Gas prices and the 55 mph speed limit

Move over, windfall profits tax, said Stephen Moore in The Wall Street Journal. There is now a “sillier” idea out there for fighting soaring gas prices—reviving the "despised and universally disobeyed" 55-mile-per-hour national speed limit enacted in 1974 after the OPEC oil embargo.

Motorists do love to drive fast, said John Dillin in The Christian Science Monitor via New Jersey’s The Record, but lowering the speed limit and getting all Americans to drive less “could have greater impact than oil from the Arctic.”

That’s why it’s so “curious” that more politicians haven’t jumped on this bandwagon, said the SavingAdvice personal finance blog. “Slower speeds do make a difference." During the two decades when our top speed was 55 mph the U.S. saved 167,000 barrels of oil a day, "which was about 2 percent of the country’s fuel consumption."

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Sign up

It's still unlikely Congress would pass something as unpopular as the 55-mph limit, said the Winston-Salem, N.C., Journal in an editorial. “But that does not mean traffic can't slow down and that vehicles can't operate more efficiently.” All we have to do is enforce the speed limits we already have.