Why Can’t We Drive Faster?

Almost everything about cars has changed over the past 50 years – except for how fast we’re allowed to drive them.

In 1970, you could legally drive 70-75 MPH on most highways – in cars with drum brakes, without ABS and not even one air bag. There was no Lane Keep Assist or Automated Emergency Braking and the headlights were pitiful things by the standards of the 1990s.

But we can’t legally drive faster today in cars with more technology – and capability – than the race cars of 1970.

What then is the point of all the technology?

Yes, I know. Saaaaaaaaafety. The accident (and fatality) rate has declined as all this stuff got glued to cars. But surely it’s safer to drive a 2018 model year car faster than 1970s speeds? If it isn’t it sure seems like a lot of bother for not much gain.

The problem, of course, isn’t the cars or the technology or even the speed laws. It is the low and declining quality of the average driver, which is a function of the fact that not much is expected of drivers in terms of skill or judgment. They are expected to Follow The Rules, whatever those rules may be and no matter how silly it may be to follow them in a given context. Think, for example, of the drones – and that’s just the right word – who will not budge at red lights that never change; who will remain in place even after multiple cycling of the light which never gives them the green.

Because it’s The Law.

An image of naked savages prostrating themselves before a grimacing totem pole comes to mind.

Drivers have been habituated and browbeaten into a state of near-paralytic deference to Rules (no matter how silly) hypercaution, torpidity and passivity. They are nearsighted old ladies – by the standards of 1970.

It’s ironic.

The single most important saaaaaaaaaaaaafety system – the driver – has been all-but-outlawed. The result is a kind of perverse tug-of-war between conflicting elements, the conflict engineered by a government which feigns concern over our well-being but which is really interested in control above all.

In 1970, drivers were in full control. They had complete sovereignty over their cars. No one else was responsible for braking and steering and paying attention – so they did all of those things and because they had to do them, the average driver had no choice about learning how. It was not only expected, it was required.

Assuming you wanted to drive.

By way of analogy, it was like when you were a kid and your friends built a tree house way up high. If you wanted to get up there, you had to summon the gumption – and have the physical skill – to haul yourself, hand-over-foot, up the tree trunk using those sections of 2x4s boys used to nail to tree trunks as makeshift stairs. If you didn’t have the gumption or the skills, you stayed on the ground and didn’t get to smoke cigarettes and look at your buddy’s dad’s stolen Penthouse mags. There was no elevator to take you up the tree in saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety.

And thank god for that.

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