[fielderLS3]

Again, I'm not trying to say that every road and every situation should be a free-for-all speedway. I'm simply saying that having the exact or very nearly the exact same speed limit for a congested road as an empty road, or the same limit in the rain at night as a clear day, or the same limit on a curvy hilly road as a straight flat one, or the same limit for a 40 ton truck as a Corvette, makes very little sense, at least to my brain, which sees shades of gray, not only black and white.

Different road and traffic situations do indeed call for different speeds, but as of right now, all of them have similar limits. I'm not saying I would eliminate speed limits everywhere, or even in most places, but there are some places across this country where it would be feasible, at least at certain times of the day, and at the very least, a lot of the speed limits could be safely raised. I've driven in almost every state. For anyone who hasn't done it, you'd be surprised how much nothing there still is in this country. There are places where you can go 10 miles without meeting another car on nice, wide, flat roads with no hazards. Why in that situation should you not be able to go any faster than you could, say on a road with blind hills, heavy traffic, and in the rain?

I think was are all kinda agreeing on one point...most of the problems on the roads are the result of idiocy behind the wheel. The current system is basically one in which you can do a lot of dumb*** things behind the wheel as long as you keep it below an arbitrary magical number determined 50+ years ago when automotive technology was completely different from today. My position is that there has to be a better way, and having it the other way around could be an improvement. If we raised speed limits AND raised driving skill/discipline/etiquette standards at the same time, I think the roads would be safer, and less time would be unnecessarily wasted on travel.

Lowest common denominator engineering nets lowest common denominator results. An inability or unwillingness to allow for discretion produces systems that try to cover everything, and end up doing nothing well.