is get back to the drawing board on nuclear power, and make it safe. There isn't too much option.
Cars will have to go and that doesn't bother me in the slightest.

Here are some arguments against the 55mph limit: higher costs associated with increased police patroling in order to enforce it; the trucking industry depending on heavier and larger trucks which deteriorate the highways. There is also evidence that when the limit was raised from 55 to 65 the rate of highway fatalities went down (since the traffic flow was 70, people obeying the law were dangerous).

However, the concerns about the 55 limit posted above express a reluctance to endure personal inconvenience. I'm going to have to store that away for the next time I hear about the selfishness of the Baby Boomers.

I think this is the point where I'm supposed to allude to the Boomers' notorious totalitarian impulses or something.

Well, I'm curious about this compulsion people have to get wherever they're going as fast as they can, especially by going as fast as possible. I can talk about this because I suffer from the same disease. I fight it all the time.

If reducing the speed limit truly saves energy - all other issues notwithstanding - haven't we done something for the common good? A common good that benefits us as individuals?

If reducing the speed limit truly saves energy - all other issues notwithstanding - haven't we done something for the common good?

Only if saving energy — that particular energy — outweighs any other good. This is plainly not the case, though we may talk as if it were -- we make compromises with such things all the time.

Orwell wrote about the subject when it came to automobile safety:

Cut down the speed limit to twelve miles an hour in all built-up areas, and you would cut out the vast majority of accidents. But this, everyone will assure you, is ‘impossible’. Why is it impossible? Well, it would be unbearably irksome. It would mean that every road journey took twice or three times as long as it takes at present. Besides, you could never get people to observe such a speed limit. What driver is going to crawl along at twelve miles an hour when he knows that his engine would do fifty? It is not even easy to keep a modern car down to twelve miles an hour and remain in high gear—and so on and so forth, all adding up to the statement that slow travel is of its nature intolerable.

In other words we value speed more highly than we value human life.

I'd also like to say a word here in defense of convenience. Simply put, convenience is not wasting time. We may mock it when the time not wasted is spent frivolously, or convenience is purchased at a high cost — as with the people so obsessed with getting a parking place close to a business entrance that they drive around the lot for longer than it takes to walk across it. But wasted time generally increases the cost of every good and service.

At its worst, the denigration of convenience is a part of the abandoment of the old socialist goal of material prosperity by the Adbusters wing of the Left. But that may be a stretch.

And Bobby, I must confess that there's a strong regional element to my feeling here, which may influence my tone. The 55mph speed limit was long regarded in the West as something akin to a latter-day Stamp Act imposed by Easterners who'd never be seriously burdened by it. It may be hard to imagine the rejoicing when it was repealed — speed limit signs in Texas were changed within days, with hasty reflective-tape patches.

If reducing the speed limit truly saves energy - all other issues notwithstanding - haven't we done something for the common good? A common good that benefits us as individuals?

Reducing the speed limit, as you pointed out, won't necessarily make anyone drive slower. When the speed limit was 55 everyone went 70 anyway. Reducing the speed limit again would be little more than a bureaucratic fiction which encourages unsafe driving, among other things.

Now, if you made cars that couldn't comfortably go 70 mph for long distances, that would be another matter. But try telling America you're messing with its cars. ;)

Only if saving energy — that particular energy — outweighs any other good. This is plainly not the case

You may be right, although it's not that plain to me. What other goods would be diminished by reduced automobile fuel consumption? Not saying there aren't any, just that they're not jumping into my head. Auto emissions are a serious environmental threat, high gas prices endanger our economy, and our thirst for oil has been complicating our foreign policy most of my life.

convenience is not wasting time

I may be addressing this question to the wrong group of people, but...what do people actually do with all this time they're saving? Are they really using it productively, or - if that's the wrong word - are they using it in a manner that adds value to their lives?

Now one thing I'm interesting in asking about Texans is: how far do they drive to work? We have this image they have to travel great distances. Is that true?

Don't get me wrong, I'm always trying to set new world records for getting to wherever I'm going. When the limit went back up to 65, it felt liberating. And I used to drive between Boston and Glens Falls (NY) somewhat regularly. At the old limit it took about six hours; with the new 65 I shaved maybe an hour off. It was still a long drive, and I wasn't any less wired from the journey.

It just seems to me that when discussing whether a reduced speed limit is a good idea, the We Don't Want To argument is pretty weak.

Now one thing I'm interesting in asking about Texans is: how far do they drive to work? We have this image they have to travel great distances. Is that true?

Growing up I had a number of friends whose fathers commuted the 100 miles to Houston each morning, and the same back home every afternoon. This was after the oil bust of the early eighties, when local unemployment hovered between fifteen and twenty percent and most people owed more on their houses than they could sell them for. Usually they only did this for few years before they either found a job closer to home or broke down and moved their families.

what do people actually do with all this time they're saving

In this case, the roads were perfectly straight and only passed rice farms for at least seventy-five of those hundred miles, so the speed limit really does make a difference. For these men, it would have meant an extra 45 minutes a day at home with their families, at their jobs earning money, or anyplace but a car.

In general, though, lowering the overhead to travel means that appliance technicians can hit an extra house on their daily round, that parents don't have to choose between dinner or a movie before the babysitter has to go home, and that I as a high-school student could have spent an extra half hour reading science fiction while driving my grandmother to physical therapy. It's the difference between spending a night in a hotel when we go visit my relatives or driving straight through and having an extra two days to visit.

It seems to me that when making decisions about how other people should be allowed to spend their time, the We Don't Want To argument should carry a lot of weight, even if it's not invincible.

What other goods would be diminished by reduced automobile fuel consumption?

That's a different thing altogether. I'm all for reducing auto fuel consumption, even though it'd likely be bad for the local economy. I just think that slowing traffic down is a terrible idea. Reducing speed limits would penalize folks in hybrids as much as folks in hummers, which doesn't make any sense at all. Adding a dollar-a-gallon tax to gasoline (but not diesel) strikes me as a much, much better approach.

The answer is get back to the drawing board on nuclear power, and make it safe.

I'm with you on that. "Making it safe" is a culturally touchy one, as nuclear power has proven to be quite safe when done by the French, and not safe at all when done by the Soviets.

Nuclear power has proven to be quite safe when done by the French, and not safe at all when done by the Soviets.

Making it safe is one issue; making it cost-effective quite another.

(From an ex-BNFL employee).