States with the highest speed limits

There are different times in our lives when there is a need for speed. You may be late to work or school. An emergency vehicle may need to get to somewhere that help is in dire need of. A young woman may need to get to the hospital to have her baby. What ever that need may be there are times in everybody's life at some point when they need to drive faster than normal. Typically in most states the speed limit on roads which includes our Interstate system is somewhere in the range of 55 to 65 miles per hour.

Back in the year 1974 when oil shortages hit the United States, Congress decided to enact the "Emergency Energy Conservation Act". This restricted the vehicle speeds on Interstate highway systems and access roads back down to a maximum of just 55 miles per hour. Like other bad ideas in life, in the year 1995 the legislators eventually repealed the national speed limit.

Since the repeal of the "Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act" thirty four states have enacted laws that raised the maximum speed limits to 70 miles per hour or more on certain stretches of road.

For some of you out there with a need for speed there are 15 out of these 34 different states that have a speed limit of 75 miles per hour. Here's a list of the states in which drivers enjoy the freedom of this higher speed limit of 75 miles per hour on Interstate highways. They include Kansas, Arizona, Utah, Maine, Texas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Louisiana, Montana, Colorado Oklahoma, Nevada, New Mexico, South Dakota, and North Dakota. Speed limits may vary for certain urban areas, big trucks, and nighttime hours. This information was compiled by the Governor's Highway Safety Association in Washington D.C.

There are three of these 15 states that have speed limits of 80 miles per hour on specified segments of their Interstate roads. These state are Wyoming, Texas, and Utah. On top of this list there is one single solitary state which by far has the highest speed limit on certain specified Interstate highway segments out of all of the fifty different states. Like they say everything is always bigger in the great state of Texas, and that also includes the speed limit. Texas is the state with the highest speed limit in all of the country of 85 miles per hour!

Now let me assure you that this doesn't give you a license to be speed racer on these designated stretches of our Interstate highway system. So pay attention to what ever the designated speed limit may be on the road in which you are traveling on, because there are hefty fines awaiting those who fail to observe those speed limits.

Take it from me I know, and I learned my little lesson with speeding about a year ago. The state trooper clocked me with radar going 14 miles an hour over the designated speed limit. Now I didn't argue with him, because I was aware that I did something wrong. I cooperated and before I could say anything in my defense he asked me to stand by as he returned to his patrol car. After a short period time past the state trooper returned and handed me a ticket. So at this point there was no way I could argue my way out of the ticket.

The state trooper did thank me for being so cooperative, and he then proceeded to give me instructions on what to do when I went to court. He told me that since I hadn't had any tickets in the last three years to get a copy of my driving record. Take my driving record to court and hand it to the district attorney, and plead faulty equipment. This way I wouldn't get any points on my record, and my insurance premiums would go up in price either.

When my day in court arrived that's exactly what I did. The court room was literally packed full of people, and when my turn finally arrived I followed the instructions which the state trooper had given me two months earlier. The district attorney told me that the state trooper had saved me a lot of time, and instructed me to go downstairs and pay the fine to the clerk of the court. Now this whole experience still cost me around $300, but it could have been a whole lot worse. When you come down to it, that increased need for speed didn't save me anymore time than the man on the moon. So whatever the posted speed may be, I advise you to try your best to drive very close to it, and that is TheHoleStory.