To avoid losing part of their federal highway fund allocation, state safety administrators must ensure that interstate speed limits are adequately enforced within their state. In an upcoming test, federal researchers will be randomly selecting and clocking a very large sample of vehicles on a given section of the state’s portion of an interstate highway that has historically had a relatively high accident rate. In anticipation of the upcoming study, state administrators randomly select and clock 100 vehicles along this route, obtaining the speeds shown in data file XR09111. Construct and interpret the 95% confidence interval for the population mean vehicle speed along this stretch of highway. Based on this interval, comment on whether the mean speed for the population of vehicles using this part of the highway might be 70 mph, the cutoff above which federal highway funds become endangered.
A computer and statistical software.