Motoring News - 65 MPH speed limit results in CA (no Audi

[Gross Scruggs <GScruggs@wposmtp.nps.navy.mil>]

-- No Audi Technical Content, Just Audi Driver Content --

Steve, your observation supports a little known NTSB-commissioned study, the
name and authors of which I don't recall.  I saw the study reprinted in an issue
of Road&Track about two years ago.  The great fallacy that the politicians, law
enforcement and other ignorants keep stating is that without speed limits people
would drive faster and faster until our highways were slick with blood of the
innocents.  Well it don't work that way.  The previously mentioned study found
what actually happens is that when unrestrained people tend to drive at the
speed at which information comes to them at a personally comfortable rate.  

If one were to suddenly abolish speed limits there would of course be an orgy of
'wow this is neat' triple digit excursions but very quickly the vast vast
majority of drivers would settle to 70-80mph where they would be comfortable
processing the data involved in driving.  My own experience indicates that when
I try to drive at a speed too high or too low for my existing mental condition,
affected by sleep, fatigue, anxitey, excitement, and yes, alcohol, that I have
to devote a great deal more energy to the process than when the speed is
synchronized with my mental condition.    

The 70-80mph figure mentioned previously is not a 'universal human being'
number.  It is affected by things like the culture you've grown up in, personal
skill assessment, road conditions, vehicle conditions, weather, and the like. 
The heart of the matter is that we all process information/data at rates which
are personally confortable and when we are stuffed into a politically decided
limit we rarely operate at optimum efficiency.  

I do not advocate a pedaltothemetal limit because there are very few of us that
are capable or trained to deal with the physics and decisions required at high
speeds.  No brag...just reality.  Graduated Drivers Licenses is a very good idea
that has no chance in our climate of 'equality at any cost.'

Regards,  Gross Scruggs