Speed Is No Issue Unless It’s About How Fast Liberty Is Lost
Bob Tomaine NaturalGasNOW
Contributing Writer
[Editor’s Note: Speed is the sprit of freedom and bureaucrats threatened by it once thought they could just con drivers out of it. Today, they’re trying to con drivers into EVs.]
A speedometer by itself is not exciting, but one specialized example offers a lesson worth pondering amidst today’s anti-fossil-fuel hysteria.
In what remains a striking illustration of an edict issued by a government at once oblivious and overreaching, September 1, 1979 saw automakers forced to equip cars for the American market with speedometers that would instantly transform motorists into caring, genteel drivers. They would see the new gauges with their highlighted 55-miles-per-hour notch and their maximum marked speed of 85 miles per hour, the thinking went, and instantly realize that they needed to comply with the then-national speed limit in order to save gas and avoid the danger caused by high speeds.
Does a speedometer that reads no higher than 85 miles per hour really inspire motorists to drive slowly? The United States government once believed it would do so, just as it now believes that personal electric vehicles are universally practical.
The rule was straightforward in stating that “(n)o speedometer shall have graduations or numerical values for speeds greater than 140 km/h and 85 mph and shall not otherwise indicate such speeds. This paragraph does not apply to a speedometer design for use in or installed in a passenger car sold to a law enforcement agency for law enforcement purposes. Each speedometer shall include the numeral ‘55’ in the mph scale. Each speedometer, other than a digital speedometer, shall highlight the number ‘55’ or otherwise highlight the point at which the vehicle speed is equaling 55 mph.”
It’s been called a “folly” and rightly so. It was – in that best tradition of government – forcing drivers to accept something with the claim that it was for their own good while in the background lurked a subtle implication that they were stupid, unconcerned or both and therefore unable to drive carefully unless coerced into doing so. For more than one reason, the 85-miles-per-hour speedometer was a failure and in 1981, its end was in sight.
Government, unfortunately, rarely admits to or learns from its mistakes and often seems determined to repeat them in updated form. Sometimes, it descends into the bizarre, as when New York Governor Kathy Hochul said that “buildings are the largest source of emissions in our state” and that’s why she’s “proposing a plan to end the sale of any new fossil-fuel-powered heating equipment by 2030.” It’s probably safe to extrapolate that the bulk of the heating equipment required under her scheme would be powered by electricity and that the electricity will be generated by solar, wind and/or hydro. Keep that point in mind.
Governor Hochul’s push for increased use of electricity comes not long after she “called for major regulatory action that will require all new passenger cars, pick-up trucks and SUVs sold in New York State to be zero-emission by 2035. Governor Hochul has also proposed that all school buses be zero-emission by that the same year,” according to a press release from her office. Those “zero-emissions” vehicles obviously would be powered by electricity from the same sources and over the same distribution system as would her proposed heating equipment. California has learned about that, a point which Governor Hochul should keep in mind, but probably won’t.
Virginia is in a situation similar to New York’s, but that might change. It all began with California, which then exported its madness to other states; like the governor of Virginia, not everybody is happy about that and some are taking action.
The blindness – whether accidental or intentional – afflicting those who demand a complete transition to electric vehicles is inexplicable. Even New Hampshire with its famed motto is allowing itself to be swept along, but it doesn’t demand deep thinking to see the fools behind the curtains in the fantasy world where only electric vehicles are on the roads. In fact, all it really demands is keeping up with the news while trying to make reality mesh with placing more load on the electric grid as Governor Hochul’s plan must do. Add a bit of common sense and it becomes difficult to think of the inability to see as anything but willingly self-inflicted.
What other explanation could there be for those who are imposing their misguided beliefs in the name of questionable “science?” Set aside at least temporarily what are likely the real motives behind their crusade and ask why they’re unable to acknowledge the alternatives to electric vehicles, especially when those alternatives don’t create the massive environmental issues associated with electric vehicles.
It’s eerily similar to the “settled science” of climate change in that in both cases, the True Believers have not merely all the answers, but the only answers. The European Union fits well in that category, as shown by its “Fit for 55” scheme to provide for a “100% CO2 emission reduction target for both new cars and vans by 2035.”
It’s worth noting the EU, like California and those states unable to think for themselves, is uninterested in keeping internal-combustion-engine vehicles in service with environmentally friendly fuels. That fact is one more reason to question whether environmental concerns are truly the highest priorities in the minds of those advocating nothing but electric vehicles for personal transportation. Not unlike the 85-miles-per-hour speedometer, it’s an agenda whose goal is telling people how they should behave.
Text and Photo Copyright 2022 by Bob Tomaine
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