Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
Kansas was my favorite state when I drove from Minnesota to college in Texas. The speed limit on the Sunflower State’s freeway was 80 miles per hour. What an enlightened state, I thought, oblivious to the dangers of zooming along at 118 feet per second. Had I then known Montana’s speed limit was “reasonable and prudent,” I might have held the Treasure State in even higher regard. But I grew up, slowed down, and stayed alive.
Montana slowed down, too, prodded — some would say coerced — by the federal government. Now our highest daytime speed limits are 70 mph on two-lane highways, 75 mph on rural interstates. That’s still too fast for me, but as Charles Johnson reports, not fast enough for several Montana legislators, who have asked the legislature’s lawyers to draft bills to raise the daytime speed limit on interstates to 80 mph. Sen. Jonathan Windy Boy (D-Box Elder) would also up the limit on two-lane highways to 80 mph, thus ensuring a legal closing speed of 160 mph (235 fps) just before someone loses control and initiates a head-on crash that kills everyone in both vehicles.
These bills are libertarian grandstanding by legislators who like to drive fast and think they are better drivers than they really are. If they need to travel faster than they can now drive legally, they should become licensed pilots and fly to their destinations.