Imagine you are driving on the highway, the windows of your car are rolled down, your favorite song is playing as loud as you can play it, your heart rate rises, and naturally, you speed up a little bit. Then all of a sudden you see flashing red and blue lights and you pull off to the side of the road, what are you supposed to say to the officer “Sorry I was just really in the music” or maybe in a different situation “sorry I am late for school/work”?

As a society I understand why we have speed limits in cities and neighborhoods, places where you might hit a person if you aren’t careful and there are sharp turns you just can’t take if you go too fast, but why do we have speed limits on the freeway or highway? Everyone is already going 20 over and when that happens we use the excuse that we were keeping up with traffic, not only that but the highway patrol doesn’t pull us over in that situation because it would otherwise be dangerous for EVERYONE ELSE ON THE ROAD if we were to go the posted speed limit. So why have it at all?

Other countries have experimented with getting rid of the speed limit such as Germany and Russia and it has been successful. In those countries, there is less traffic, fewer traffic tickets, and fewer accidents. Here in America we have many traffic accidents and crash-related deaths, but accidents and deaths aren’t caused by speeding, they are caused by driving while impaired and distracted driving. I know that when I drive I am constantly looking for cops rather than paying attention to other cars.

“By raising the speed limits most people wouldn’t have to worry about being pulled over for speeding. A patrolman on the side of the highway wouldn’t even be an after-thought. Instead, cars would safely cruise by at secure, yet faster speeds, and keep traffic going smoothly.” – Justin Stenstrom, the Editor-in-Chief of EliteManMagazine.com

It is easy to say that speed isn’t causing as many accidents or deaths as we think it does. I can say this confidently because of racing and race cars. There is almost always 1 crash in every racecar event if not more, where every car in those races is going 200+ mph, these racers almost always just get out of their car with minimal damage to themselves, now it is true that there are still racers who have lost their lives or are injured in some way, but 90% of the time they walk off the track in good health.

Most modern cars can’t even reach 200 mph, but almost every car including a Prius can reach 100mph easily, so theoretically we would be much safer than we imagine if there was no speed limit. To make it even safer we can have different lanes have a minimum and maximum speed, for example on a 3 lane road the far right lane would be the original speed of the road at 60-70 mph, the middle lane would be 70-80 mph, and the far left lane would be 80+. This would mean you would only go at the speed you are comfortable driving at. It just makes sense.