God bless Texas
Today, the speed limit on some roads will be raised to 85MPH, improving travel times and annoying hippies who lied for years telling us that 55MPH was good for the environment.
40 Responses to “God bless Texas”
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September 1st, 2011 at 11:13 am
I would like to add that we have also legalized catfish noodling.
I love this state.
September 1st, 2011 at 11:16 am
Well, if using less gas, which results in less tailpipe emissions, is good for the environment, then the hippies are correct. 55 mph is definitely better for the wallet. The thing is that aerodynamic drag increases like the square of the speed, so an increase in speed from 55 mph to 85mph will probably double the drag on the car at 55 mph, and hence significantly decrease your miles per gallon used while driving.
The funny thing is that I thought of this while zipping down the highway in Italy last month in my Alpha Romeo Giulietta at 85 mph… isn’t Europe supposed to be way ahead of us on the green stuff? Everyone driving so fast uses a lot more fuel and produces a lot more emissions than people “need” to.
September 1st, 2011 at 11:19 am
The hippies probably wouldn’t complain as much if we had European levels of taxes on our fuel. People love their sin taxes (i.e., taxes on things I don’t do, so obviously no one else should do it either).
September 1st, 2011 at 11:21 am
Well, they also don’t have CAFE standards which means their cars are more efficient.
September 1st, 2011 at 11:29 am
…and legalized feral hog hunting from helicopters.
September 1st, 2011 at 11:58 am
If you want better fuel economy while doing 85+, just sit behind a tractor trailer and set it on cruise. Drafting FTW.
September 1st, 2011 at 12:15 pm
Texas mandated a 55mph speed limit a year before Nixon pushed it on the national front. It was oil panic, not hippies.
September 1st, 2011 at 12:47 pm
ALSO: SB321 goes into effect today. Most employers will no longer be able to prevent employees who legally own guns and ammo from storing them in locked private vehicles parked in company parking lots during business hours. There are a few exceptions, such as school and federal building parking lots. The law only allows guns and ammunition to be stored in parking lots, garages and other parking areas provided to employees, not work areas.
September 1st, 2011 at 12:48 pm
NB: SB321 is a Texas law …
September 1st, 2011 at 12:53 pm
Hundreds of new Texas laws go into effect today. We should let them meet only once very FIVE years.
September 1st, 2011 at 12:55 pm
Markie Marxist sez: “We can’t have capitalist commerce moving at that speed! They’ll make money faster! Now Texas is going to have a competitive edge! That Perry guy will take credit for it, and he is NOT a good communist! We’ve got to put a stop to this! We’re supposed to slow American capitalism to a crawl, like we did back in the good old days when Jimmy Carter was president! People were supposed to be driving electric Urkelmobiles at 35 mph on the interstates by now! This is going backwards!”
September 1st, 2011 at 12:55 pm
A great civil victory! Unless you are, ya know, a landowner wishing to use your land as you see fit…
*ducks*
September 1st, 2011 at 1:53 pm
CAFE standards not being there make their cars more efficient?
Bullllllllshiiiiiiiit!
Their cars are SMALLER because their towns have lots of little teeny tiny streets.
They pay more for a liter of gas than we do for a gallon.
It’s amazing the dumb stuff you’ll say when libertarianism stops being a pragmatic take on social issues and starts becoming your religion.
September 1st, 2011 at 1:54 pm
And Ben, the reason you see people flying down the highway there is there aren’t nearly as many folks with cars, and they tend to be the wealthiest Italians. They have really, really, REALLY awesome public transit and you don’t need a car to go most places you want to go. The folks who are driving aren’t worried about their fuel bills.
September 1st, 2011 at 1:55 pm
I still remember a letter to the editor that I read when the 55 mph speed limit was first introduced:
“Crossing Texas at 55 isn’t a job, it’s a career.”
September 1st, 2011 at 1:59 pm
Our definitions of efficient are different. I mean a European Beemer will stomp a US Beemer.
September 1st, 2011 at 2:26 pm
If by efficient you mean “doesn’t have cup holders and has a marginally faster lap speed around Der Nurburgring”…sure. But that’s not the definition of efficient I think most people would think to be relevant here.
September 1st, 2011 at 2:30 pm
Top Gear a couple of years ago showed a Euro Jaguar Diesel going from Switzerland to North Britain on one tank of Fuel. Time in the Chunnel doesn’t count, because it was on a Train with the Engine shut off. 700+ mile range, 70-75 MPH average speed.
