Congress Considering Reducing the National Speed Limit to 55 MPH

There have been renewed calls to reduce the National Speed Limit from the speeds of 70 MPH and below to a maximum speed of 55 MPH on all roadways around this country. It is believed that by doing this, the demand for gasoline will be reduced resulting in more supply than demand reducing the price of gasoline.

In theory this may work as forecasted, however, there is more here than lowering the speed limit to save gas.

Lowering the speed limit can harm our economy even more so than it has already been harmed by failing banks, record mortgage foreclosures, rising fuel costs, the weak U.S. dollar, and rising food and energy costs.

Our commerce system depends on products reaching the consumer in a timely manner.

Reducing the speed limit increases the transportation time thereby increasing the delivery charges. As a result, even though product prices may not be increasing from manufacturing costs, they will increase to cover the rise in delivery costs.

Consider the current regulations for truck drivers who deliver our goods to shelves near you.

A truck driver who hauls products is regulated by how many hours in a day they can drive, how many hours in a period they can spend "on the job" and service time totaling no more than 14 hours in a day the driver can work. A total of 11 hours maximum is the most a driver can legally drive in a day before they must take a minimum of 10 hours off before driving again.

Confusing, isn't it? Let's clarify this.

A driver arrives at work on what will be the "perfect day" for driving. A perfect day is a total of no more than 2.5 hours waiting for loads or other administrative delays.

A perfect day would be this:

A driver (he) reports for work at 6 a.m. Monday morning and being the perfect day, his load is already connected to the truck and he begins his day with a service inspection that takes a minimum of ½ hour.

Upon completion of this inspection, he hops in his truck and drive 4.5 hours to the delivery destination. Here he spends 1 hour waiting for his truck to be unloaded.

Current hour count is 1.5 hours non-driving and 4.5 hours driving.

At precisely the end of his 1 hour wait, he is able to climb into the truck and head to his next load. Backing to the dock 30 minutes later, he has his truck being loaded and he waits one hour to be loaded.

Hour count is 2.5 non-driving hours and five hours of driving.

After his one hour delay, he again gets into the truck to head to his new destination. It is five hours to his destination and after a half hour delay to be unloaded, he has one hour of driving back to his starting point and the end of his day.

Final day hour count is three hours non-driving and 11 hours of driving. His day ends at 8 p.m.

This is a perfect day and the most he can do in one day. Now he must wait a minimum of ten hours before he is able to drive again.

Tuesday, he reports for work at 6 a.m. (which includes that mandatory off period.) Today is different though. Where yesterday was perfect, today is about as bad as it can get.

He logs in and performs his 30 minute service inspection, his load is ready and he departs. Today his first run will take six hours.

Tuesday's hour count at the time he parks at the dock for unloading is 30 minutes non-driving and six hours driving.

His day takes a turn for the worse at this point. After many delays he is finally unloaded and heading out to pickup his next load after a four hour delay. A three hour drive gets him to his next load.

His second day of hours count is now 4.5 hours non-driving and nine hours of driving. Total hours at this point are 13.5. At this point he has 30 minutes left to his day, period.

It takes 30 minutes to load his truck. At this point, he is not allowed to drive. He has reached the maximum 14 hour period to his day and must park and take 10 hours off.

DOT Hours of Service Regulations state that a driver "May not drive beyond the 14^th hour after coming on duty, following 10 consecutive hours off duty."

The load sits in his truck for 10 hours. Even with a sleeper, he must take a minimum of eight hours sleeping and two consecutive hours in the sleeper or off duty or any combination.

What is all this mess about? Well a driver driving on four lane or more roads (it is rare if in existence at all, that a two lane has posted speeds higher than 55 MPH) can drive between 55 - 70 MPH legally on interstate roads where posted.

Reducing this speed does several things. It reduces the distance a driver can legally drive in one day of driving by up to 165 miles more so because rarely can anyone drive the entire time at the posted speed. Traffic, accidents, weather, and other factors combine to reduce the average speed below the posted speed when distance traveling.

This will translate to longer delivery periods, less trucks available to haul loads (they are still in transit with their last load).

Hourly drivers will take more hours to arrive at their destination while drivers who are paid by the load will need to charge more per load to make up for lost work due to taking longer to get to destinations.

The bottom line is just that. The bottom line will increase everyone's bottom line costs in the increase of these transportation fees. Even if the price of diesel fuel were to drop, it will not make up for these additional fees.

The government needs to stop looking to the past for solutions to problems that existed in the past, and still exist due to their short-sightedness.

The only solution is to find a way to break our dependence on petroleum-based fossil fuels, in particular those fuels imported from foreign sources.

Drilling oil in the United States will not resolve this problem as prices are still dictated by the foreign oil market. The call to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as well as in coastal U.S. waters will not resolve this.

Tick, tick, tick, the clock is ticking counting down the time when fossil fuels will be as extinct as the creatures they derive from. Until we accept that oil reserves around the world are dwindling and not a bottomless well of crude oil.

Millions, if not billions of gallons are being drawn from the ground daily. These resources will one day, in the foreseeable future, dry up. Recent news stories hint that this may be closer than we think with Middle East countries refusing to increase production.

We need a plan now to stop this world from regressing decades of "progress" back to the days of horse-drawn wagons.

For those who are calling for a reduction in the National Speed Limit, stop and think about the consequences of your actions before implementing something that will do nothing to help our high fuel prices and poor economical situations. It will be detrimental to our economy in higher transportation costs, food prices, shipping fees from shipping companies such as UPS and FedEx, and increased product delivery times.

The car-driving public already has the option of voluntarily reducing their speed simply by lifting their foot off the gas pedal and driving in the right-hand lanes of traffic. However, as our national usage has already decreased with the increase in prices, it shows that Americans can regulate their usage without government intervention.

The call to reduce the speed is unnecessary. Traffic around more populated areas is already restricted to reduced speeds. Multiple lane highways were designed to move traffic quickly and safely, reducing the speed will only result in constricted traffic flow detrimental to traffic flow. Many never drive along interstate roads where the speed reduction would be felt, thus the burden will fall only to those who travel open interstate highways (such as truck drivers, sales people, and those who make a living traveling) while not really curbing our glut for fuel.