Despite safety concerns, you can soon go 85 mph, legally, on a toll road in Texas

You say, as Sammy Hagar sang, "I can't drive 55?" Head to Texas, where soon the legal limit for cars will be 85 miles per hour -- yes, 85 -- on a stretch of freeway between Austin and San Antonio. The Texas Transportation Commission voted in favor of what will be the nation's highest allowed speed limit for a 41-mile piece of a toll road, State Highway 130, reports Nathan Koppel of The Wall Street Journal. This section of the less than remote highway is scheduled to open this fall and is expected to provide a quicker connection between two of the state's largest cities. (Rick Scibelli photo: current limits)

As you can imagine, the high speed limit has prompted concern among some safety experts. "When you increase speed limits, you have an increase in the severity of injuries," said Lee Friedman, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who has studied the correlation between speed limits and traffic fatalities. Many Texas motorists, he said, likely will exceed the new speed limit and travel more than 90 mph. That would be faster than the average speeds allowed on those famous German autobahns. Veronica Beyer, a spokeswoman for the Texas commission, told Koppel that the toll road has been designed and tested for high-speed travel. "Safety is our top priority," she said.

Carolinas auto club notes dangerous rural roads

U.S. 129, a favorite of motorcyclists
but one of North Carolina's most
dangerous roads. (Citizen-Times)

In the latest of a long line of reports documenting the carnage on dangerous rural roads, the Asheville Citizen-Times that an annual AAA Carolinas analysis has labeled rural counties the “killing grounds” for traffic in the state. Five of the state's counties combined for 5.4 percent of the state’s fatal crashes, despite having only 2 percent of the state’s vehicle miles traveled.

Nationally, two-thirds of fatal crashes occur along rural roads, as reported here last year. Many AAA chapters issue reports about the phenomenon, which can serve as useful reminders.

“We really do it for heightened awareness, so drivers are aware when they are in these counties that there is an increased chance of being in a crash,” said Angela Vogel Daley of AAA Carolinas. “I think that people are obviously concerned when particular counties are on the list year after year.” Clay County handled less than 0.1 percent of the state’s vehicle miles traveled but had five fatal crashes per 100 million miles traveled — nearly five times more than the state average of 1.11 fatal crashes per 100 million miles traveled, according to AAA. (Read more)

Little weevils eat pestiferous vine in Eastern states

Tiny beetles have become the most recent state employees in Maryland, devouring invasive Asian weeds that are usually destroyed with chemicals or heavy machinery," Candus Thomsom of The Baltimore Sun reports. The plant is known as the mile-a-minute weed, and its newfound nemesis, the weevil, only feasts on it. The weed grows six inches a day and covers all other vegetation, strangling it. Though the plant first started in Pennsylvania, it's now found in 12 East Coast states, and state officials hope the tiny weevils can help control its spread.

Maryland's State Highway Administration released weevils this summer at seven wetlands, and four more sites are scheduled to receive them. Officials had already released Japanese beetles to eat the weed. They cause immediate damage by eating the leaves, but the weevils "lay waste to the whole plant over time," Thomson reports. Weevil larvae burrow into stems, killing the plant and preventing it from releasing seeds. The federal government approved use of weevils to control mile-a-minute growth in 2004, and they've been released in 10 states since then. (Read more)