Michigan law requires most state-highway speed limits (other than freeways) to be set following a study by the Michigan Department of Transportation and the State Police, in which the speed of free-flowing traffic is measured and the limit set at no less than the speed below which 85 per cent of vehicles are driving. In this way, the speed limit reflects the behavior of ordinary motorists, and avoids making criminals out of all but the 15 fastest per cent of users.
Despite this law (MCL 257.628) many state highways have grossly-underposted speed limits that are exploited by local police to write revenue-generating speeding tickets. When MDOT proposed to correct two such locations in East Lansing, local complainers and politicians went ballistic, claiming to fear greatly-increased auto speeds and accident risk on state highways through East Lansing. Although MDOT has yet to correct the improper speed limits, East Lansing Representative Gretchen Whitmer has introduced this bill to require that the speed-limit process involve a resolution by city councils on state highways that go through cities.
There is no way a bunch of local politicians can participate in the engineering study, so it is difficult to imagine how the law would work. Worst of all, if cities were successful at dictating state-highway speed limits (the way they do on city streets now), motorists would be subject to a jumble of random speed limits as they crossed from one city to the next, and statewide travel would be throttled by politicians responsible only to local voters. The majority of road users from out of town would have no voice in setting the speed limits on the roads they've paid for (and to which cities contribute next to nothing).
This bill might open the way to dozens of speed traps. Remember that this legislature has already voted to tax driver-license points and increase the surtaxes applied to all traffic fines from $25 to $40