re: Roads are better, Cars are safer, Let's raise the speed limit.

I think we need to think about this in two different realms. Urban freeways should probably have lower speed limits. When you're traveling through the city limits of urbanized Houston, Chicago, New Orleans, whereverbigtown USA I think it makes sense to have lower limits to account for more access and egress points on the facility. It's high speed, so if you introduce more points of access, you introduce a lot more decisions that must be made in shorter distances. It's safer that way and that's okay.

Now, on rural freeways...the nothingness from Lake Charles to Beaumont, the nothingness from Baton Rouge to Lafayette, the nothingness from Lafayette to Alexandria...those stretches of freeways are wide, they are open, they are straight and they often have very few access points. It's perfectly acceptable to design for 85-95 MPH limits.