Watching Republicans in Congress operate is like watching people kill themselves in that new stupid movie by M. Night Shyamalan.

Let’s talk for a moment about the Contract with America.

There were a lot of individual items in the original Contract with America 14 years ago, but the one that I always maintained won it for the Republicans was the pledge to repeal the mandated 55mph national speed limit.

The reason, I think, why the speed limit issue was what did it for the Republicans was that most all of the other issues were either complex economic matters or inside Washington wonkish stuff like term limits and the line item veto. And from what I’ve seen, most people don’t have even a rudimentary understanding of economics or what makes the economy run. But they know when they’re being inconvenienced, when a nanny is poking them in the ribs telling them to do this and don’t do that. The 55 MPH speed limit was one of those items, and opposition to it was mounting.

To review, the limit was put into place by the Nixon administration to save fuel costs after it was determined by a government study that the average maximum fuel efficiency for cars on the road at that time was 55 MPH. Forget making your own decisions about how much gas you individually could afford. And forget about state governance and local decision making on such matters. Here was the nanny Federal government poking the entire country in the ribs.

And people seemed to tolerate it for a while, but the 1970′s gas crisis passed, and with it so should have the national speed limit. After all, our national highway system was designed in the 1950′s to be traveled on at an average speed of 70 MPH in cars with 1950′s road handling technology. Surely, some 40 years later and without a gas crisis, the limit could be lifted. Surely modern cars could handle the roads even faster than 70 MPH, but at least at 70 MPH given advances in technology.

By the early 1990′s, opposition to the 55 MPH speed limit was reaching a crescendo. People had had enough of it. Nobody was actually traveling at that speed anyways, and most States were using it as an excuse for revenue generation, converting highway cops into tax collectors of a sort, pulling people over for refusing to observe an artificially low speed limit. And as if to rub people’s noses in it, defenders of the 55 MPH speed limit began an advertising campaign claiming that their speed limit was safer. It read, “Stay Alive at 55″.

Right in the ribs, poke, poke, poke.

The Democrats’ refusal to change the speed limit in the face of overwhelming opposition by the populace at large exuded extreme arrogance. So in 1994 the public punished the Democrats and rewarded the Republicans by handing them congress for the next 12 years. I truly believe that the speed limit issue was the one that pushed the Republicans over the finish line.

So here we are today, at another gas “crisis” of sorts, of course, this one isn’t half as bad since there are no price controls on gasoline. And what do you suppose people are proposing? Yes, yes, we already know the answer. But would you have expected it from the Republicans?

But now, a few politicians are daring to raise the “C” word — conservation — in public. Among them is Sen. John Warner (R., Va.), who last week sent an open letter asking the Energy secretary and the Government Accountability Office to study whether it’s time to drop the speed limits on the nation’s roads — again. (Read the letter) He’s expecting an answer in time to raise the issue in the Senate before Congress breaks for the election in September.

Sen. Warner’s letter makes reference to the old 55 mph speed limit, which was repealed in 1995. In an interview, he says he’s not necessarily advocating a return to 55 miles per hour now. He’s urging government analysts to marshal facts to determine at what speed modern automobiles, with electronic-fuel management, five- and six-speed transmissions and more aerodynamic designs, could run most efficiently.

This is a man who has absolutely no understanding of what so got in the craw of Americans over the first 55 MPH speed limit. He literally thinks it’s the number, not the arrogance of setting a national limit or of mandating everyone maximize their fuel efficiency while driving. Absolutely unbelievable.

And no, I’m not going to address the condescending tone of the reporter. No, nobody ever addresses conservation issues. Never. He’s another example of a nanny stater eyeing your ribs, and POKE POKE POKE! Seriously, the entire article could be fisked but I can’t stomach the endeavor.

So for the record, let’s just address the fuel efficiency thing, and then the safety thing. Other people have done this far more effectively than I could have, so let’s just quote them directly, shall we (via deb)?

The [Associated Press] article states that slowing a car from 70 to 60 miles per hour will give you a 2 to 3% gain in efficiency. That paltry benefit is precisely the reason Americans refuse to slow down. It is simple economics; if gas costs $3.33 a gallon, a 3% savings amounts to around a dime a gallon. If your car burns gas at a rate of three gallons an hour, [e.g., 60 mph at 20 mpg*] the 30 cents you save by driving 10 mph slower will take ten minutes out of your life. Very few people in America are willing to sell their time for three cents a minute.

For reference sake, the minimum wage in Massachusetts is $8/hr, or $0.13/minute. For EVERYONE in Massachusetts, it makes more sense to drive a little faster. For the lowest paid worker in Massachusetts, his time is worth 4.4X the savings he’d achieve by driving slower.

So can we end this nonsense already?

No, because there are always the safety assholes out there. Indeed, the WSJ article by the condescending nanny state reporter above delves into it as well:

Speeding has a social cost. The NHTSA estimates that speed-related crashes cost $40.4 billion annually. The agency puts the number of speeding-related fatalities at around 13,000 a year. During the years that the national speed limit was in effect, speeding-related fatalities declined, according to the NHTSA, although it’s not clear whether that was directly related to speed limits, or other factors such as improved vehicle design.

What’s missing from that analysis, of course, is any analysis of how much speeding is required to generate a likely fatality. To be sure, speeding is a high cause of highway accidents, but there’s an enormous difference between driving at 70 MPH and driving at 120 MPH. One is the average speed on the road, though nominally above the speed limit. The other is reckless. Both are according to the law, speeding. But one can only make sense of speeding statistics by comparing average speed traveling at the time of an accident to the average speed other cars on the road at that time. I would venture to guess that the typical accident is caused by someone traveling over 1 standard deviation above the average speed being traveled on the road at the time of the accident. But the 55 MPH speed limit advocates never talk in such terms, which is why I tend to think they’re full of it.

Also, there’s this, which I’ve blogged before but is worth watching again:

I suppose the good news about this is that if the Republicans maintain their current stupidity quotient through election time, there won’t be many left in Washington at all. Indeed:

He [Sen. Warner] is expecting an answer in time to raise the issue in the Senate before Congress breaks for the election in September.

Good work there bucko.

Tags: 55mph, Contract With America, John Warner

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