WASHINGTON — An influential Republican senator suggested Thursday that Congress might want to consider reimposing a national speed limit to save gasoline and possibly ease fuel prices.
Sen. John Warner, R-Va., asked Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to look into what speed limit would provide optimum gasoline efficiency given current technology. He said he wants to know if the administration might support efforts in Congress to require a lower speed limit.
Congress in 1974 set a national 55 mph speed limit because of energy shortages caused by the Arab oil embargo. The speed limit was repealed in 1995 when crude oil dipped to $17 a barrel and gasoline cost $1.10 a gallon.
Warner cited studies that showed the 55 mph speed limit saved 167,000 barrels of oil a day, or 2 percent of the country’s highway fuel consumption.
The Department of Energy’s Web site says that fuel efficiency decreases rapidly when traveling faster than 60 mph. Every additional 5 mph over that threshold is estimated to cost motorists “essentially an additional 30 cents per gallon in fuel costs,” Warner said in his letter, citing the data.
@3. Headline News Briefs 14 no:New Walter Reed groundbreaking
President Bush broke ground Thursday morning on a $970 million expansion of the National Naval Medical Center that will elevate the facility into the nation’s premier military hospital. The new Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, set to open in 2011 in suburban Bethesda, Md., was proposed as a means to streamline and centralize an aging and scattered military medical infrastructure. The project grew in scale and cost with the influx of casualties from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and with the publication last year of a series of articles in The Washington Post that documented poor conditions for veterans recovering from wounds at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.
New York: Nanny drowns saving child
The live-in nanny of three children in Syosset drowned Thursday afternoon after she jumped into a backyard pool to save the youngest as he struggled in the water, police said. The 3-year-old boy may have been wearing a life vest that slipped off, police said. When he began struggling in the water, the nanny, who was in her 60s, jumped in to save him but was taken under herself. The boy was resuscitated at a hospital and stabilized.
Florida: Tropical Storm Bertha forms
Tropical Storm Bertha has formed in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa. The second named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season is moving toward the west-northwest about 14 mph, and forecasters expect that to continue for the next couple of days.
Illinois: Dad accused of caging kids
A suburban Chicago man locked his two daughters, ages 2 and 5, in a wire cage in his pickup truck because he didn’t have a baby sitter, officials said Thursday. Ricardo Gonzalez, 35, of Midlothian was arrested Monday after a woman at a gas station in Posen heard a crying child and spotted him pushing small hands back into a cage, police said. He had a wire cage behind the front seats of his truck, police said. Tinted windows and a large plywood board in the back window concealed it. The children are now in foster care.
Texas: DNA frees 15-year inmate
A Texas man who spent more than 15 years in prison after being wrongly convicted of kidnapping and robbery raised both arms skyward and collapsed in his mother’s embrace Thursday after being told he was a free man. Patrick Waller, 38, had been behind bars since 1992 for aggravated robbery and aggravated kidnapping stemming from the abduction of a Dallas couple. He was proved innocent by DNA testing late last year.
Vatican: Pope approves ‘99 miracle
Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday approved a miracle attributed to the intercession of a 19th century Belgian priest who ministered to leprosy patients in Hawaii. Benedict declared that a Honolulu woman’s recovery in 1999 from terminal lung cancer was the miracle needed for canonization of the Rev. Damien de Veuster. The miracle was attributed to the intercession of the late priest, to whom the woman, Audrey Toguchi, had prayed.
Zimbabwe: Opposition appeals for protection at U.S. Embassy
About 200 opposition supporters crowded outside the U.S. Embassy in Harare on Thursday, appealing for protection amid new reports of violence aimed at dissenters against the heavy-handed rule of President Robert Mugabe, who won in a runoff election last week roundly criticized as being a fraud. The United States, meanwhile, presented a draft resolution at the U.N. Security Council calling for new sanctions against Mugabe and his top aides. It also would demand talks on a coalition government for Zimbabwe, although the opposition leader has ruled that out.
From Herald news services
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
