A Call To Lower the Speed Limit to 55

By Matthew S. Miller, AlterNet. Posted May 31, 2007.

"I can't drive 55!" -- Sammy Hagar, Heavy Metal icon also responsible for the Fast Times at Ridgemont High soundtrack.

"People try to go as fast as the car will go ... One thing the truckin' industry has done year after year is raise the speed limit ...When man goes a little bit faster than walkin'; that's very unnatural ... People have a way of getting' carried away with it and they do this thing called speedin' ... I blame it all on the trucking industry, all of it, all this racing around and everything! So, I had this idea ... -- Michael Russell, Peripatetic Picker & Patriot

Fifty-five! Now there's a number that used to unite the United States. Coast to coast the law of the land was fifty-five miles an hour. Just as patriotic Americans worked together and planted victory gardens to fight food shortages during WWII, in the 1970s, with help from the insightful policies of an enlightened congress, Americans responded to the OPEC energy embargo with character and resolve. We reduced our consumption of petroleum.

Imagine the national unity of will it must have taken in 1975 to get Chevrolet to produce the subcompact Chevette and to persuade people to drive it! The effect of the collective effort knocked a dent in the all time petroleum production curve and set peak oil back a decade from legendary oil geologist M. King Hubbert's initial estimate of a 1996 peak. It's amazing what Americans can do when they work together! Just ask Neil Armstrong.

Congress laid the groundwork for mass-producing and popularizing fuel-efficient cars in 1974, a year before the Chevette hit the assembly lines, with The Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act. It prescribed a national 55 miles per hour speed limit to reduce gasoline consumption. Its follow up, The Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, among other things, raised the corporate average fuel economy standards (CAFE) from 18 mpg to a 1985 level of 27.5 mpg. These steps were taken to mitigate the negative economic effects that our increasing dependence on "foreign oil" had wrought.

Our support of Israel in the Yom Kippur war caused a backlash among the seven Arab sisters of OPEC and Saudi King Faisal decided to use the oil weapon against the West on October 17th 1973. After the initial economic disruption, we retaliated with the conservation weapon and it worked. The embargo ended exactly six months later, but the conservation policies still looked like a good idea in light of the dawning realization that America had passed its all-time production peak in 1971. They seemed even better in 1979 when a second oil shock stemming from the Iranian revolution rocked the world economy.

By '84 attitudes had changed. Like petulant children, having come down hard from a candy-driven sugar high and ready for a new buzz, Americans started consuming petroleum in the transportation sector again at an unprecedented rate. The rationalizing child's argument that "since she has a dollar and the candies are only a penny a piece, she should be entitled to eat 100 pieces" is exactly the same argument by which Americans collectively justified their gasoline consumption. Why conserve an apparently cheap and plentiful commodity? At the 1985 low of $20 a barrel in 2006 dollars, oil was astronomically under-priced, a fact hidden from the narcissistic gaze of late 80s yuppies and Wall Street types.

Fundamental rights were at stake. How dare the government infringe on the "flow of commerce" and my right to declare my independence with the speedometer of my automobile (not to mention odometer). Sammy Hagar's screeching foray into the world of social protest with "I can't drive 55" from his 1984 Voice of America album summarized the oil optimism and deregulation imperative of the Reagan era. By the late 80s, Americans were driving gas-guzzling Jimmys, Jeeps, Blazers and Broncos 75 mph through the light truck loop-hole in the CAFE standards. Fifty-five became a number from America's past.

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Matthew Miller holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of South Carolina, grows food on his lawn, poops in a bucket in his garage and drives sixty-one on the interstate. He also serves as a peak oil prophet for the greater Oklahoma City area. He plans to quit driving and to build an Earthship with his communist buddies.