Imagine having to drive 55 EVERYWHERE on every interstate highway. Even cars today can drive comfortably at 80 mph and still have a great margin for safety.

When Hagar said that he can't drive 55 I really could not either.

It sucked.

I was assured the streets would be flowing with blood due to all the deaths caused by ending it and the oil wells would be pumped dry to produce all the gas we would need.

UTTERLY.  It was pure suckage.

I remember when Nixon put that in place, and remember when Newt killed it.  I remember it like when the assault rifle ban was passed and when it expired.   Both were jacked up Federal actions that way overstepped their authority.

My 68 vw bugs top speed on a flat was 20 mph more than the national speed limit.
My 2 speeding tickets with that car were 20 and 30 over.
The cop did not show up to court for the 30 over so the case was dismissed.

Friends and I all drove to the other side of our city to take pictures of ourselves at the first sign that was changed in the area.  Went from 55 to . . . . . . . . 60!!  It was a glorious day.

Driving anywhere with any kind of distance sucked bigly. When you can see for 15 miles in a straight line with not even a tree in the distance there would be that cop hiding behind the only bush for 50 miles waiting.

I could not count how many summons I had back then. Missouri had the Old Highway Law where if you were traveling less than 70 but more than 55 there were no points assessed on your drivers license. But you still had to pay the fine and court costs.

That reminds me, a Kansas State Trooper gave me a ticket in about 1991 for going 60, for not wearing a seat belt, and having a weapon (night stick).  I showed up in court with no lawyer and told the judge that my 1960 VW could not go 60 MPH, and that in 1960 seat belts were optional in a VW and that mine did not have that option, and that I had a "night stick" in my car because I just got off a security shift and was on my way to Army National Guard drill.  

Judge dismissed all charges.

Funny that the Trooper asked me why I was dressed up, and asked was I Army or was I some weirdo or something?  I greatly regret not asking my first thought of "well are you a drill sergeant or do you just like to wear a round brown"?

I laugh because the scumbags politicians of NYS and as I recall the unindicted felon HRC aka former NYS Senator HRC spent millions upgrading Route 17 in NYS so it could become 86. I know the project killed one town as the new roadway bypassed it and put the highway right in the front yard of some farmer.

Now all these later they have dropped the speed limit to 55 in a few areas. As I understand it the excuse is there has been to many accidents in these particular stretches. I think it is BS and just an attempt to make revenue.

God Bless Texas

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In honor of Nixon,  we called it, "dickin' along".

And the larger and different-colored 55 on every speedometer.

It sucked along with the 85 MPH speedometer (max) with the highlighted 55.

Ohio Highway Patrol troopers just loved that 55 speed limit. 60 mph = guaranteed a ticket.

I imagine they cried at night when it was repealed.

Some of it was comical, I had a Ford Escort with the highly optimistic 85 max speed.

Lol my 63 VW has the original 1300 motor and the fastest it can do is 60 mph going downhill in 4th gear with the windows up.  It is super slow.

Ohio only in the last 15 years upped the limits on most highways.

I remember interstates were 60 mph 55 for semis, then 65 and 55, the. They let the trucks go the same speed which was way better for traffic then finally 70 mph for all.

WUT!!!!! I thought 55 was to conserve fuel.

Right up there with limiting speedometers to reading 80 mph so people won't be tempted to drive any faster since they won't know how fast they are going.  Voila!  No more speed contests!

I can't drive 55.

Tricky Dick wanted to save the U.S. from using arab oil. We have the largest reserve in the world, oil here in the U.S., for strategic reserve. Why not use everyone else's oil then ours.

Cars back then folded like a tin cans when wrecked. Maybe the lower speeds were better for survival rates.

I got my license in 1973 and then this bullshit started.

If you want to see how fucked up this law was…be driving along, not in traffic, and set your cruise to 55 and set there for a while, I will give you .92 miles or 1 minute and you will go crazy

In the 1960's speed limits were 80mph cars and 70 trucks.

55 was Torture!!

When the law was passed, almost no cars had overdrive in them. By the time 82-83 rolled around, over half the cars had it. Any car going over 55mph was drinking gas, and that's one reason it made sense. Almost all cars were running 1:1 gearing. When overdrive started to become more available in the early 80s, now you were running .7:1. That gave you another 10mph. IOW, where you could get 25mpg at 55, now you could get that 25mpg at 65mph, because you'd turn the same rpms at 65 that you used to at 55. Then multiport fuel injection around 86-87 allowed fuel to atomize better, bumped HP/Torque numbers, improved throttle response, and the mpg numbers jumped about 5mpg. We've had a lot of improvements since then.

Your average MPG for full size cars in the 70s up until 78-79, was about 15mpg. Overdrive changed that to about 20-22mpg. Fuel injection bumped it to 25-27mpg.

