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COVID and the Double Nickel
We just got back from a 1,100-mile motorcycle trip through the Davis Mountains and the Big Bend area of Texas. We started going out there in the late 80s. The fast routes back home to San Antonio and the Hill Country are I10 or US 90. The speed limit is 80 on I10 now and 75 on two-lane US90 (except for passing through the handful of towns west of Del Rio). I remember how we used to run 80 mph, on a hair trigger if we saw a trooper (and they actually rarely ticketed us; usually we got a warning). The whole trip back on 90 yesterday, we locked our cruise controls on 80 mph as much as possible and didn’t worry.
The difference between back then and now reminded me of the whole 55 mph deal. It foreshadowed some things to come. First, it was started as a response to a real problem, the Mideast oil embargo or whatever it was called in the early 70s. It was framed as one’s civic duty to comply. Then, when states didn’t get on board, the feds used financial disincentives to bend recalcitrant states to their will, and ultimately it stayed on well beyond its useful life. I got pulled over by a Montana trooper in the late 70s who told me I could go to court or pay him $5 on the spot and get a receipt. Montana called it a “failure to conserve natural resources” citation instead of speeding. There was massive civil disobedience, yet we still had the self-righteous who would hold 55 in the left lane. Nanny state people like the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety kept the 55 alive until the mid-90s.
I wonder – are these the same people who became COVID-scolding nannies? Or their precursors? It seemed a lot worse during COVID, but then again, we aren’t masking 5 years later yet the double nickel lasted over 20 years. It seems as if these people have always been with us and will always be there, waiting for a chance to nag.
The pictures are from 1990 and this week. The spot is on the river east of Presidio – background mountains are in Mexico. If you haven’t been, I highly recommend the Davis Mountains and the Big Bend. Wild and very lightly attended.
Yes. People who nag enjoy it.
That’s why so many become HOA presidents . . .
A reminder:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” ~ C. S. Lewis
And wild, wide-open spaces are great in some ways, with the caveat that if something happens, help could be hours away.
The location where we took the pictures is about 500 feet above the river. There is a crashed truck down on the edge below the overlook. The road takes a huge rise from just above the river level in about a mile, (15 percent grade) the road clinging to the side of the cliffs. Once years ago we were stopped at the top and a family came up the hill in a clunker car, smoking and struggling with the little kids laughing and cheering from the back seat as they crested the top. Some more pics showing aging and bikes.
Is that what the officer told you? I think it was a “I need a six-pack” citation.
I recall a comic from that era. IIRC the setting is Texas and the punchline is, “Drive 90 and freeze a Yankee.”
I do recall the idiocy of double nickels. However, I was much more impressed that you and your wife are still out there doing what you are doing through a long history. There is something really special about that in this age where so little lasts or seems to hold its value. I found your pictures most impressive.
I liked it when the limit was finally abolished, the dire preditions of increased deaths on the highways didn’t come true. They went down. The theory at the time was people could now concentrate on driving instead of keeping an eye out for the cops . . .
Here’s another thing. Let’s say you have two roads that can get you to your destination. Taking the interstate highway, it’s 75 miles, taking two-lane roads is 68 miles. Since both have a 55 mph speed limit (and presuming you are going to more or less obey the law), you can get there faster on that two-lane road. The 4-lane interstate highway with broad shoulders is the safer road, but the 2-lane road is less distance, so it’s quicker. But if the speed limits are set based on engineering principles rather than Washington DC fiat, the 2-lane road may still be set at 55, while the interstate is 65, 70, or even higher if you are living in a western state. So taking the safer interstate highway may also be the quicker option. Allowing states to set their own speed limits often resulted in people driving less on 2-lane roads and more often on 4-lane divided highways, which are going to be safer roads.
On the subject of speed limits, I always wanted to get on one of those roads with “Drive at a safe speed” is all that is posted. When I finally got to drive on one, no longer owning my Shelby GT 350, I was driving a VW bug pulling a pop-up trailer. Double Nickels was about all I could manage.GRRRRR!
What broke the double nickel law were seatbelt laws. People felt safer driving faster and the people became fed up with 55.
Especially on roads that were clearly designed and built for higher speeds.
Another in a long series of efforts to reduce the power of the states and subject them to the whims of the Feds (think drinking age, etc, same sort of disincentives applied if you Failed To Comply). With entirely predictable results.
The Covid analogy is entirely apt here. Forced compliance is the antithesis of the Federalist model, but it’s the one politicians and losers run as fast as they can to, for a host of reasons, mostly encapsulated in large balls of insecurity and a screaming inability to manage their own lives.
The desire to be re-elected, incumbency, and the power structure within Congress has given us decades of this crap, including the debt, the lunacy of a bombastic CR crammed down the throats at Christmastime (not the first time), repeatedly censured and indicted politicians, and a cadre of media hacks all too willing to write the losers’ stories for them and chastise anyone who questions the narrative.
The states are supposed to check Congress, and be independent. That evaporated long ago, and with state budgets beholden to Medicare/Medicaid federal grants for half their budgets, it’s basically a lock that nothing will change.
Well, at least not easily. It’s possible with the last election, some of these structural faults will be addressed. But I’m not holding my breath.
Another safer aspect of the Interstate over two-lane roads is the absence of farm equipment and bicyclists . . .
There is a highway called Tail of the Dragon ( look it up). Fun road. They have speed limits posted, but don’t seem to enforce them. What they do enforce is staying in your lane, and not crossing the center line.