Email This StoryCommission votes to raise Texas speed limits
Dec. 1, 1995THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
AUSTIN -- The speed limit on major Texas roads is going up, but state officials say drivers should obey posted signs until they are changed.
The Texas Transportation Commission voted 2-0 Thursday on a plan that allows the speed limit to go up to 70 mph on some stretches of interstate highways, divided four-lane roads and larger divided roads. The plan also maintains some 55 mph and 65 mph zones and creates more 60 mph zones.
Signs noting the changes should be posted within days of the Dec. 8 end of the national speed limit and other stretches of undivided roads, state roads and farm-to-market roads will be studied and recommended for changes in the coming months, state traffic officials said.
The 22-year-old national speed limit was repealed in a law signed by President Clinton on Tuesday. The law gives states the power to set speed limits and puts Texas' former 70 mph and 65 mph speed limits back into effect.
The commission's action allows some of those 70 and 65 zones to go back into effect and maintains lower limits in other areas.
'There will be confusion as we move into and through this system,' said commission chairman David Laney. 'The highest priority is safety. In that regard ... signage should be taken at face value. It is effective until it is changed. There should be no assumption that it has been changed.'
Laney said he agreed with Washington lawmakers that states could do a better job setting speed limits, and he said there are some areas where the national speed limit is too slow.
But Laney added that the Transportation Commission would monitor traffic accident and fatality records where speed limits are raised and will take action if there are too many injuries and deaths.
'We are very encouraged by the responsible action of the commission that if they do see traffic accidents go up, that they will take some kind of action,' said Jerry Johns, head of the Southwestern Insurance Information Service, an insurance group.
'At this point, that is our only hope,' he said.
Johns said in the last five years, accident-injury rates have increased by 20 percent under 65 mph speed limits.
'If we go to 70, heaven only knows what we will see,' he said.
'We feel like what we are going to see is hundreds of more lives lost in Texas. We feel there is a real possibility of higher insurance rates if we see accidents continue.'
The changes affect some 8,100 miles of interstate and four-land divided roadways that carry nearly 60 percent of the state's traffic, said Tom Newbern, acting director of the state Traffic Operations Division. He said there are nearly 77,000 miles of roadways in the state.
The faster speed limits mostly affect areas just outside the urban center of nearly all of the state's major cities as well as rural areas, Newbern said.
'We encourage motorists to continue to obey posted speed limits while we continue to implement the 70-65 system,' he said.
Copyright © 1995 The Lariat
Comments or Questions can be sent to The Lariat
More News ...
