Will Missouri become the next state to increase top highway speeds?
Steve Bruns drives a lot — whether long commutes, monthly drives to Urbana, Ill., or a periodic trip to Houston to visit family.
Bruns, of St. Charles, says he’s a “big fan†of the rural interstate speed limits in Oklahoma and Texas, which top out at 75 mph and 85 mph, respectively. Back home in Missouri, the rural limit is still 70 mph outside heavily populated areas.
A Missouri lawmaker wants to change that. State Rep. Mike Kelley has introduced a measure seeking to increase the top speed on Missouri’s rural interstates and freeways to 75 mph.
“I would gladly accept that,†Bruns said in an interview.
Kelley, R-Lamar, said 17 other states — including neighboring Oklahoma and Kansas — already allow people to scoot along rural interstates at 75 mph or higher, and he thinks Missouri could handle the increase. It’s the latest nudge to increase top rural interstate speeds at a time when traffic fatalities are falling.
He said he already sees people driving 75 mph on Interstate 44, which passes through his district.
“I think there is a point where people feel safe, and that is what they are going to drive no matter what the speed limit is,†Kelley said. “We have come to a point on interstates that that is the speed most people travel.â€
If he’s successful, Missouri would join 13 other states — including Illinois — that have increased rural speed limits on interstate highways since 2005. (Illinois went to 70 from 65 one year ago.) Kelley introduced similar legislation last year, but it wasn’t successful.
Gary Biller, president of the National Motorists Association, agrees with Kelly’s observation about human nature. States that have done their own traffic surveys, he said, found that the average motorist on rural interstates drives in the low to mid-70 mph range, regardless of the posted speed.
“It kind of indicates that drivers don’t usually pay a whole lot of attention to the number posted on the sign,†he said.
Still, there are enough drivers who consciously stick to the posted speeds that it creates potential conflict points between the majority and those traveling slower than the prevailing speed, Biller said.
“That differential in speed is what causes conflicts and potentially accidents,†he said.
Biller said the top speed should be based on sound engineering. On highways, that means basing it on the 85th percentile of free-flowing traffic, his group says.
Jason Hoffmann, of Kansas City, drives Interstate 70 to and from the St. Louis area “pretty frequently†and said adding 5 mph to the top speed on rural reaches wouldn’t improve things much without an additional traffic lane.
“There are just too many trucks, many of which make abrupt lane changes, for a raised speed limit to do any good,†said Hoffmann. Nonetheless, he supports the idea of making the limit 75.
Missouri and other states have seen some of the lowest traffic fatality rates in generations. Biller and others note that deaths declined despite speed limit increases. He credits factors such as improvements in vehicles, roads and emergency care.
But some safety advocates argue against higher speeds, warning of reduced driver reaction time, longer braking distances and higher energy forces when crashes do occur.
“States have been falling over themselves to raise speed limits,†said Russ Rader, spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. “No state legislator I am aware of has introduced companion legislation to repeal the law of physics.â€
Studies consistently show that when speed increases on a stretch of road, so too does the number of traffic fatalities, Rader said. By comparison, when top speeds are reduced, the number of fatalities goes down.
Rader agrees that law-abiding motorists already have calculated how fast they can travel without getting a ticket: usually 1 mph to 5 mph over the posted speed. He said increasing the speed limit will push them into a higher speed bracket.
During the 1970s, a national energy crisis prompted the federal government to set a national 55 mph speed limit to hold down gasoline consumption. That top speed remained in place until the late 1980s when it was eased to 65 mph. It was repealed in 1995.
Dan Hyatt, of Maryland Heights, a computer engineer who is familiar with tenets of traffic engineering and Missouri traffic laws, said he believes that higher speed limits would have a marginal effect on gas mileage with today’s cars.
Hyatt added that cars rolling off the assembly line now can better handle higher speeds safely and have features that improve the odds of surviving a collision. He’s in favor of top limits of 75 mph to 80 mph on rural interstates, and 65 mph in the cities.
There’s one more positive side effect, he added. “If you have higher speed limits and don’t have predatory policing, people will drive through Missouri,†he said. “And if they drive through Missouri, they will spend money.â€
Maybe they’ll even fill up at a Missouri gas station, Hyatt said. Taxes from those gas sales are put back into Missouri’s highway system.
