Leave it to old John Warner to bring up bringing back a National Speed Limit. Report on CNN.com
Leave it to old John Warner to bring up bringing back a National Speed Limit. Report on CNN.com
So Jesse Helms died? I didn't see anything about a national speed limit
Look closer, and they just did the story on our noon news.
(FWIW It's currently on the crawler on FOX News)
There has been talk about this (but not to any great extent) for the past couple months.I use the NMSL (Nationally Mandated Speed Limit) as an example of crummy laws that are enacted in a hurry but take forever to be repealed. Also as many of you may recall the main beneficiary will be local and state governments who will use it as revenue enhancement. All the local and state governments who whine about not having enough manpower to enforce immigration laws (for an example) will jump RIGHT on any national speed limit.
they tried to drop the speed limit here in houston on the beltway (the outer loop, soon to be replaced by another even more outer loop) to 55. iirc, there was a judge that threw out every ticket written there because he thought it was stupid. it ended up going away fairly quickly. EDIT: similarly, in atlanta the speed limit is 55, and nobody even does 70. you get passed left and right doing 80
the reason they're talking about this is to lower fuel demand right? cars built these days are optimized to run at 65-75mph on the highway. if you drop that to 55, a lot of cars mileage will actually decrease(think honda civic dx with a 4spd auto) because they are being lugged around at 20mph slower in top gear than they were designed to do.
this isn't going to be the same change that we saw from dropping the speed limit back when a lot of cars didnt even have an overdriven gear
here is the story
btw, its really annoying that the link button will only put links at the beginning of a message, not where the cursor is when i press the link button
The energy department didn't sound too enthusiastic about it. Warner is probably on Big Insurance's payroll. Big Insurance was the primary winner in the 55 MPH fiasco. Today, with teh intr4n3t, yo, it would be a lot harder to sneak that one through on us. We would all hear about it fast and start the E36 M3 storm to our congress critters.
Consider this on all this conservation talk: Lets ASSume that we have 100 units of energy and we are currently using 100 units for all our "stuff" and we have been growing at 3% per year. Sure, if tomorrow we all used 10% less energy and we used 90 units, without fixing the 100 units fixed max, we'd be right where we are again shortly, like in about 3 years. That is what has happened with all the conservation. Right now, my fleet averages upper 20's on a weighted average for MPG. Some do 50, some do 22 (OK, 20 in boost), but given the miles each travels, I'd say about upper 20's. That is easily double what cars got 30 years ago, which allowed a gap to be filled by growth. Anytime so shiny happy person tells us that we only need to conserve energy and everything will be fine, he is FOS (Full of E36 M3, a medical term). Conserving can help in the short term, but without a fundamental change in what we are doing, like put a nuke in every town and make electricity virtually free, drill anywhere oil is economically available regardless of the caribou, etc., it will only delay the pain.
Found on another forum:
An Indian walks into a cafe with a shotgun in one hand pulling a male buffalo with the other. He says to the waiter: "Want coffee." The waiter says, "Sure, Chief. Coming right up." He gets the Indian a tall mug of coffee. The Indian drinks the coffee down in one gulp, turns and blasts the buffalo with the shotgun, causing parts of the animal to splatter everywhere and then just walks out. The next morning the Indian returns. He has his shotgun in one hand, pulling another male buffalo with the other. He walks up to the counter and says to the waiter "Want coffee." The waiter says "Whoa, Tonto! We're still cleaning up your mess from yesterday. What was all that about, anyway?" The Indian smiles and proudly says .. "Training for position in United States Congress: Come in, drink coffee, shoot bull, leave mess for others to clean up,disappear for rest of day."
the energy department probably isn't real excited at the idea that "they should determine at what speeds vehicles would be most fuel efficient, how much fuel savings would be achieved, and whether it would be reasonable to assume there would be a reduction in prices at the pump if the speed limit were lowered." he wants the damn speed limit so much, why doesn't he get off his ass and figure it out for himself?
"If Congress is serious about addressing gasoline prices, they must take action on expanding domestic oil and natural gas production."
to me this sounds like "hey buddy, you do your job and we'll do ours, k?"
This may be slightly off topic but here goes. When we start using less gas, the state/gov gets less money from the taxes on gas that help pay to fix our roads (among other things). Where will that lost tax revenue be coming from if less gas is purchased? More taxes on the gas, actually causing a price increase as demand falls or increased taxes elsewhere or a different place I haven't thought of?
thatsnowinnebago wrote: This may be slightly off topic but here goes. When we start using less gas, the state/gov gets less money from the taxes on gas that help pay to fix our roads (among other things). Where will that lost tax revenue be coming from if less gas is purchased? More taxes on the gas, actually causing a price increase as demand falls or increased taxes elsewhere or a different place I haven't thought of?
Sounds like when we had a drought in central VA a few years ago. They instituted water restrictions, and then raised the rates, since the water company "wasn't making enough money, due to decreased demand for water." Well DUH, you tell us that we cannot use as much and are then surprised that you are selling less?
John Warner is retiring nxt election cycle. He's worthless. Unfortunately I live in the dominion of Va. I wrote him awhile back about the supposed "real ID" law. He told me to get stuffed. He can die in a fire for all I care.
Who else thinks we need Sammy Hagar to help us fight this?
that video makes me sad
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