Reform to Speed Limits Is a Must

I was racing around the house trying to get ready for school because I knew I was going to be late if I didn’t leave as soon as possible. As I pulled out of my driveway onto a nicely paved highway it got me thinking. Why do we have speed limits? Who are they to say how fast I can safely drive my car? Is a speed limit just a means for the government to make money? These questions and more are going through the minds of millions of drivers as they make their way to work or school every morning.

The ultimate plan for me would be for our government to adopt a system similar to the Autobahn in Germany. They do regulate the speeds of their drivers but the way in which they do this seems to make more sense. In Germany they designed the Autobahn with the goal to provide high-speed, safe traffic flow. They achieve this by enforcing strict laws to control the flow of traffic like having designated passing lanes in which you can only get in to pass a car; you can’t just get in the lane to go three miles per hour faster than those in the slow lane like we seem to do in America, which creates more congestion. They do regulate the speed of larger vehicles such as 18-wheelers which do not have braking systems that would allow them to slow down as quickly as an average car.

The belief that our national system for highway safety would fall apart if speed limits were taken away is based on false pretenses, They believe that if we took away speed limits motorists would completely disregard their own and other motorists safety by driving recklessly. Does that sound like the way you would drive? Germany is the best example to prove this theory wrong, they do not have speed limits and some drivers do drive in excess of 120 miles per hour but the average speeds tends to float around 80-85 miles per hour. The main thing that makes me want to adopt this system is that the fatality rate in Germany for automobile related accidents is actually lower than that in the U.S. The three basic rules for driving in Germany are the main thing that prevents auto accidents: pass on the left, yield the left lane to drivers that are traveling faster than you, and do not distract yourself by multitasking while you are driving.

Studies have shown that motorists who travel 5 mph to 10 mph faster than the average speed tend to be involved in fewer