Your comment that most people will drive at the speed they feel is reasonable and safe... does not correlate with my experience. My experience has been that most people will drive at 5-10 miles OVER the speed limit because they know they will not be ticketed at that speed. They "assume" that the "reasonable and safe" speed has been determined by the speed limit + 10-15 MPH.
Agree that most people feel "reasonable and safe" is above the current speed limits on many roads.
Agree that most people will drive 5-10 miles over the posted speed limit.
Agree that most people expect that they will not be ticketed at 5-10 miles over the posted speed limit.
Disagree that people necessarily correlate "reasonable and safe" to the posted speed limit in any way.
The limits are so out of whack across the spectrum that on some roads I feel like +20 is reasonable and safe while in other places -15 is reasonable and safe. When it's foggy out or "respectably raining", there's another 10-15 downward from those numbers.
In short, I think the problem is that data driven analysis is not what drives the limits. "Budget-management" and "public opinion" dominates the limit-setting process.
But what happens is this: initially the speed limit is set for 35 MPH. They conduct the study and determine that most people drive 40 MPH on that street so they up the speed limit to 40 MPH. Guess what? Shortly thereafter they determine most people now drive 45 MPH on that street.
I get the impression you're drawing the conclusion that people will driver 150+ mph if you set the posted limit to 150mph. This is definitely not the case. Reason #1 is that my car won't do 150 mph.
There are many other reasonable conclusions, such as 35 mph was way too low in the first place and they need to iterate further until they find a "boiling point".
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I did and that video doesn't have anything to do with what I'm saying. I'm in full agreement that speed limits shouldn't be based on revenue generation. They should be based on engineering.
Agree. And now let's address your road quality problem.
Let's start with a state law. Maybe make it a national law at some point but let's start with a state one for now. It goes something like this:
1. All interstate roads are intended to have a minimum speed limit of 60 mph. For any interstate roads with a speed limit under 60 mph, ALL income from speed limit enforcement (from the smallest hovel to the largest city) must be spent on improving the road quality. Any "excess" funds (i.e. aren't needed to improve those roads) will go directly to the Interstate Highway Budget.
2. Any resident of the state can request that any interstate road with a speed limit below 60 mph be considered for an increased speed limit to at least 60 mph. In response to this, within 30 days the state will spend IHB funds from #1 to research whether the road meets the requirements for the increase. If the road does not meet the requirements, the road will be added to the IHB "roads that need some love" RTNSL list.
3. The RTNSL list will be reviewed quarterly, sorted, and IHB funds -- where not allocated for #2 -- will be spent to improve these roads in the order listed.
4. Any RTNSL list entry that is not upgraded within 3 months will either (a) have the "exceeding the speed limit" fine set to $1 for a period of 3 months or (b) be downgraded from "interstate road" to "unmaintained road" status.
The result: "Speeders" pay for upgrading the roads. If the state doesn't use that money wisely and respond swiftly, the fines dry up until they get their act together. And no more local officials milking passerby vehicles for income.
(I'm not sure what 4b actually affects, but perhaps it impacts state funding in some way. The idea is that no area wants to have the road downgraded in this way.)
