The Kansas Legislature is considering allowing the Kansas Department of Transportation to raise the state's highest speed limit on separated, multiple-lane highways from 75 to 80 miles per hour. The new limit would bring the state in line with several other sparsely populated, largely rural Western states, including South Dakota, pictured here in this April 2015 file photo.

Topeka ? The Kansas House rejected an effort Tuesday to increase the speed limit to 80 miles per hour on rural interstates, even as it moved to hike it to 70 on some other highways.

The House approved a bill 106-19 to allow the state’s secretary of transportation to increase the speed limits on rural two-lane highways and other non-interstate highways another 5 miles per hour, from the current 65. The measure goes next to the Senate.

But the House’s action came after it voted 90-24 against an amendment offered by Rep. John Bradford, a Lansing Republican, to increase the speed limit on interstates outside metropolitan areas to 80 mph from the current 75.

Six states — Idaho, Montana, Nevada, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming — have top speed limits of 80 miles per hour; Texas sets it at 85 miles per hour on some highway segments, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association. Bradford noted that before 1957, Kansas said only that a driver’s speed had to be “reasonable and prudent.”

“Kansas is very flat for the most part, and you can see great distances for the most part,” Bradford said.

Several House members saw increasing the top speed limit as unsafe, particularly because state law says that speeding on a highway isn’t a moving violation unless it’s more than 10 miles per hour over the limit. Thus, they said, boosting the top limit to 80 miles per hour will encourage some drivers to go 90.

Rep. Don Hineman, a Dighton Republican, said he might have supported Bradford’s proposal 20 years ago, but “something has changed.”

“Today, there are way too many drivers that are holding a cell phone in their hand as they drive,” Hineman said. “They’re texting. They’re reading email. They’re twittering. They’re on Facebook, whatever.”