Driving during the national 55 miles per hour speed limit


I'm watching "Cannonball Run II" on YouTube, and it's reminding me of the days when the posted speed limit on America's Highways was 55 miles per hour. By the way, the movie isn't all that great, not as good as the original, but I'm enjoying it because it lets me time-travel a bit.

I learned to drive at the time that the national speed limit had been lowered to 55, in 1974. I just Googled it, and it looks like it lasted officially until the mid-nineties, with a compromise in the late eighties in the rural areas.

It really didn't affect me, for many reasons. First of all, when I was learning to drive, in my teens, I was so timid that I rarely ever got on a freeway, and even on major streets I just poked along. I remember hearing from my mom, who was exasperated by how slowly I drove, when I was 16, or 17, to "At least drive the speed limit!" I always wondered about that.

In my college years, at Phoenix College, and ASU, I very rarely ever used a freeway. Phoenix only had one, and I enjoyed driving around the town so I was usually on the surface streets. And when I moved to Los Angeles, I also avoided the freeway, mostly because it was always so crowded, and it was actually faster to take Cahuenga than the 405. I mapped it all out with a Thomas Guide.

Of course when traffic did move on the California freeways, there really was no speed limit, you just kept up with traffic to be safe. If you've never driven LA freeways at speed, the best I can say is to watch NASCAR, and understand how tight the pack is, and how important it is to not be going too slow, or make any sudden moves. It really got to be the same in Phoenix, especially if you were going to be in the carpool lane - I once had a DPS car following me on the 10, and I was going so slow (under eighty) that he zipped into the lane around me, and passed. I was kinda surprised that he didn't flip me off. The posted speed limit, by the way, was 65.

I knew a lot of people who enjoyed speeding out on the open road, who had CB radios, and radar, and just generally made a game out of it. I really never had any interest in that, I had always wanted to drive a racing car on the track, like at Bondurant. I considered myself a motorsports person, not a boy racer. I never got a chance to drive on a track, and now I've lost interest.

OK, time for me to go back to the movie, which was made in 1984, when things like running away from the cops, high-speed chases, and drinking beer while you drive, were still considered funny. Times have changed!

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