Driving Smoothly
If you don’t want to be confronted with a speed limit, you can go to our eastern neighbors. Further from home, the speed limit might also be abolished soon.
Everyone knows, of course, that in Germany you can drive without limits on sections of the autobahn, but did you know that there is also no speed limit on certain stretches of the Isle of Man? The chance of you ever driving there, however, is considerably smaller. Perhaps even smaller than sitting behind the wheel once in the American state of Arizona. There too, you might soon be able to fully depress the accelerator. A local state representative, Nick Kupper, is campaigning for the abolition of the speed limit on certain routes. We read this thanks to Motor1 in the Arizona Capitol Times .
Kupper abolished that abolishing the speed limit would lead to fewer rather than more traffic casualties, because there would be less speed difference between road users. He cites a previously published report from the state of Montana. “It’s an interesting psychological phenomenon that when there’s no fixed speed limit, people tend to congregate around a certain speed. Interestingly, the fastest and slowest people are closer in speed than when there is a fixed speed limit. And when there is less variation, there are fewer accidents and fewer fatalities,” said Kupper.
Specifically, Kupper therefore proposes to abolish the speed limit during the day on certain relatively remote roads in Arizona. This would only apply to private vehicles. Furthermore, at dusk and night, a maximum speed of 80 mph, just under 130 km/h, would still apply. If research then shows that it works well, Kupper would also like to see the speed limit disappear on various highways. That might offer possibilities for a stretch of the Cannonball Run.