Same car with American Pollution Controls, 350 mile Range.
EPA can F.O.
September 1st, 2011 at 2:31 pm
The usual and customary speed on gravel Farm and Market roads in Texas is already 85.
September 1st, 2011 at 2:35 pm
Les–there’s no doubt emissions controls on diesels (the new DPFs with regen phases) are a kludgey nightmare that kill fuel mileage.
But I don’t think that has anything to do with the original point, which is to say that suggesting the average Italian car is more fuel efficient because they don’t have our CAFE standards is quite possibly the dumbest thing you’ll read on the Internet today.
September 1st, 2011 at 2:36 pm
(Or at the very least…something you’d only say if you know…you’d never been there and seen why they have smaller, more efficient cars).
September 1st, 2011 at 2:42 pm
our fuel mileage would improve considerably if we took cow feed out of our damn gas.
September 1st, 2011 at 2:44 pm
Sebastian- are you saying a 3 series is smaller in Europe? A golf? Nope. same size.
September 1st, 2011 at 2:49 pm
No. That’s not what I’m saying.
I’ll presume you’re not flailing about missing the point entirely, and are just prompting me to remind folks to consider what CAFE actually stands for?
September 1st, 2011 at 2:53 pm
“Hundreds of new Texas laws go into effect today. We should let them meet only once very FIVE years.”
Robert:
You know the story about the typographical error in the Texas Constitution, right?
Instead of meeting every two years for 140 days, they were supposed to meet every 140 years for two days…
September 1st, 2011 at 3:36 pm
Texas has reserved the 55 MPH speed limit for school zones.
We call hand-fishing here in Tn grapplin(g).
You can even buy “Girls Gone Grapplin” videos.
I don’t care which speed limits uses more gas, because I like burning gas and gunpowder.
September 1st, 2011 at 4:07 pm
My 5.0 T-Bird gets 28mpg at 70 but can touch 30mpg if I cruise at 80 on level roads. Cd is only one part of the equation; engine power output and fuel consumption vary with speed also, and the sweet spot balances all factors for best mileage. Besides, I’m from Texas, I use all the gas I want.
September 1st, 2011 at 4:17 pm
In 1976, I was driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike at 55 mph. I was passed by a limo with US Gov’t plates. I was convinced that day that they want these absurd rules to apply to and control the little people, not our anointed rulers.
September 1st, 2011 at 5:21 pm
Sebastiano, you’re an idiot. Volumetric efficiency of cars under CAFE standards is less than those not built to the same standards. Doing the same work in less time with the same energy is MORE EFFICIENT. Just because you want to make Uncle’s point into something it is not, does not change the meaning of his statement. Take a fucking physics class. Second, Italy’s transit sucks balls. It’s hot, filthy, unpredictable, rediculously expensive, and much slower than making the same route by private car in any area outside a MAJOR city (or, yes, Venezia for the comedians out there). Just because their transportation system fulfills your utopian dream of herding people into cities so you can better control them, does not make it good. In fact, it makes it the opposite of good (that’d be “evil,” you statist prick).
I don’t understand how some of you guys can be polite and reserved with these jackasses.
September 1st, 2011 at 5:41 pm
I got my driver’s license shortly after the 55mph limit started. It was another reason for me to hate Nixon. I won’t go into my first reasonto hate Nixon, except to say that I was damn glad when he left office, the rude so-and-so.
As for that 55mph limit, it was violated with regularity and universality in Charlotte, NC, and surrounding rural countryside, as it was in the rest of the nation. Just like the 75mph limit in Texas has been.
When the speed limit is used primarily as a revenue enhancement trick by every locality in a state, eventually the speed limit gets raised. Now in Texas we just have to watch out for those 85mph to 25mph speed traps in small towns.
September 1st, 2011 at 5:56 pm
@M Gallo, I was going to say much the same thing about car engine efficiency.
My European experience consists of five years in Germany and two and a half in Italy. My 1978 1.6 liter carbureted engine VW Scirocco would cruse at 160 KPH (100 mph) on the Autobahn and averaged over 35 miles per gallon.
Every single sentence in the above quoted text is bullshit.
Outside of the cities most people own a car, not just the wealthy. And they bitch about the price of fuel.
Public transport outside of the cities is hit or miss. The train system in Europe is really nice–except in Italy where the Union goes on strike a lot. You can be on the train and it just shuts down, right there, right then, because the Union called a strike. Have that happen to you when you’re 100 miles from home coming from Venice to Aviano.
