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House Gives Green Light To Higher Speed Limits In Sunshine State
May 1, 2014
After a sometimes-emotional debate, a divided Florida House on Wednesday gave final approval to a proposal that could lead to 75 mph speed limits on some highways.
The House voted 58-56 to pass the bill (SB 392), which was backed by the Senate last week. It now goes to Gov. Rick Scott.
Opponents said increasing speed limits would lead to more deadly crashes, with Rep. Irv Slosberg, D-Boca Raton, telling the House that speed played a role in an accident that killed one of his daughters.
“You just never want to get that call,” Slosberg said. “A lot of us have kids and grandkids and you never want to get that call, your daughter died in a car crash.”
The bill would allow maximum speed limits of 75 mph on limited-access highways, up from the current 70 mph. It also would allow speed limits of 70 mph on other four-lane, divided highways outside urban areas, up from the current 65 mph.
But the measure’s supporters said the ultimate decisions about whether to raise speed limits would be left up to the Florida Department of Transportation. The agency would decide the safest speeds for highways, they said.
“I’m voting for this bill because we’re not changing the speed limit,” Rep. Jim Boyd, R-Bradenton, said.
The close vote was highly unusual in the House and did not follow party lines. Slosberg attempted a procedural move a few hours later to bring the bill back for reconsideration, but that was defeated in a voice vote.
Florida’s maximum speed limit has been 70 mph since 1996. Rep. Matt Caldwell, a Lehigh Acres Republican who is the House sponsor of this year’s proposal, said some roads are designed to handle vehicles at higher speeds than 70 mph.
But Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, told House members he has been a funeral director for 43 years and was an ambulance attendant early in his career. He said he couldn’t vote for a measure that he is afraid could cost a life.
“I’m Dennis Baxley, I’m a speeder and I can’t vote for this bill,” he said.
by Jim Saunders, The News Service of Florida
Comments
5 Responses to “House Gives Green Light To Higher Speed Limits In Sunshine State”
Increasing the speed limits is going to cost more lives because like someone said earlier they will push not stop at 75 but will be driving 80 or 90 miles per hour and the drivers maintaining the legal limit will be the ones they hit while they are texting or talking on phone. Someone very close to me was hit by someone we believe was texting because he saw the young man coming toward him where he was parked and the fellow was not even looking at the road so he rammed him totaling all vehicles and now this person after 5 plus months is in bad condition with his neck and the condition is moving further down his backbone. We don’t know what is going to happen but not paying full attention in a vehicle and high speed added to this you can say we are in a war. I sincerely hope this increase in speed is killed . Think about saving lives and outlawing higher speed limits and OUTLAWING. TEXTING A VEHICLE!
75 FOR SAFETY! Rural interstates are the roads with potential 75-mph limits, accounting for about 1% of Florida’s traffic deaths in 2012 — despite carrying 5% of traffic. IF the goal is safety, drivers should be educated — and law enforcement should be focused — on risky locations and behaviors than minor offenses on superhighways.
I tell my teenage daughters “You may not get caught by the police on a local road doing stupid maneuvers, but you can easily wrap your car around a tree, head-on into opposing traffic, or T-bone another vehicle at an intersection. But you’ll certainly get a ticket on the interstate, ’cause that’s where the cops are.” Local and back roads are where most teenage traffic deaths occur.
Supporting 75 is support for rational speed limits, and enforcement focused on risky behaviors and dangerous locations. And that should save lives of teenagers and other drivers..
First they should bring vehicle inspections back.
There are plenty of automobiles on the road that are not safe to drive at 55 MPH, more less 75 MPH.
Higher speed limits mean higher over the speed limit drivers…what will law enforcement allow over the speed limit before they start issuing citations …lawmakers should again reconsider a stiffer fine for this texting/reading texts while driving, so now what you will have are drivers texting while driving at a higher rate of speed. It’s amazing the stupidity that is exhibited by these supposedly educated people in positions of public trust. We should get rid of them all and start over again.
So exactly what’s the advantage to our communities as a whole of raising the speed limit? Is it going to save gas? Save lives? Reduce insurance costs? Save money? No, just the opposite of all those things. It’s certainly not to save a speeding ticket. In Arizona on vacation where the speed limit is 75. Was anyone going 75? No, they’re going 80 or 85. Whatever the limit is, people are going to push it. There’s only one possible advantage and that’s to get somewhere just a little bit quicker. Is getting there a little bit quicker worth the cost of lives lost? Absolutely NOT! Folks you better get your head out of the sand and start calling the governor’s office and quickly.