U.S. Sen. John Warner talks up 55 mph national speed limit

That will not help whatsoever. Nice try though.
55 is a joke!! My 06' Dodge Ram Mega Cab with MDS gets its best gas mileage at 75-78 mph than ANY other speed. They need to look at how the vehicles are engineered.

I can't believe that He is that Stupid and That got us in this mess, Does anyone remember how this war was suppose to bring more oil at lower Prices thats what the Clowns told us before we went to War.

I can't Believe that Congess has not summited indictments Yet.

Bite me Senator Warner! As a real working american who needs to drive anything less than 65mph is a joke.
I CAN'T DRIVE 55!!!!!!!!!!

Typical of politicians. No drilling, but flailing around looking for solutions that dont work. That's what represents us? Pittyful!

The way I read it, the Senator is not proposing 55mph - he only asks what speed limit would provide optimum gasoline efficiency given current technology. When the answer comes, I suggest doing some simple math to see how much longer it would take to get where you're going with a lower speed limit (assuming your freeway or highway is not so jammed that the speed limit does not matter).

They are idiots to think that the vehicles today are not capable to drive at a much higher rate of speed. The politians just want to keep the speed limit unrealistic so they can write more tickets and make more revenue. The cops and the corrupt politians can kiss my ass on 55 mph.

Warner and all of the ridiculously low speed limits(traps) on highways in VA are a joke.

Just another example of the republicans trying to put a band-ade on the mess Bushes economic and war policies have gotten this country into. Think out side ways that puts more restictions on our freedoms and imposing more laws that are designed to add more revenues to pay for their mess. Try [for once] solving the problem this time by actually expediting the technologies that are available now that will totaly erase our dependency on fossil fuel for good.The republicans don't want that to happen because Bushes regime has spent the last 7 years trying to use the iraq oil so he and his oil baron buddies can become a major player in opec. They truly do love being in on the collusion. I CAN'T DRIVE 55. Why don't we just go back to the stone age.

With six speed automatic transmissions today, I dont know that 55 would help

55 mph is certainally possiblity and all americans can drive at this speed. It would most likely save thousands of lives and also many million barells of fuel. We are all spolied to speed and a slower limit , even though some folks might have real or supposed problems, it is nevertheless a plan to help us reduce consumption and help get us out of this mess.

Any idiot should know the faster you drive, the more fuel you burn. 55mph would save gas and also save lives. Since gas has gone up over 4.00 per gallon, most drivers have not slowed down a damm bit. Yes, set the speed limit at 55, and if y ou get caught speeding, get yourself a ticket. Why the big rush anyway.

I am not in favor of re-instating a 55 mph speed limit. If the goal is to encourage gasoline savings, I'd rather have higher fuel cost (via higher gas taxes) than to be subject to a 55 mph limit. The lower speeds save the most fuel on non-aerodynamic vehicles, so the savings are not uniform. (If one wants to know your fuel economy at various different speeds, a Scangauge II reader will give you this information and more live in any 1996 vehicle or newer.)

As unpopular as it may sound, an alternative idea would be to go to a rationing system, where each driver gets a 'gallons of gas' card that lets him/her pump say 50 gallons a month before being subject to 'excess consumption' surcharges. 50 gallons/month * 12 months = 600 gallons/year. 600 gallons/year * 25 mpg average = 15000 miles/year. This system would encourage fuel efficient vehicles and all electric vehicles for day to day commuting and driving, leaving the option to "splurge" on gas for hauling the boat on weekends. Unused rations might be sold to others.

just because the senate moves slow dosen't mean the rest of us have to.

The senitor has hit a nerve with the public, but he has in fact suggested something that will help us out of the fuel crises. I don't think that 55mph is the right answer but when the experts give us their report we could start doing our part by supporting such a plan. Sure this doesn't cure all of our fuel problems but we have to tackle this thing on a item for item improvement.

I lived through the 55-mph speed limit years. Maybe we saved fuel, but many people treated this artificially low speed as a joke. It was like liquor prohibition might have been; we turned the masses into scoffllaws. And, in many states, driving that slowly is just impractical for daily life; our highways were built for higher speeds. As a matter of fact, so are our lives. I don't think you can get today's Americans to slow down.

I think a better solution would be to encourage people to drive smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles. The gigantic pick-ups and SUVs people have in such large numbers now are ridiculous (they are about to go the way of the dodo anyway, with $4/gallon gas prices). Let the private sector and market forces lead the way, but the governments should provide tax and fee breaks for smaller vehicles. There should be a sliding scale: the more fuel-efficient the vehicle, the lower the taxes and fees on it. States should consider waiving the registration fee entirely for vehicles that can achieve more than a certain fuel efficiency, say 40 mpg.

