We should not have speed limits on our largest highways, at least not in the left-most lane, and here's why.

Speed limits have virtually nothing to do with safety. People who speed are not necessarily unsafe, and unsafe drivers don't necessarily speed. In fact, it is already illegal to drive dangerously, regardless of what the posted speed limit is. If a cop thinks you are driving too fast, too slow, or too erratically for the conditions of the road at the time, then you can be charged with reckless driving.

And it does make sense to have troopers look out for reckless drivers because they pose a danger. But that doesn't mean it's right to indiscriminately stopping those who go "too fast."

On highways, speed and safety are unrelated. Once you're going beyond 40 miles per hour, any collision is going to be painful. The Connecticut Department of Transportation agrees: It prominently states on its website that lowering speed limits does not reduce accident frequency.

"Accidents are most often the result of driver inattention and driver error," according to the department. It also admits that speed limits set too low will create too much variability in driving speeds and thus lead to more accidents.

So safety is not the primary concern for speed limits on highways. The primary benefits of speed limits are the revenues collected from speeders, which explains why the speed limits tend to be too low: that way, they can catch more speeders.

Speed limits shouldn't be a hidden tax.

Beyond the costs of speeding tickets, lost time in court, and higher insurance premiums, there is the much bigger cost of wasted time on the road.

Consider a commuter who travels 60 minutes each way to work, with ten of those minutes on local roads. He averages the speed limit of 65 miles per hour for the other 50 minutes. If he were to travel at 90 miles per hour—if he could drive that fast, assuming the roads weren't too congested—then he would cut his total commute down by almost 15 minutes each way. That's a half hour saved per day. In a year, that's 126 hours, or more than three full working weeks. It's like having an extra three weeks of vacation spread out over the course of the year.

Now multiply that by the more than 100,000 people who drive on Connecticut's I-95 each day, and assume they each earn $20 an hour on average, which is probably low since commuters tend to be higher earners. So continuing to force them all to drive at 65 miles per hour has an opportunity cost of more than $250 million per year. Every four years we waste an extra billion dollars by driving too slowly.

Plus there are civil liberty issues. One man in Texas, pulled over for going 70 in a 65 zone, got Tasered for not showing his license and registration quickly enough. A Utah man, pulled over for speeding, got Tasered in front of his pregnant wife and baby. Every excuse we give to the government to arrest us results in more abuses. Again, this is not to say police should not pull over reckless drivers—they should, regardless of the speed they are driving—but it is important to recognize that the more people they can pull over, the more often civil liberties will be abused. And hasn't the government abused us enough?

We should stop giving them excuses.