Neighbor News
Speed Limits
Doesn't the Legislature want people to drive the safest speed? Tell your Representative to vote NO on Senate Bill 607.
To All Pennsylvania Drivers:
If highway safety is Harrisburg’s goal, why is there no discussion about speed limits?
The House Transportation Committee members surely must know the method for setting the safest speed limits. It’s a highway safety engineering principle called the 85th Percentile Speed.
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From 70 years of experience, professional highway engineers have found that the 85th Percentile Speed is the safest speed with the most compliance.
Officials in charge post speed limits 8 to 16 mph below the speeds safe drivers actually drive (FHwA data), which are 85th Percentile Speeds.
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This creates a Catch 22 making almost all drivers “speeders” liable to be ticketed. This is the loophole the RADAR lobby is trying to cash in on by giving RADAR to municipal police. When everyone is “speeding” it’s like shooting fish in a barrel to use RADAR to unfairly ticket drivers who are driving the safest speed: doing nothing dangerous and harming no one.
Doesn’t the Legislature want people to drive the safest speed without getting a ticket? Of course, there also wouldn’t be any money in RADAR if all the limits were set at the safest speeds.
Doesn’t common sense indicate that giving RADAR to municipal police is only for the money? They can claim that there’s a cap on the revenue a town can keep, but it is still a lot of money, and all that money goes somewhere, doesn’t it?
Tell your Representative to vote NO on Senate Bill 607, RADAR for municipal police.
Sincerely,
Tom McCarey Member, National Motorists Association
The opinions expressed in this letter belong to the author and do not necessarily represent those of the NMA or the NMA Foundation
