There’s a reason why Germany’s Autobahn occupies a tremendous amount of mental real estate for automotive enthusiasts: It’s a highway where speed limits are, shall we say, optional for long stretches of road. For drivers based in the United States, a road trip on the Autobahn can require a lot of work: buying a plane ticket, renting a car and learning at least some German so you aren’t utterly baffled by the signage. But soon, drivers looking to legally drive on a highway with no speed limits might only need to head towards the Southwest.
Arizona’s state government is currently considering H.B. 2059, also known as the RAPID Act, a law that would remove speed limits from certain stretches of the state’s roads. According to the wording of the bill, these would be “derestricted speed zone where no maximum speed limit applies to motor vehicles that are not commercial vehicles.” This wouldn’t be a round-the-clock condition, though — the lack of a speed limit would begin half an hour before sunrise and end half an hour after sunset. The wording of the law also includes some fairly pragmatic measures, including that the roads affected by these revised speed guidelines would not be near “urbanized” areas and that the crash rates for the roads in question showed a consistent pattern of being below the state average.
Representative Nick Kupper is the lawmaker behind this proposal. In a statement, he argued “[i]t will let us raise speeds where it’s safe, keep tough penalties for reckless driving and update our laws to reflect how people actually use these roads.” Kupper also introduced a separate bill this year that would alter the state’s registration fee for vehicles powered by energy sources other than gasoline.
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The Croatian route is a bucket-list trip for any serious motorcyclist. I tackled it on a handful of bikes equipped with the latest in Bridgestone tire technology.In touting the RAPID Act, Kupper cited the example of a longstanding Montana law that allowed drivers to proceed at any speed they considered “reasonable and proper.” As Josh Jacquot recounted in a 2017 Car and Driver article, that state’s Supreme Court would eventually determine that this policy was too vague — eventually, the state government established a 75 mile-per-hour speed limit, which has since been raised to 80.
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