Driving In The U.S. VISITOR FINDS SPEED LIMITS WIDELY OBEYED

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30822, 6 August 1965, Page 10

Driving In The U.S. VISITOR FINDS SPEED LIMITS WIDELY OBEYED

(By

JOHN O’CALLAGHAN

in the “Guardian," Manchester)

(Reprinted by arrangement)

If you have ever wondered what it feels like to be a policeman in a patrol car sitting in the middle of an unbelievably virtuous procession of traffic, the United States is the country to visit. Many times in the course of a 3000-mile trip, as I stuck punctiliously to the speed limit. I feit sure that other drivers must have heard a scare rumour that plain clothes highway patrols were to consist of men in green shirts driving BMC 1100 s. A remote possibility? But how else to explain that same family 30 yards behind, that same commercial traveller 40 yards ahead, an hour after I first noticed them?

The fact of the matter seems to be that speed limits—in a trip through 10 States I could nowhere have legally exceeded 65 m.p.h.—are widely obeyed.

This obedience does not appear to stem from the feeling that the limits are, on the face of things, sensible. No British high speed enthusiast would, for instance, concede that 60 m.p.h. is an appropriate pace for the well contoured emptiness of the new National Interstate Highway 81, coming up from the South through Virginia—9o m.p.h. might (with reluctance) be accepted. And who would suppose that these fast cars could (never mind would) obey a 25 m.p.h. limit in many towns;; and 15 m.p.h. when or end of the day? Yet on the whole these limits were observed. It was this perhaps more than anything' else, that underlined the maturity of the American driver. His car is a tool, fulfilling, incidentally, but only incidentally, certain fashion and status functions. When he wants to travel the 450 miles from Buffalo to New York by car, he can rely on Its taking 450 minutes, plus whatever amount is allowed for rest. Jams, congestion, and hold-up margins do not need to be allowed for. Estimates can be achieved: there is no need for desperate overtaking, light jumping, or speeding. And showing off in an American car may not have become quite as ludicrous as swanking about having a telephone or a bath at home, but it is not far off it. Are speed limits of not much more than 60 m.p.h. helpful and sane? The answer, based on brief experience must be “Yes.” In America, the distances are vast, and 60 m.p.h. is a pace which it is possible to sustain, without getting unduly fagged, for nearly a whole day. In Britain, the shorter distances might suggest an upper limit of 75 m.p.h. In general terms the limits were good, because everyone on the road was operating within the same dimension of speed; therefore everyone’s level of vigilance could be stabilised. De-restriction in , England, with cars that can and do travel up to 130 m.p;h., means that everyone, including the weary worker cruising home down the motorway at 50 m.p.h., has to keep a standard of alertness appropriate to 130

m.p.h. to deal with the people who are travelling that fast.

Variety Sought

Speed limits, though bring their own problems. One gets bored after a time with the face of the woman in one’s driving mirror, and the shape of the man’s head in front. It needs a minor infringement to restore equanimity. On the New Jersey turnpike, from Washington to New York lorries, too, can travel at 60 m.p.h. contrary to the common practice of limiting them to 10 m.p.h. below the car figure. The situation arises where one becomes involved with a truck travelling at 63 m.p.h. on a long down slope, and 57 m.p.h. going up the other side. The obedient motorist is subjected to a lot of needless passing and repassing. On the more usual system of distinct limits for classes of vehicle, the business of passing a truck adds just that occasional bit of variety to help to focus concentration, and this benefit seems worth the possibility of minor congestion caused by the slower moving lorries. There are roads in the United States where lorries and buses cannot go. One of these is the Blue Ridge Parkway, a splendid-advertise-ment-free scenic drive down the spinal cord of the Appalachians. It is a two-lane single carriageway, of entirely English proportions, with frequent sight-seeing lay-bys, all, in the American style, admirably sign-posted. The speed limit here is 45 m.p.h., around which figure the winding hilly road seems to have been designed. Here, as in nearly every other aspect of motoring, it is plain that America is a country with the right scale for coping with the (to us) enormous waste of space implicit in universal car ownership. In the vastness of the Appalachians, the Parkway is an unremarkable thread. In the Lake District it would probably be called vandalism. An abundance of space means that the major routes, mostly two-lane motorways, can swing through the countryside with expansive grace and vast central reservations. But there are plenty

of less grandiose routes, many two-lane roads, and as many three-lane highways, with the unbroken “no overtaking ” line swinging continuously from the left to the right hand side, supplemented often with road-side signs reading “Pass,” “Don’t pass.” I looked out for toilet facilities on the roadside, thinking that these were bound to be abundant in view of the distances to be travelled, but found only a very few, close to the frequent "wayside picnicking areas,” which provide a rough bench and table. Most petrol stations, on the other hand, boast of “clean rest rooms.” Signposting American signposting relies slightly less than ours on words.’The single word “Stop” effectively incorporates the gothic wonder of our “Slow Major Road Ahead” sign, and its partner, “Halt." Roads have simple numbers and say, helpfully to the foreigner, which way one is facing north, south, east or west. Especially helpful in Kentucky were the diagrammatic “bend” signs, with the maximum safe speed for taking the bend underneath. This speed really was the top safe speed, and its presence took a lot of sweat out of night driving in the wet. In Britain we do some things better than the Americans—we signal more regularly on our motorways our intention to change lanes, and our yellow signal lights are far more distinctive than the American red-rear white-front direction winkers. The thrust and press of driving in Britain means that a good many of us drive more positively and consciously than do Americans; we don’t yet need illuminated “Keep Awake . . . For Safety” signs on our motorways. In New York, of course, a mistimed eye blink can be fatal, and courtesy is not the cab driver’s middle name. But it is exhilarating to surge uninterrupted with a five or six lane tide of cabs, lurching and tossing on the execrably surfaced street, down the length of Manhattan by virtue of the widely used “green wave” traffic lighting. Returning to the stink of British roads, one American method that ’ would instantly apply here Is having lorry exhausts that emit skyward above the driver’s cab (silencers must last longer that way, too). A point to be thought over: In rural areas especially, American cyclists, like English pedestrians, ride against the flow of traffic. Is this a good idea?