Speed limit reasonable, cars less so
Dear Mahatma: Why are automobiles built to go 100 mph and more? I know in Montana there are high speed limits. But I see no reason why a person should be able to drive more 80 miles per hour. — Non-Speeder
Dear Non: The 2020 Nissan Murano in our garage has a top speed of 160 mph on its speedometer. The 2017 GMC Canyon has a top speed of 140 mph.
Not that anyone in our house would try to peg those speeds. That would be insane. Heck, the tires would probably blow.
Why do ordinary passenger vehicles go so fast? We suspect it’s because that’s what consumers want. See the Dodge Demon, which supposedly goes from zero to 60 mph in 1.7 seconds and has a top speed of 215 mph.
About Montana. It once had a non-numeric speed limit for daytime driving on rural roads. This stood for about three years in the 1990s when the Montana Supreme Court ruled the law’s requirement that drivers go a “reasonable and proper” speed to be unconstitutionally vague.
Translation: A driver says tomato; a state trooper says to-mahto. And so the court called the whole thing off, after which the state Legislature imposed numerical speed limits.
A few Western states, Montana included, have a top speed limit of 80 mph on some highways.
The highest speed limit is in, naturally, Texas. It’s 85 mph, on a 41-mile stretch of Texas 130, more or less from Austin to San Antonio.
Our family has actually been on this highway, which is a toll road, in a minivan doing 85 while other vehicles passed us by. We’ve also experienced Germany’s famous Autobahn in a well-used 700 series BMW. The speedometer was in kilometers, so our mind was frantically converting the speed to miles per hour.
Answer: OMG, girlfriend!
The most notorious speeders in Arkansas are folks who involve themselves in high-speed pursuits with Arkansas State Police.
Fleeing an officer is a crime, by the way. Some of these pursuits end in what’s known as a tactical vehicle intervention, in which a trooper uses his car to stop or immobilize the fleeing vehicle.
These pursuits often top 100 mph.
State police maintain a pursuit report, which was sent to us after a request. There were 620 such pursuits in 2023, 207 of which were by Troop
A in central Arkansas. Second-highest was Troop D, headquartered in Forrest City, with 99.
The vast majority of these pursuits — 474 — involve cars and SUVs. But 90 fleeing drivers were on motorcycles. Think about how dangerous that is.
And two(!) were driving semis.
What we really wanted was data on the sex and age of the fleeing drivers. Also the make and model of their vehicles. Because we suspect the median age is about 25, the sex is male, and the most frequently driven vehicle is a Dodge Charger or Challenger.
Alas, the state police don’t put that information into a document or report.