Reply to post:

California cops pull over Google car for driving too SLOWLY

Charles 9

"The real fun comes when looking at the history of maximum speed limits on open highways. At present, it's 65 mph unless posted otherwise...like 70 mph on some. The *original* limit was "reasonable and proper"."

It mostly goes to population density. The sparser the population, the less the risk of a high-speed collision and therefore the safer it is to raise the limit. It also matters if your state is of some significant size like Montana and Texas. Texas houses the longest single chunk of singly-maintained highway in North America (it's piece of I-10, ~880 miles long, over 1/3 of the entire 2,400-mile-plus Interstate), and it's probably one of the few states known to post an 80mph limit, especially in the rural stretches of I-10. Montana I think used to have "reasonable and prudent" for its chunks of Interstates like I-90 but had to scale it back to only 75mph.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon