I have been to Williamsburg, but, honestly, I don't think I've ever driven there.

However, many touristy and just plain small towns do the same thing. One of their big forms of revenue seems to be ticketing the out-of-towners, probably because they know that it's easier for the tourist to just send the fine back than to drive back in a month to contest it.

My basic point is not so much that 60MPH is too slow everywhere. Obviously, there are many factors that go into what the correct speed limit in a given area should be. Nor is it really an issue of revenue-based ticketing, although that's certainly an important concern. The issue, in my mind, is that everyone goes way faster than the speed limit in certain sections. In my experience, except for some places that are obviously speed traps, everyone, including the cops, realize that the speed limit is too slow, so few tickets occur. But if that's the case, why are the limits still so slow? I know for a fact that state legislators drive these roads regularly. The DOT administrators do, too, as that's the building I'm driving to. All those signs do is serve to make drivers nervous.

Sure, some of the issue with raising the limit, some people will say, is that people will continue to drive faster than that. I've not faound that that's really the case. I've found that people find the speed they think should be driven on the road and drive that, with little regard to the posted sign, even to the point that, on rare occasion, the traffic on the road will be going slower than the limit, and not due to overcrowding, but just because that's the innate speed of the road.

And, to defend myself about the 25MPH thing, in Raleigh, there are some roads that were probably historically residential, but they're now thoroughfares, even though they may still be two-lane roads, and they're still 25MPH. I'm not talking about backroads; I'm taking about non-shortcut roads people use to get places every day.