Mark Twain said it best: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

6/06/2008

Dear Honorable John Warner l,
I am writing today out of concern for the long term and short term economic viability of the US Economy and the severe crisis that is looming with $130.00 a barrel oil price.
I have listened to many speeches by potential presidential candidates, members of congress and the senate as well as numerous talk show hosts and analysts’. While I agree with the theme that, “we need to become less dependent on foreign oil and that we need to allow for new technologies through American ingenuity”, we cannot afford to wait the time it will take to achieve this independence.
We have a short time to make changes to our economy or it will be decimated. My case in point is that as the price of oil increases, so will all other dependant industries which are a major sector of the total US economy.
There is a very simple solution that can happen overnight and save this country from experiencing the coming extreme economic downturn. This country experienced a very similar problem in the early 1970’s and took measures to make the change. What the U.S. experienced then was much less severe than the current situation. Yet the leaders of the time, some of which are still in congress today, realized the need to address situation then.
We did not have airlines on the brink of bankruptcy, for some their second and third time in less than a decade. Has anyone considered what would happen if all the airlines should fail. No airline model can sustain itself with $130 a barrel prices.
The cost of transporting goods was not at high a percentage increase in the 70’s as it is today.
As these prices increase, it will become even worse as people begin to be laid off in record numbers. Is this over concern on my part? I do not believe so. It is the duty of our elected representatives to observe, prepare and prevent such economic duress.
We can turn the economy around very quickly without an enormous cost or a dramatic change in governmental policy or adjustments by the Federal Reserve.
It was a simple solution in the 70’s and it can be a simple solution today. I am talking about reducing the federal highway speed limit. I will show several examples to my point and how effective this can be on the economy.
Let’s be honest here! The current speed limit on the highway in most states is 70 MPH while some or as high as 75 MPH. Do the majority of drivers maintain those speed limits? Based on personal observation, the answer is no. Do I have any statistics to support that assumption? No.
But all one has to do is drive the speed limit and see that the majority of people are passing by with a speed much greater than the limit. It has been my observation that people are driving 85 MPH to 90 MPH with some driving even faster than that. When the speed limit was 55, my observation was that people were driving 70 to 75.
Some find an aversion to the thought of slowing the speed limit again. For me, I find an aversion not slowing down because I know that those vehicles that are speeding are not only using gas they do not need, they are creating the rise in the prices of fuel which in turn is causing harm to the economy.
I believe that most people want to do what is beneficial not only for themselves, but also for others and what they would consider the “right thing to do”. If we can educate them on the effects of speed versus drag and the resulting fuel consumption with increased speed, the impact that has on the economy, consumer pricing, their jobs and long term personal viability, they would make a change in their habits. Especially when they know it will create stability in fuel prices which would, in turn, would create stability in their careers and the prices of goods and services they rely on. This would, in fact, stimulate the economy! Creating more jobs, more consumer spending, more companies and more taxes and revenues for the Government.
What I hope to do is enlighten our leaders and the general public to the savings that would be achieved by a reduction in speed. I only bring this up as I have heard no current leader, analyst, or talk show host even mention it. What I do hear, is a lot of people talking about how bad it is, and how bad it is going to get, but with no solutions in the conversations. Other then we need to reduce our foreign oil dependency. It is not my goal to seem pretentious and assume that no one else has thought of this. Certainly, there are a great many people much smarter then I. But I do not hear dialog from any Governmental or public source on the subject.
The simple truth is that “speed increases drag”. That simple statement is not so simple in explanation. It depends on many things. Air Density, based on pressure altitude and temperature. It also depends on the shape, size and weight of the vehicle. Wind is also a variable that affects drag greatly. If you are trying to maintain 90 MPH in a commercial semi truck with a headwind, it will consume much more fuel then with no wind or trying to maintain 55 MPH in that wind. I personally observe semi trucks maintaining speeds well above the speed limit in headwinds on a daily basis. Some as high as 90 MPH.
Speed does not just increase drag. It increases it exponentially the faster one travels in a medium, such as a gas (air), or a fluid (water).
Here is a simple graph of drag vs. speed.

(Source: Airman’s Aeronautical Handbook).
You can see that as speed is increased, total drag increases exponentially. Now this is an aerodynamic graph for airplanes which are aerodynamically more efficient then automobiles.
So let’s look at a graph from a 1956 beetle owner’s manual. I cannot find a chart like this in any contemporary automobile owner’s manual.

The graph only measures as high as 69 MPH. But you can see that the trend is for the drag to increase exponentially the higher the speed. Below is a chart of Gallons Consumed per 100 miles based on Miles per Hour.

