Ohio Raised Speed Limit Just in Time for Drunk Travelers

Five-hundred and seventy miles of rural Ohio interstate roadways have been bumped up to 70 mph. The new speed limit went into effect July 1 — just in time for the extra traffic of the holiday weekend — but authorities aren’t predicting an appreciable surge in accidents or fatalities, via the PD.

What the state highway patrol peeps are saying is that speed doesn’t really matter at all over holiday weekends. Everyone’s drunk anyway.

“Excessive speed does cause crashes, whether the speed limit is 55, 60, 65 or 70 mph,” a high patrol spokeswoman said. “But we find more impaired drivers during holidays and holiday weekends.”

Here’s the upshot: expect way more cruisers on the roads, folks. Drive safe and drink responsibly.

This article appears in Jul 3-9, 2013.

First this claim that the new higher allowed top speed across Ohio is in any way excessive speed is complete and total cooked up garbage!! The real facts are that the interstate freeways across the state that have this week received the increase to 70 legally are designed at a minimum to safely handle speeds of 75 to 80 mph. This fact means that the newly posted again limit of 70 across Ohio is in no way excessive speed as this article implies and says!

Are these so called “safety groups” that don’t want to allow higher posted limits ever going to tell the truth that higher limits like the posted this week 70 is well below the design speed of these freeways. And that real data safety collected in states by each states DOT that for years have allowed 70-75 legally shows that higher allowed speeds has made travel in these safer on these high speed roads and freeways!

How about these so called “safety groups” acknowledge the fact that there is not one shred of real data that shows higher speeds allowed on roads and freeways designed for these speed or higher are less safe!! The fact is that the data shows that the data collected on these higher allowed speed freeways in these higher allowed speed states with travel speeds being highest in the history of driving in the US they have continued to clock the lowest death rate per miles traveled in the history of driving!

How about people stop with the throwing around of the term excessive speed which has nothing to do with the current maximum limit which still with the increase this week posted well below the design speed of these freeways. Allowing higher legal speeds on roads/freeways that are designed to safely handle even higher speeds than are posted today in no way qualifies as excessive speed!! How about now that there are over two decades of real collected on high speed roads safety data from states that have for years allowed higher limits to be posted in that shows that these roads are the safest in the history of driving they start to tell the truth of why they continue to lie about what is safe and what is dangerous???

It would be nice if these so called “safety groups” would for once tell the truth of them being opposed to higher limits is and always was about the lost revenue they have collected for the last 4 decades of limits being under posted across much of the US. And how about they finally tell the truth of why the continue to try to block increases is because of the revenue lost from having higher limits will cost them from lost insurance premiums from the loss of the speeding tickets that lower limits provided?????

These so called safety groups have decades of twisting the truth of allowing higher limits well within roads design speed are not excessive speed in any shape or form! These groups that for years fought against the truth that shows in states that now allow higher legal speeds are not any less safe than before the limits were raised. The truth that shows the opposite of their claims, that actually show that travel has gotten safer on the higher allowed speed highways and freeways.

These groups that don’t care one bit about safety!! And it seems that they are never going to stop twisting the truth to suite their agenda. Their continued agenda of keeping limits posted low well below real world safe speeds to protect revenues streams in states that have kept limits artificially low……Thankfully starting this week Ohio is stopping being one of the states where insurance companies can make a killing off of drivers ticketed for doing nothing unsafe!