The fastest highway in America is officially open. Whether you live in Texas or you are planning on making a trip to the 41-mile long road on the Texas highway with a speed limit of 85 be warned; it's going to cost you.
The toll-road will cost $6.17 per car to legally drive 85 mph from Austin to Seguin. To some, charging drivers to use the road is a genius idea as town leaders believe that the expanded toll will help eventually bring more development and jobs to Texas.
"People want to go fast," said Adrian Lund, President of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety to Yahoo. "Cars are built to go fast and states increasingly want to raise their speed limits. Even if it means saving just two or three minutes during a trip, people want to go faster."
The average speed limit for highways in the U.S. doesn't exceed 75 mph, and there are no longer any roads in the U.S. with no speed limits as there used to be for many areas. But since 1995, a stunning 35 states have raised their speed limits to 70 mph on certain highways according to Yahoo.
While there are highways out west that have 80 mph speed limits, there hasn't been a state to allow anything higher than 80 mph until now.
The highway was literally constructed for high speeds as it is wider and flatter than most highway roads around the U.S. It also has fewer objects on the side of the road that could cause distractions such as billboards according to Yahoo. Experts felt this was done because traveling at such a high speed and looking away from the road for even just a few seconds could cost someone their life.
The Texas Transportation Commission announced their decision to allow the high speed limit back in September and there has been a lot of discussion amongst other states on whether the road is a good idea or not.
"Higher speeds dramatically increase the risks of a catastrophic crash," said Bill Graves, CEO of American Trucking Association toThe Inquisitr. "On today's busy and congested highways, it is simply unfathomable that a state would allow drivers to put themselves and others at risk by increasing speed limits to such excessive heights."
There are a number of people that aren't too happy about the new speed limit however, as many aren't so sure it is safe to allow drivers to go so fast legally. It's one thing to allow a professionally trained NASCAR driver to go over 200 mph, but to expect everyone who enters the new toll-road to drive 85 mph might be out of the question.
"The research is clear that when speed limits go up, fatalities go up," said Russ Rader, a spokesman for the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said to the Associated Press.
Higher speed limits get drivers to their destinations quicker, but unfortunately the tradeoff could mean more crashes and highway deaths.
A 2009 report in the American Journal of Public Health showed traffic mortalities in the U.S. from 1995 to 2005, and the study determined that over 12,500 deaths were caused due to increases in speed limits on all kinds of roads.
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