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Can’t Drive 55? West Texas Welcomes You

24.10.2006

There, amid creosote bushes, mesquite trees and the occasional cactus, is a heavy-footed driver’s dream — a road sign declaring a speed limit of 80 miles per hour that coincides with entry into bucolic Hudspeth County.

State officials approved the new speed limit in May, making it the highest legal limit in the United States. The old speed limit had been 75 m.p.h., said Carlos Lopez, director of traffic operations for the Texas Department of Transportation.

The 80 m.p.h. zone extends east on Interstate 10 from the El Paso County line, through Hudspeth County and beyond.

In all, it includes 521 miles of highway in parts of 10 counties, Mr. Lopez said, splitting off at the junction with Interstate 20 east of Kent and continuing toward Monahans and on Interstate 20 into Kerr County.

The limit is an ideal fit for Texas, a state that prides itself on being larger than life.

“You can now get places in a more legal fashion,” said Mike Mossman of Fort Hancock. “In Texas, we measure distances by hours rather than miles.”

The new speed limit does not apply to big trucks, which have a limit of 70 m.p.h. during the day. The speed limit at night is 65 m.p.h. statewide.

Most drivers had already been driving above the old 75 m.p.h. limit, Mr. Lopez said. “You get a safer highway when people are driving in more uniformed speeds,” he added.

Not all Texans are happy with the higher speed limit. Before it took effect, the Hudspeth County commissioners passed a resolution opposing the change, and the head of the panel, Becky Dean-Walker, complained that the new speed limit was “too dangerous.”

“What’s next? 85?” Ms. Dean-Walker asked. “They’ll keep going.”

She also said the new speed limit was a burden on the county. Most of Hudspeth County, which has a population of 3,295 and an area of 4,572 square miles, is served by a volunteer ambulance service. The judge said she was concerned that the ambulance service would be overburdened by an increase in highway accidents.

“We’re a poor county,” Ms. Dean-Walker said. “We can’t keep enough volunteers. Every time they jack up the speed limit it puts a terrible strain on rural counties. Five miles an hour makes a difference every time in accidents.”

Here in Fort Hancock, a dusty border town of 1,713 people about 50 miles southeast of El Paso, the issue has split the local population between those who drive the new speed limit and those who do not.

“It’s a personal choice,” said Jose G. Franco, superintendent of the Fort Hancock Independent School District. Mr. Franco said he observes a speed limit of 70 m.p.h.

“I see people pass me at 80 m.p.h., and yet we hit the exit about the same time anyway by the time you slow down for semis,” he said.

But the higher speed limit has been a boon for Mr. Mossman, who as the owner of a wholesale cactus and desert plant company drives some 80,000 miles a year across the Southwest.

He said the roads with the new speed zones were so remote that “everyone waves at each other because they haven’t seen any other human in so long.”

He added, “It’s lonely out there.”

Sgt. John D. Schuller of the Hudspeth County Sheriff’s Office, a Fort Hancock resident, said drivers had been obeying the new speed limit.

“They’re given a few miles over,” Sergeant Schuller said. “If you’ve got an 80-mile-an-hour speed limit and you give them two or three miles, that’s 83, and then if they get all the way up to 85-plus, they’re in trouble.”

Sergeant Schuller said he drove in accordance with the new speed limit, but his wife, Georgia, refused to go beyond 70 m.p.h.

“She tells me to slow down,” he said.

In Sierra Blanca, population 533 and the Hudspeth County seat, Tom Ellison, 81, shook his head at the mere mention of the 80 m.p.h. speed limit.

Mr. Ellison, who owns a car repair and rock polishing shop, said he used to retrieve wrecked vehicles on Interstate 10 but stopped in the late 1990’s because of the morbid scenes he often encountered.

“It’s just too fast,” Mr. Ellison said. “I just don’t like it. It’s going to give a lot of people tickets, and accidents, too.”

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