A band of people gathered on Saturday at a highway rest stop here on the outskirts of Detroit to protest Michigan's speed-limit law by following it.
Members of the Michigan chapter of the National Motorists Association want the state to raise its speed limits. To illustrate their views - that few motorists follow the current 55 mph highway speed limit - they staged what they billed a "snail rally." It was a caravan of more than 50 cars that snarled traffic for more than an hour on some of Michigan's busiest highways by traveling at the speed limit."Not everybody has to go 75 just because the speed limit is that," said Susan B. Costello, a medical technician who lives in Dearborn and attended the rally with her family. "For the people who are going to go faster, you might as well legalize it."
The group of motorists left the rest stop in rows, driving exactly 55 mph in the right lanes of I-275. Their cars carried signs reading: "Make 75 MPH Legal" and "Over 55? It's OK Cops Take Visa!"
Traffic on I-275 was moving about 70 mph in light snow until motorists came on the caravan, which left at least one lane open for traffic to pass. The traffic stream slowed for several miles as the caravan made its way along four different interstates and back to its starting point.
In December, the federal government lifted requirements that states set highway speed limits at 55 mph, or 65 mph in rural areas, to receive federal highway aid. States may make their own speed rules now, and Michigan, like many others, is debating whether to lift its limits.
The Michigan Senate passed a bill in December that would raise the speed limit to 70 mph on all but 170 miles of urban highways. The state House of Representatives passed a more restrictive bill, one that Saturday's demonstrators do not like. It would permit highway speed limits to 65 mph but allow state officials to choose lower speed limits for some stretches of the roadways. Over the next few months, the Michigan Legislature will try to reconcile the two bills.
Gov. John Engler of Michigan has said he wants to step up enforcement of the state's seat-belt law before speed limits are raised. While the law requires motorists to wear seat belts, the police cannot stop a vehicle solely on the basis that its occupants are not buck-led up.
Those who want the limits raised argue that most people drive at the same speed no matter what the speed limit; they simply get fewer speeding tickets when limits are higher. But many safety experts say that as speed limits are increased, drivers go faster, leading to more deadly highway accidents. Both sides point to studies that they contend support their views.
James J. Baxter, president of the National Motorists Association, said: "What they paint on the signs out there does not make a whole lot of difference in terms of what speeds people drive."
But people like Charles A. Hurley, senior vice president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, believe that higher speed limits increase highway deaths. "In order for that not to be true, you have to repeal not only speed limit laws but the laws of physics," said Hurley, whose group in Arlington, Va., is financed by automobile insurers. It is not that there are many more accidents at the higher speeds, he said, but that they are more severe.
But state Sen. Douglas Carl, a Republican who has led the fight in the Michigan Senate for higher limits, said: "This issue is more than just a public safety issue."
The debate, Carl said, "is being driven more than the public knows by the insurance companies that make a great deal of money off the surcharges" added to the premiums of drivers charged with speeding and other traffic violations.