The buses were unreliable as hell, if they ran or not was a guess.
Don’t tell me that Italy has “really, really, REALLY awesome public transit” because it doesn’t–I’ve been there, I’ve seen it, I’ve rode it, I lived it.
September 1st, 2011 at 7:25 pm
That California’s voters fail to recognize the causal link between our ridiculous 55mph speed limit for trucks and traffic congestion I shall never understand.
No matter how many lanes wide our freeways may be, at most hours of the day the two right lanes are clogged with semis (read: obstacles) going 55 and semis going 60 trying to pass them. And everybody else on the road trying to go a standard 80mph in the left-hand lanes.
September 1st, 2011 at 8:51 pm
Is good. Means less road time and more range time for us.
September 1st, 2011 at 10:54 pm
So If the normal american who travels usually 12 to 15 m.p.h. over the posted speed would be doing 100 m.p.h. as standard in Texas.
September 2nd, 2011 at 10:16 am
Magus, I’ll second what I can. I travelled a bit in Italy, and it was interesting to see how much better the trains were in the UK, France, and Germany.
Italian mass transit was the laughingstock of Europe 25 years ago, and I haven’t seen any news from there to make me suspect things have changed for the better.
I drove in Naples and Rome, and I can tell you for a fact that many, many city people own cars. I couldn’t understand how most of them stayed undamaged.
TIM, in some parts of Texas that’s probably true, but I doubt if it will be normal all over Texas.
September 2nd, 2011 at 10:53 am
Yeah, the parking lot bill did go into effect yesterday. Forgot about that.
Damn shame the open carry bill did not. Just a couple more years. Maybe.
tweaker
September 2nd, 2011 at 11:21 am
I hate to piss on your parade, but there is one correction. There are no 85 MPH speed limits today or any day in the near future. First, TXDOT will do speed studies and argue that the same concrete that people are regularly going 80-95 MPH can not handle 85 MPH legal speed limits. They’ll drag their feet and in the mean time, DPS will be handing out tickets like candy as people think they can legally go 85+ even without the new signs in place yet.
September 2nd, 2011 at 1:26 pm
“And Ben, the reason you see people flying down the highway there is there aren’t nearly as many folks with cars, and they tend to be the wealthiest Italians.”
I saw a buttload of cars on the highways everywhere I went in Italy, so I don’t know what you’re talking about. The cars ran the gamut from little il Puno Fiats to AMG Benzes. Saw a few high end Ferraris and Porches.
Funny thing was the fastest thing moving on the highway that I saw was a Chrysler minivan.
September 2nd, 2011 at 3:53 pm
M Gallo, you’re the idiot, because you’re still missing the point. It has nothing to do with comparing say a 3 series here to a 3 series there. That their 3 series might be a bit more efficient than ours is irrelevant.
CAFE stands for Corporate Average Fuel Economy, you fucking jackass.
In other words, you look across the fleet of cars a company offers and average what their FE is.
They have a lot fewer mini SUVS, vans, pickups, and full sized sedans in their fleets than we do. That’s why they’re more efficient over there. It has nothing to do with CAFE. It has everything to do with narrow streets and expensive gas.
Their public transit doesn’t smell. It allows you to get where you’re going relatively inexpensively and quickly. One of the perks of having my old man be a professional Italian tour guide–people’s worlds are rocked when they go there and realize how badly they’re kicking our ass in that dept.
Dollars to donuts you’ve never even been across the pond.
Magus: I will tell you that, because compared to what we have here, it kicks the living shit out of it. Sorry the bus left you stranded. We don’t even have a bus route for the comparable journey, so sorry…they have better public transit than we do in Europe. You’ll just have to get over it, hard as it may be for the people who view living in cities as part of some evil statist plot like the M Gallo idiots of the world seem to do.
And while I’ll stand corrected on the car ownership rates (admittedly I was only considering people in urban areas, since that’s where people tend to live), the average European drives 4500 miles per year. The average American, 15,000 give or take. We use cars way, way more…mostly because we HAVE to because our public transit is negligible compared to theirs in availability and routes traveled.
September 4th, 2011 at 2:53 am
Sadly none of this will matter for people in North Texas. The NCTCOG chose to ignore the 85th percentile studies and sets the speeds across DFW unnaturally low saying it helps DFW meet the clean air regulations. Of course no one drives 60mph in DFW but that’s what the signs say.
It’s still 60 or 65 for about the first 20 miles south of Dallas on I35.