Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Reasonable and prudent ...

When I first meet out-of-state people and tell them that I'm from Montana, as often as not the response I get is something like, "Oh, that's where you can drive as fast as you want." This despite the fact that our state's highways have had arbitrary speed limits for over a decade, now. Old stereotypes die hard.

Sadly, my tenure in Montana doesn't go back quite far enough for me to remember those heady, pre-1974 days when our state's daytime speed limit was "reasonable and prudent," but I did get to enjoy the three years back in the late 1990s when that was again the case. Those of us who drove in Montana back then will remember the sign below very well.

Oh, how I miss those days ...

6 comments:

  1. I remember my dad driving from Shelby (where we lived) to Great Falls in a little under an hour on two-lane roads (pre I-15). My father was an excellent driver and the only one I've ever trusted, with the exception of my spouse. Now it's around 90 miles from Shelby to Great Falls, so that would make his speed around 90 miles an hour. He didn't, of course, drive that way in inclement weather, or during a blizzard. He drove in a careful and prudent manner, something that people outside of the state never seemed to understand. I still get that "Oh, Montana. That's where you can drive like a bat out of hell." No, it's not. It's where you use common sense and common courtesy. Or it used to be...

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  2. I could never understand how the law enforcement would be able to make a ticket stick with this particular situation!

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  3. Tickets were issued only after you were dead from not driving in a reasonable and prudent manner. :o)

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  4. For me, I think, the biggest point is that the speed limits are really just arbitrary numbers, and don't really have all that much to do with safety. There are certainly lots of roads in eastern Montana where one can safely drive faster than 70, despite what the speed limit says ... and there are almost as many roads up in the mountains that have the same 70 MPH speed limit, where it would be suicide to actually drive that fast.

    So I think "reasonable and prudent" is the only way to go. The highway patrol would save more lives if they went back to that philosophy ... ticketing people who don't bother to slow down when roads get icy, for example.

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  5. I drove in Montana in the 60's & 70's. Actually the "reasonable & prudent" limits worked quite well. If you were on slick roads or some other hazardous situation you were expected to slow down; if you were traveling at 90-100 mph you were not reasonable nor were you prudent! Tickets were issued and could be paid on the spot!

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  6. I also think they had it right in the '50s. That's when, where, and how I learned to drive, reasonably and prudently. And it is really the 'de facto' standard everywhere. Here in Colorado you can get a ticket for 'agressive driving' for obeying the posted limit. And no one really knows what the 'grace' standard above the posted limit is. It's up to the officer to determine if you are 'R&P'.

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