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N0KFQ > TODAY 02.01.16 17:22l 56 Lines 2695 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 80535_N0KFQ
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Jan 2
Path: IW8PGT<CX2SA<GB7CIP<N0KFQ
Sent: 160102/1619Z 80535@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.4.65
1974
Nixon signs national speed limit into law
On this day in 1974, President Richard M. Nixon signs the
Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act, setting a new national
maximum speed limit.
Prior to 1974, individual states set speed limits within their
boundaries and highway speed limits across the country ranged
from 40 mph to 80 mph. The U.S. and other industrialized nations
enjoyed easy access to cheap Middle Eastern oil from 1950 to
1972, but the Arab-Israeli conflict changed that dramatically in
1973. Arab members of the Organization for Petroleum Exporting
Countries (OPEC) protested the West's support of Israel in the
Yom Kippur War by stopping oil shipments to the United States,
Japan and Western Europe. OPEC also flexed its new-found economic
muscle by quadrupling oil prices, placing a choke-hold on
America's oil-hungry consumers and industries. The embargo had a
global impact, sending the U.S. and European economies into
recession. As part of his response to the embargo, President
Nixon signed a federal law lowering all national highway speed
limits to 55 mph. The act was intended to force Americans to
drive at speeds deemed more fuel-efficient, thereby curbing the
U.S. appetite for foreign oil. With it, Nixon ushered in a policy
of fuel conservation and rationing not seen since World War II.
The act also prohibited the Department of Transportation from
approving or funding any projects within states that did not
comply with the new speed limit. Most states quietly adjusted
their speed limits, though Western states, home to the country's
longest, straightest and most monotonous rural highways, only
grudgingly complied. Even after OPEC lifted the embargo in March
1974, drivers continued to face high gas prices and attempted to
conserve fuel by buying revolutionary Japanese economy cars. For
many, a desire for fuel-efficient automobiles became the standard
until the trend toward gas-guzzling sport-utility vehicles (SUVs)
emerged in the 1990s. In 1987, Congress authorized states to
reset speed limits within their borders, but proponents of the
national maximum speed limit law claimed it lowered
automobile-related fatalities, prompting Congress to keep it on
the books until finally repealing it on November 28, 1995.
Today speed limits across the country vary between 35 and 40 mph
in congested urban areas and 75 mph on long stretches of rural
highway. U.S. drivers now drive almost as fast as their European
counterparts, who average between 75 and 80 mph on the highway.
On some roads in Italy, it is legal to drive as fast as 95 mph.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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