They have no respect for the hours long driver.
They don't mind if people get blood clots taking 6 hours to drive what should be 3.
Can we just get on with the Industrial hemp fuel produced at 22 cents a gallon sold at 2.50,and put an end to this utopian socialized traffic engineering.

It just makes more money for government ,and causes blood clots for the hours lontg traveler.

I agree Digg. If I want to preserve my gas, I can choose to drive 55 in the right lane. Not only should we open up land drilling, but we should seriously consider Nuclear, clean coal, wind, solar, ocean current, and other power sources as well. Maybe there will be a silver lining with these out of sight crude oil prices i.e. bi-partisan support on an energy plan that considers all short-term, mid-term, and long term resources and requirments.

"government has to do something"...

This proposal is nothing.

Typical, the government has to do "something", so instead of developing domestic supplies, they punish us with 55mph limits.

In the east where cities are closer, perhaps 55 is a sane speed, here where I live in central Washington, 55 is a quick way to get bored, what with the slow crawl through the wheat fields.

Typical.

"They don't mind if people get blood clots taking 6 hours to drive what should be 3."

Wow. When was the speed limit raised to 110 MPH?

Looks like lowering the speed limit to 55 from 70 would add about an hour and a quarter to the drive between Spokane and Seattle.

Limits should be created based on circumstance. Flying through the remote parts of I-90, 75 mpg seems reasonable. However, I think that around the city we might go as low as 40 mpg especially around critical intersections such as 405/5 and 90/5.

Why on Earth would anybody wish reinstate a national speed limit on our highways?
That's not moving forward that's going backwards! Do they honestly believe that in the year 2008 we should be setting speed limits that are the same as those in the 1940's and 50's?

Interstates are the arteries of our country. Slow them down and you slow the economy down. And no, it will not effect fuel prices anyway. First because of the traffic created (it's weaving in dense traffic that causes many accidents by the way), second because oil prices are rising mostly due to dollar inflation and our government overprinting money (oil prices are relatively stable compared to gold prices, notice they have both gone up in unison, if our dollar was as stable as gold oil would be $30 a barrel right now), and third because most people won't follow a national 55 mph speed limit! I'm sure they will say that "well if we could just get people to slow down it might work". Well it's not reality and never will be so they need to stop lobbying to make laws that depend on something that will never happen!

We should be making laws that optimize traffic flow and restore respect for the left lanes which would thin out traffic, reduce accidents, and help the economy by speeding up our internal transportation system. Overall, our speed limits are already under posted (never mind being 85th percentile, they aren't even average speed) combined with cruising in left lanes and not using them as passing only lanes leads to cars weaving and therefore causing very dangerous traffic snarls.

Our traffic flow is so inefficient it only takes a few cars to back things up because some people think they can drive in whatever lane they want at whatever speed and are bolstered in their belief by under posted limits.

Think about it; there are ALWAYS these packs of traffic moving down the highway of cars scrunched together. There is plenty of room ahead but one guy is blocking the left lane and 5, 10 even 15 or more cars are lined up behind him. If something goes wrong all these cars are packed like sardines which makes the accident that much worse. This also is the root cause of road rage; weaving and unnecessary braking to avoid collisions, which by the way wastes a lot of fuel.

The mere suggestion to implement old outdated policies that have been an absolute failure in the past will cause far more harm than good. Just like Prohibition and Jim Crow.

The 55 mph speed limit was also directly responsible for the immense amount of damage done to the American auto industry resulting in cars that were poor products both in terms of performance, safety and gas usage. After all, they only had to be safe and have decent performance at 55 mph. The answer to having safer more efficient cars isn't to lower the bar so that the car of the day with it's poor performance, safety and gas guzzling is acceptable, it's creating the demand for a better car by raising the bar. 55 mph set our auto industry back 25 years and in the process made our cars the laughingstock of the motorized world for which the industry is still paying the price to this day because we are just now starting catch up, and no 55 mph speed limit is going save us now.

They also say they favor returning to the 55 mph speed limit because it was "safe" and it "saved lives" and then attempt to make people feel guilty if they don't support it. If driving 55 mph is supposedly safe and according to some of them, saved 4,000 lives a year, then can they please explain to me why traffic fatalities were running between 50-60,000 annually during the years when the 55 mph limit was most strictly enforced and started declining to today's record low levels only after it was repealed? Also, even with the steady decline, why then am I still 66% more likely to die on the American Interstates for a given mileage driven than the German Autobahns, over half of which has no speed limit? The answer is our traffic flow system is total and absolute a mess, thanks in part to the generation that learned to drive during the 55 mph era when driving skills plummeted along with the speed limits!

If these people really want to make a difference then work with reality and help to make our roads fast and safe with optimal traffic flow while moving us forward. Here's a few suggestions:

1) Synchronize all of the urban traffic signals on the surface roads nationwide. Just imagine how many millions of barrels of oil a year that alone would save by eliminating all of the stop and go driving and urban congestion. A side benefit is that smog in the larger urban areas would be greatly diminished.

2) Teach motorists how to DRIVE, teach them to do it WELL under all conditions and circumstances. This will go a long way into cutting our highway fatalities to even lower levels than they are now.

3) Implement realistic but stringent fuel efficiency standards and stricter enforcement of ALL traffic laws, not just the revenue generating speeding regulations. A mandatory 30 day license suspension for first time offenses such as Texting While Driving would drive the point home in a hurry.

I know that the above will not go over well with that group because first of all it makes common sense and it is readily doable. And secondly, I suspect that they really don't give a whit about saving energy, lives, trees, bears or anything else. I believe that their intent no doubt is to exert a measure of control over other people's lives.

Lastly, do they really believe that any of what they are trying to force down everybody's collective throats will stop climate change or conserve a single drop of oil?

Climate change is a natural occurrence and nothing we can do will stop it (If you don't believe me, then ask the scientific community why the polar ice caps on Mars are melting...I'm pretty sure us humans didn't have anything to do with it). Secondly, every barrel of oil that we don't buy goes right onto the world market and into the hands of countries that may not have as effective fuel economy or emission regulations as the United States so in actuality, if by some slim chance they did get their way, they would be making the problem worse, not solving it!

Sorry to break it to them but gas prices will likely never be in the sub $1.00 a gallon range again since we have proven to Big Oil we are willing to pay much more than that no matter how ridiculously low you want the speed limits set. Also don't forget the wonderful field day that speeding tickets (shored up by new technologies such as speed cameras) and jacked up insurance rates will have taking money out of the hands of the consumer and and putting it into the coffers of bureaucracies and large corporations which will only serve to reduce consumer spending and hurt the already struggling economy even more.