That was the game changer that made the 55mph speed limit unnecessary.

I remember when my grandma would hit the turnpike and do 75-80 no fucks given.

I don't have to imagine it because I lived through it. 85 mph speedometers on vehicles that could do 150 mph sucked almost as bad as having to putt along at 59 on the American Autobahn.

Damn, that is spot on.



Your implying that the 55 MPH Federal speed limit was necessary?

My grandma had a '90 GMC jimmy with the digital dash and if memory serves me correctly it went above 85 mph.


Ford Motorsport made a speedometer for the mustang that went to 140.

No go, not fun. No thanks.

I hit 170mph on the way to the track last week. Then did 100-130MPH all day long.

Going 60mph now, feels like 15mph…..10 years ago.

Even the small county roads here are 70.

I bought a used 1987 Nissan Sentra in 1991.
It had a 3 speed auto transmission and it was geared so redline in third was 70.
It was OK in semi-rural Washington state, but in California when everyone was doing 75-85 it sucked.
It was a self correcting problem, it tossed a con rod out the side of the block when I was doing 80 mph on the downside of the Coronado bridge one morning.  

Around 1986 or so there was exception made for some rural interstate sections to allow 65mph.

When the 55 national limit was enacted, the reason was for fuel conservation, not safety.  Insurance companies and some other groups resisted repealing this for "safety" reasons.  

Now, there are some areas where there are interstate minimums of 60.  Interesting that 30 years ago in the same spot that was dangerous and now is considered slow.  Any tickets written then should be retroactively pardoned.

Your statement somewhat correct, but delete the word "maybe".  But that would still apply now wouldn't it?  Even with modern safety features, survival rates are better with slower speeds.  That doesn't justify a national speed limit of 55.  If it does, why not make it 25?

There were exceptions but many American cars of the era had 85 mph speedometers.

It was the china virus shot/mask mandate of the 70’s.

When it was implemented yes. We didn't have near enough oil production capacity when it was enacted as we do now. We were very low on what we could produce and refine. We thought we were basically nearly out of what we could pull from the ground. People forget that a huge percentage of the oil that we pull up today was unknown in the 1970s. Or, like shale oil, we couldn't pull it out, or at least not at an affordable price in the 70s, and we didn't start getting that cheaply until the 1990s, so that was 20 years away. Our only option in the 70s was to buy it, and the majority came from the Middle East.

We didn't have a strategic oil reserve either until 1975, so that wasn't there either.

When that law was passed it made perfect sense. It doesn't now because we have the lens of history to look through.

I remember the odd and even days, where you could only get a few gallons at a time, and it depended on whether or not your tag had an odd or even last number. Then, your car or truck on average, only got about 15mpg, and that was if you had an efficient car or truck. Most people didn't. The little Japanese cars were extremely rare and nobody trusted them yet. You might see one Honda or Nissan, Datsun at the time, for every 250 to 500 American cars. Hell, my grandmother still had her pristine 1957 Chevy, plastic seat covers and floor covers, like a brand new car. It was only 16 years old. Lots of those old cars running around then. The gas crisis IS THE reason that Japanese cars got popular in the US, and why US cars went on a major diet.

At the time, the common scientific consensus was that we were running out of oil in this country, and at some point, around the world.

Our military's primary job was protecting the countries that sold us oil and protecting the shipping lanes for it. Our primary focus in government was to be sure to keep the Soviets from influencing those countries through overthrowing governments and attacks on allied countries from Soviet allies nearby.

It was really close at times. People tend to forget that at that time the Soviets had the US and Canada surrounded by countries they'd had successful communist coups in. Almost all of South America, and half of Central America, and they were working on Mexico. it wasn't until Reagan's second term that we turned that mess around.

We have to look at it through the same lens that people in the early 1970s saw it through, with no knowledge of future events. It was a very stressful and unsure time. If you weren't around and paying attention, this won't make the same sense that it will to people that were there.

And now more and more people have no respect for any authority, not like it ever deserved it.  

Someday soon we might see everyone from politicians to police being tarred and feathered, just judging from my own observations of other people now.

Yes, it was most disturbing to watch tumble weeds and antelope passing you off the side of the road.

I am the proud owner of an all original, rust free, '94 F-150 with one of those speedometers..

It was never necessary.
Wanna save gas, slow down.  Wanna get there sooner, pay the price.

55 is a good speed.


For parallel parking.

I didn't notice anyone paying attention to the speed limit then any more than they do now.

Jimma?
Is that you?

I don't have to imagine, I lived it! And the FPNI. It sucked.

One nice thing about the 55 mph speed limit on the interstate was you could set the cruise, step out the front door, take a piss and step in the rear door.

Dumbest law ecer and people accepted it, njobodynfoightnir, sheeple.