so in an online forum I stumbled upon an interesting question why do you car
drive so much faster than the legal speed limit and I thought it would be
interesting to make a video on it there are plenty of products we buy every day
that can be used in ways that are completely illegal
for example guns knives chainsaw to more complicated examples like gasoline
alcohol and medication most modern cars even the basic ones
will go at least 110 miles per hour very few cars will reach anything near 200
miles per hour but yes there are some you 110 miles per hour is faster than
any speed limit in the United States so why can cars go that fast. your car
needs to be able to accelerate to highway speed in a reasonable amount of
time and many people are accustomed to being able to accelerate from zero to 60 miles
per hour in under 8 seconds to do that requires a certain amount of power also
if you're on a highway going 75 miles per hour which is perfectly legal in
many places you will need some power and reserve in case you encounter a headwind
or need to climb a steep hill or you just want to pass someone which means
that on a flat and level road with no head wind your top speed will definitely
be above 75 miles per hour or if you drive a truck maybe you need extra power
in case you're towing something so the level of power needed for a reasonable
acceleration and to have some additional power for hills and headwinds generally
means that you would top out at a minimum around 110 miles per hour on a
flat road of course if you drive a sports car
with more powerful faster acceleration your top speed could be much higher
speed governors on most cars are either set at 155 miles per hour as a
gentleman's agreement between luxury car manufacturers or are set at the maximum
speed rating of the tires tires with the speed rating of H which is a popular
rating on many sedans today are rated for a top speed of 100 and
30 miles per hour so an appropriate question would be why aren't all cars
just governed at 85 miles per hour 85 miles per hour is the fastest legal
speed on a public road in United States on state highway 130 in Texas and that
limit was only established seven years ago the problem with governing a car as
such a speed is that it will still be able to reach illegal speeds on every
road with a limit below that for example every acidentally and people would be
reluctant to buy a car that wasn't able to keep up with traffic while everyone
else is driving at an illegal speed Manufacturing a car that's not able to
keep up with the traffic could even possibly open an auto making company up
to liabilities for safety reasons and even if manufacturers did limit the cars
because of legal requirements there would be plenty of people figuring out
ways to circumvent the speed governors one other major issue with a blanket
speed governor in the United States is that speed limit policy is set by the
states themselves and not set nationwide since federal government does not set a
speed limit you're never violating a federal law by driving fast except
perhaps in isolated cases on certain federal properties you're only violating
state laws even when the federal government did set the National
mandatory speed limit back in 1970s the speed limits were still stayed lost and
could be set higher than the federal maximum but the states would lose
federal highway funding if it did sir no single state has the ability to get auto
manufacturers to make something special just for them except perhaps California
and California Air Resources Board which for years has had a special emission
regulations and the automakers even fought that as much as they could and
even if a state did get such a legislation passed there there would be
absolutely no way to prevent out-of-state vehicle from driving in or
being sold in that state also any law requiring speed governors on cars could
only apply to new cars which would discourage people from buying new and it
will create a set of vehicles that weren't able to keep
up with the rest of the traffic on the road which would be unsafe because of
something called speed differential no matter what your insurance company says
it's not the high speeds that kills on the nation's highway when more of the
vehicles on a freeway are doing similar speeds and there are a few vehicles that
are going far faster or far slower than the average then there are less
accidents driving too fast causes no more accidents than driving too slow as
compared to the other automobiles on the road