Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 23, 1995 TAG: 9506230083
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARC JAMES SMALL
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
First, this is decidedly not a matter for federal control, but rather for state management. Highway conditions in Massachusetts or Connecticut are not those in Virginia, while conditions in Virginia are not those in Colorado or Nevada. Each state should control its own limits as its own conditions and policy dictate.
To find otherwise offends our tradition of district, federal and state powers. Even where a problem exists, which is susceptible to federal management, comity generally dictates that the federal government keep its hands off.
Second, even if this were a federal matter, stiff control of speed limits isn't in our overall interest. The old saw that ``speed kills'' is simply not true, as any competent highway engineer or safety expert will advise. What kills is speed differential - the difference between the speed of two colliding objects. Merely traveling at 100 miles per hour is not fatal; hitting a tree, which makes the speed differential 100 mph, is most decidedly so.
A corollary of this is that reaction times fall dramatically at higher speeds, and safer driving practices and tougher enforcement of the same thus become much more important. However, these are state and not federal concerns.
If the interest is in safer highways - and it's relevant to recall that federal speed limits were only imposed as a result of the oil crises of 1973 - then the effort ought properly to be in encouraging people not to tailgate, to use turn signals when changing lanes, use headlights when traveling at speed and the like - not in the citation of drivers for simply traveling rapidly.
The cost in all this is the cost of man-hours spent on the road. A 500-mile trip at 55 mph will take nine hours; that same trip at 70 mph will take seven hours. The cumulative cost of that saved time, when multiplied by our entire population, is immense. In times of economic slowdown and fiscal constraint, we cannot afford any longer to waste these thousands of man-hours lost to productive labor.
And that brings up the third point. To exempt commercial vehicles is the ultimate foolishness. Let us allow commercial vehicles - the lifeblood of this nation - to carry our commerce and produce to their intended destination as rapidly as can be done. Particularly out West, where highways are long and straight, and distances considerable, the time saved by allowing trucks to travel at higher speeds will serve as a significant stimulus to our flagging economy.
Warner's vote shows a chilling disregard for the basis for our federal system, and is peculiarly ill-timed when he's facing stiff opposition in his re-election bid next year. It certainly dismays me. I have always been a strong and active supporter of Warner, and had expected to be on his re-election bandwagon next year. I don't know that I can do so now.
Marc James Small, of Roanoke, is a lawyer.
by CNB