You turn into a residential street in a Colorado town where no speed limit sign is posted. What limit applies?

Why D is correct

Where no limit is posted, the law supplies one: the statutory speed for that class of road applies, and residential streets carry the same default figure that towns routinely post anyway. The absence of a sign is not the absence of a law; it means the road's character — housing, pedestrians, driveways, parked cars — was reason enough for the legislature to fix a number in advance. Drivers are expected to know the defaults for the common road classes, because unposted stretches are everywhere: side streets, alleys, residential loops and short connectors.

Why the other options are wrong

A. Whatever speed feels safe to you, provided you can stop for children

Personal comfort as a speed standard would make the limit different for every driver on the street. The whole point of a statutory default is a common number that applies whether or not the driver feels constrained.

B. There is no limit where no sign is posted

An unposted road is not an unregulated one. Statutory defaults exist precisely so that no street in the state is a free zone, and ignorance of the default is not a defence to a speeding citation.

C. Half the limit of the road you came from

Inheriting a limit from the previous road would make every turn a new roulette. Limits attach to classes of road, not to whatever you were driving a moment ago, and residential streets are classed separately from arterials by design.

On the road

Cutting through a residential loop to avoid arterial traffic, you notice there has not been a speed sign since you turned in. The law has not looked away: the residential default applies as if it were painted at every corner, and it matches the traffic reality — kids on bikes, cars reversing from driveways, a jogging stroller at the curb — better than any arterial number would.

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