HB 5944 is the latest in a series of bills to empower local governments to pick numbers out of thin air and put them on speed-limit signs (see also HB 4224, county roads in townships; and HB 5777, state highways in cities). This bill would let township boards and county road commissions combine to overrule county road engineers and the Michigan State Police and slap speed limits as low as 25 m.p.h. (the state minimum) on any unpaved county road.
The purpose of this bill is to placate residents along gravel roads complaining about dust and speeding cars. It ignores the fact that artificially-low speed limits cannot be enforced and will not be obeyed, and it overturns the normal practice of leaving gravel roads unposted. Unposted gravel roads are still subject to the "basic" speed law, which requires that all vehicles be operated at a speed not greater than is "reasonable and proper." This practical limit can very widely with unpaved-road conditions, so it is hard to apply a meaningful speed limit to a gravel road.
This bill amends the "prima facie" part of Michigan speed law. That's Latin for something that's illegal only "on the face of it." Most motorists are unaware of this part of the law, which governs most speed limits in urbanized places. Few persons receiving tickets know that it is not necessarily illegal to violate a posted prima facie limit. Motorists have the legal right to challenge a prima facie citation by pointing out to the court that their speed was careful and prudent and not unreasonable and improper, even though it was in excess of the posted limit.
This law was intended to protect motorists against unreasonable politically-set speed limits. Bills such as this one are trying to chip away at this basic protection against revenue-generating speed traps.