(Source: Congressional Budget Office based on data from Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Stacy C. Davis, Transportation Data Book, October 2001)
It is obvious that speeds above 60 MPH dramatically increase the amount of fuel being used.
75 MPH and above is extremely un-economical and should bring concern.
The increase in consumption from 60 MPH to 85 MPH is 30 %.
In my personal truck, a 2007 Toyota Tundra with a 5.7 liter engine, I have a Miles per Gallon gauge and I have computed my own consumption at 60 MPH, 65MPH, 70 MPH and 75 MPH.
60 MPH = 21 GPH
65 MPH = 20 GPH
70 MPH = 18.8 GPH
75 MPH = 16.8 GPH
The difference in consumption from 75 MPH to 60 MPH is 20%. Just slowing down 15 miles an hour. What does that mean in time. 60 MPH is one mile a minute. 75 MPH is 1.25 miles a minute. To travel 100 miles at 60 MPH would take 100 mins or 1.66 hours. To travel 100 miles at 75 MPH would take 80 mins or 1.33 hours. That is a 20% increase in time to destination.
So 20% savings in fuel will cost a person 20% in time to travel to their destination.
What does that savings in fuel mean to the National Economy?
The current National fuel consumption is 20,590,000 barrels of oil a day. If we slow down and save 20% of that, we could save 4,118,000 barrels of oil a day. What does that equate to over time?
10 days = 41,180,000 Barrels saved.
30 days = 123,540,000 Barrels saved.
60 days = 247,080,000 Barrels saved.
180 days = 741,240,000 Barrels saved.
365 days = 1,503,070,000 Barrels saved.
2 years = 3,006,140,000 Barrels saved.
5 years = 7,515,350,00 Barrels saved.
10 years = 15,030,700,000 Barrels saved.
100 years = 150,307,000,000 Barrels saved.
There is significant savings that would create a large surplus of gas almost overnight. This surplus would drive the price of fuel back to acceptable levels. For the short term, reducing the national speed limit is the fastest way to get fuel prices down which would reduce the price of goods and services and stimulating the economy to bring us out of the current downward trend that we face today.
There are other ways we can save as well. Boating for instance. A Key West 2300 SS equipped with a Yamaha F250 will burn 21 GPH at 6,000 RPM and give a speed of 48 MPH. At 5,000 RPM, the burn is 14GPH and a speed of 38 MPH. (Source: Actual statistics obtained by author demonstrating Fuel burns, RPM settings, and speeds with named boat and motor). That is a 44% savings. Perhaps speed limits need to be set on container ships, commercial fishing vessels cruise ships, and other freight vessels.
The airlines are another place we can save. As an airline captain, we were encouraged by the company to save by flying slower. By flying .74 mach instead of .78 mach, we realized significant savings. Perhaps .72 should be imposed in National airspace as the maximum speed. Also, there are operators that do not have the equipment to fly at the higher altitudes which dramatically increases the fuel consumed. Perhaps anyone who does not have the required equipment should not be permitted to fly as they are adversely affecting the resource. Another way to help the airlines save would be for ATC to plan and utilize 4 to 1 descents rather the 3 to 1 allowing the aircraft to stay higher longer saving a significant amount of money.
One large area where we could save is to use medium size aircraft versus the smaller regional jets. This would save two fold. More people per flight and less congestion in the air freeing up time on the taxi way, or holding in the air as we now do with the added congestion of the smaller aircraft. Aircraft would also be able to fly more direct routes as a result of less congestion.
Re-regulate the airline industry and get rid of the empty seats created by too much competition where we are inefficiently burning fuel we do not need to. Will there be an increase in the fares? Most likely but that can be countered by the reduced price of fuel. Also, the government could set price at a rate just slightly above the fixed and variable cost curves giving reasonable fares and security to the airlines. Do people need the fares low enough to travel frequently? It is now considered a right and an entitlement rather than a privilege. Our economy, the price of fuel and the associated cause and affect on the overall health of the nation can no longer afford that attitude.
Deregulation has worked and forced the costs of labor down which was the intent of Alfred P. Kahn, President Carter and the Congress and Senate of the time. To help stabilize the cost of fuel, it is time stabilize the airlines.
What is significant to understand is that speed, frequency, competition and waste costs money. It has reached a point where the attitude of “I should be able to get where I want to go as fast as I want to and as cheaply as I can” is taxing the National Economy and we cannot afford to allow that attitude any more. People are going to have to realize they have responsibility in fuel conservation as much as the oil companies and OPEC do. They can make the difference.
Educating people is the key! Start programs in the High School driver Education classes about fuel consumption and how it is affected by the extra drag created at higher speeds. Televise instructional video on TV about the savings that can be realized by slowing down. Show how slowing down will lower the price of fuel which will lower the cost of goods and services and in turn stimulate the economy and create jobs and extra tax revenue.
Educate freight company owners that by paying their drivers to slow down, they will be increasing their revenue. If a driver loses 20% time to save 20% fuel, the goods the owner is transporting will be in more demand as the lower price per unit will demand more units ordered, which will create more need for trucks and other drivers. The savings in fuel will more than offset hiring extra drivers and buying more trucks.
Make people aware that by slowing down and saving fuel, our teachers, firemen and policemen could realize pay raises as lower fuel prices leave extra cash in the state budget making raises more secure. Currently, in Florida, the state is considering a 4 day school week to save fuel through one less day of busses transporting our children to class.
Consider tax incentives to help people buy more fuel efficient auto mobiles. If they buy a car that gets a specific gas savings, let them write the cost of the vehicle off their gross income. And loan interest rates that are for fuel efficient vehicles could be written off for the length of the loan.
Also, to make lowering the speed limit work, provide harsh financial penalties for people that do not obey the law. Fine a particular amount for every 5 miles over the speed limit. Different rates would have to be applied to different socio economic groups as a lower group would suffer more than a higher group. People who make more money need a higher penalty that would affect them in a negative way. A $150 fine is not going to affect someone who makes $50,000 a year. This particular law would have to be in place for the people who just do not want to realize that slowing down would be of benefit to them.
There are other reasons for reducing the National Speed limit.
Saving lives: When the National speed limit was raised in 1987, deaths on rural interstate highways increased by 25 – 30%. In 1989, 2/3 of the death increase was attributed to increased speed.
Lowering Greenhouse Gases: While we have a mixed philosophy on Global Climatic Temperature rise due to greenhouse gasses, currently about 50/50 by the experts, it is prudent to be safe and do what we can to lower emissions. By slowing the National Speed Limit, we would lower emissions considerably.
Extending the life of the resource: By slowing the National Speed Limit, and saving 150,307,000,000 barrels of oil over the next 100 years, we would be ensuring that future generations will have fossil fuels that will not be available to them if we do not reduce the speed limit.
While Hydrogen technology is on its way, we do not have the time to wait. Something needs to be done today to ensure continued economic viability. This is a very real problem with a very real and simple solution that should at least be investigated and discussed amongst our leaders and the people.
While it will cause some pain in the beginning, people will adjust. And once it is proven to benefit them economically, they will realize it is the proper thing to do.

