Is South Dakota’s 80 MPH Speed Limit The Highest In The Nation?

I love going for a drive around South Dakota. I love getting off the 'beaten path', and meander around on the county highways, the side-roads, the 'out of the way' spots. Just meander along...until I hear that honk from the car behind me. Oh yeah, sorry. I'll speed up a little.

But when I'm motoring down to my son's place down in the Omaha Metro, it's I-29 south (and by the way, the construction through Sioux City is pretty well done!). The South Dakota portion of the interstates has an 80 MPH speed limit, and well that's fine and good, my speed limit is about 71. You see, it's gone down some as I've gotten, ah, older. So while the state says 80 is fine, the Randy limit is pretty much around that 71 mark, and may well hit 65 or so in the next year or two.

Now, of course with the Interstate speed at 80 MPH, there's cars, trucks, SUVs and cycles zipping by me. That's OK, get on around folks, I'm doin' what I know I can safely do. But it got me to thinkin'...hmmm, is our 80 MPH the highest limit in the nation? Heck, I can remember back in the 'old days', which for our purposes here would be the 1970's, the speed limit was dropped to 55 MPH for a time. As I recall it was supposed to save fuel? Anyway, that was a long time ago. Now at 80, it must be the speediest in the country.

Nope. According to an article I saw at Cars.com, there's a stretch of road in Texas that has a speed limit of 85 MPH. And the Lone Star State has the highest average speed limits in the nation.

So I suppose if I ever find myself down south in Texas I should probably hand the wheel over to someone with a little less age of their bones so I don't look like a snail puttering along those Texan trails.

In the meantime, you'll probably see me meandering the more 'slow' roads around Wakonda or Garretson or Ellsworth or Inwood enjoying the scenery and friendly folks.