Texas OK’S highest speed limit

85 mph will be allowed on new toll road

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas will soon open a stretch of highway with the highest speed limit in the country.

The Texas Transportation Commission has approved the 85 mph speed limit for a 41-mile-long toll road near the crowded Interstate 35 corridor between Austin and San Antonio.

The road runs several miles east of the interstate between two of the state’s largest metropolitan areas. And while some drivers may be eager to put the pedal to the metal and rip through the Texas countryside, others are asking if it is safe.

“The research is clear that when speed limits go up, fatalities go up,” said Russ Rader, a spokesman for the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Higher speed limits get people to their destinations faster, Rader said, “But the trade-off is more crashes and more highway deaths.”

A 2009 report in the American Journal of Public Health studied traffic fatalities in the U.S. from 1995 to 2005 and found that more than 12,500 deaths were attributable to increases in speed limits on all kinds of roads.

The study also said that rural highways showed a 9.1 percent increase in fatalities on roads where speed limits were raised, but did not cite specific numbers in those instances.

Most highways in the U.S. top out at 75 mph, and there are no longer any roads in the U.S. with no speed limit like Germany’s autobahn. Some highways in rural West Texas and Utah have 80 mph speed limits.

The Texas Legislature last year approved 85 mph limits for some new stretches of road.

The strip of toll road running from Austin to Seguin, about 35 miles northeast of San Antonio, will be the first to allow that speed when it opens in November.

The Texas Transportation Commission, which is appointed by Gov. Rick Perry, approved the 85 mph speed limit at a public meeting on Aug. 30.