My fellow Americans the problems we face are more serious than just oil prices and the economy. Adjusting the speed limit is not going to correct our problems. We have experienced many natural catastrophies like major flooding, wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc. Let us also add into the equation the man made catastrophies like the Twin Towers and whatever else terrorists have up their sleeve for the next go round.
There have been times of prosperity and peace and there was a reason for those seasons. Abraham Lincoln said it best when our forefathers were in the throes of the Civil War and the devastation it brought to families and the people of our Nation. He said, "We have offended the Divine Power that has given us all our blessings."
For some reason our country is adopting the idea that religious people created the idea of God, on the contrary, as our constitution suggests, "God created us." I believe He just might be just a little more than offended with us.
What is the answer? Abraham Lincoln suggested:
1. Humble ourselves before God.
2. Pray and acknowledge our national and personal sin.
3. Seek ways that promote righteousness and truth.
4. Remove malice from our hearts and in unity work together to built a better future for our posterity and the world.

My fellow Americans the problems we face are more serious than just oil prices and the economy. Merely adjusting the speed limit is not
going to correct our problems.
We have experienced many natural
catastrophies like major flooding, wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes,etc. Let us also add into the equation the man made catastrophies
like the Twin Towers and whatever else terrorists have up their sleeves for the next go round.
There have been times of prosperity and peace, and there are reasons for those seasons. Abraham Lincoln said it best when our forefathers were in the throes of the Civil War and the devastation
it brought to untold families and the people of our Nation. He said, "We have offended the Divine Power that has given us all our blessings."
For some insane reason our country is adopting the idea that religious people created the idea of God, on the contrary, as our constitution
suggests, "God created us." I believe He just might be just a little more than offended with us.
What is the answer? Abraham Lincoln suggested a national day of prayer:
1. Humble ourselves before God.
2. Pray and acknowledge our national and personal sin.
3. Seek ways that promote righteousness and truth.
4. Remove malice from our hearts and in unity work together to built
a better future for our posterity and the world.
We need repentance in government, religious, and peoples.

Having sat in the gas lines of the 70's and passed by gas stations with big signs that read NO GAS TODAY. I have to wonder where this imaginary shortage of oil is? US oil consumption keeps going down but yet oil prices seem to keep going up. Seems to be plenty of gas for sale at $4/g. Thanks W, Big Oil and speculators. There is no supply problem – no refinery problem – no need to drill in ANWAR or other no drill areas.

Besides, fossil fuel and the internal combustion engine have long outlived their usefulness. Nuclear, solar, wind and geothermal is the future.

National speed limit on restricted access interstates? 75? 85?