Coming Soon? An Arizona Highway with NO Speed Limit

Arizona Rep. Nick Kupper has put together a bill he calls the Reasonable And Prudent Interstate Driving act (RAPID Act). Essentially it will allow drivers — on certain stretches of state highways — to drive at the speed they consider reasonable and prudent.

“I’ve spent a decent amount of time in Germany with the military, driving up and down the autobahn and know how it works,” Kupper said. “We need to have an honest-to-God pilot program in our nation because there are so many empty, flat, great, well-taken care of Western roads in this country that there’s no reason to have a set limit.”

His bill also pumps up fines for people lounging around in the left lane where autos driving faster have to pass them on the right. Tickets for that kind of lingering will be $500 for the first offense and — if they happen in the same year — $1,000 for the second.

The National Safety Council Arizona chapter’s president, Rick Murray said decades of studies have proven that higher speeds cause severe crashes and fatalities that are more frequent. “A study of 25 years of speed limit increases found that a mere 5 mph increase in the limit resulted in an 8% increase in fatality rates on those roads,” he said. “Arizona is already one of the deadliest states to drive in.”

An analysis of 2024 U.S. Department of Transportation data shows Arizona is fifth-deadliest state in terms of roadway fatalities.

Source link: SAN — https://bit.ly/463J3fP