Last week I issued a challenge: Show me some statistics that prove drivers who get an occasional speeding ticket are more dangerous and should pay higher insurance premiums.
So far, nobody has offered up a single study.
In fact, the opposite has occurred: Half a dozen readers have written to direct me to research that seems to say slower is not better.
"One of the underlying fallacies of the 'Speed Kills' propaganda is that speed limits bear a relationship to highway design and engineering facts," says Roger Marble of Ravenna. "In truth, a great proportion of speed limits are set for political or financial gain by the governments empowered to set speed limits."
As proof, he directs us to the Federal Highway Administration. That group -- not exactly a coalition of anarchists -- spells out its speed limit theory in Section 2B.13 of its Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices:
"When a speed limit is to be posted, it should be within 5 mph of the 85th-percentile speed of free-flowing traffic."
In other words, the experts believe that 85 percent of the drivers will travel at a sensible speed regardless of the posted speed limit. In fact, several studies commissioned by the feds indicate that changing the numbers on the signs has little influence on speed -- but a big influence on raising cash.
That information is vital only in conjunction with another federal study, this one known as RD-85/096:
"(Matching the speed limit to the 85th percentile) results in speed limits that are not only acceptable to a large majority of the motorists, but also fall within the speed range where accident risk is lowest. Allowing a 5 mph tolerance, enforcement would be targeted at drivers who are clearly at risk."
Marble and others also cited studies that deflate the widespread belief that raising a speed limit increases the danger. In fact, boosting the limit often has the opposite effect: After raising its speed limits from 55 to 65 mph on 475 miles of roadway, New Jersey's transportation department examined stats for the 18 months leading up to the change and the 18 months after. The findings:
"Actual travel speeds increased on average only 1 mph, with the exception of the New Jersey Turnpike, where speeds increased 3 to 4 mph. Fatalities decreased nearly 10 percent and fatal accidents decreased nearly 8 percent."
Another radical group -- cough, cough -- the American Automobile Association, paid for a wider before/after study. That one found that states switching to the higher limit "actually showed greater improvement in their overall statewide fatality rates than those states which maintained the lower maximum speed limit."
But if everybody is going faster, aren't we all at greater risk? That answer comes from the Washington State Department of Transportation:
"What's actually more dangerous is when motorists are traveling at varying speeds. With speed limits set at the 85th percentile speed, the speed differential -- or range of travel speeds -- is reduced, so that more vehicles are traveling at near the same speed, with fewer vehicles traveling at extremely high or low speeds."
One reader pointed out that the fatality rate on Germany's Autobahn -- unregulated in many places -- is lower than on our interstates.
Another fired-up reader, Tom McCarey, who lives near Philadelphia but saw the column while visiting his aunt in Aurora, phoned in this tirade after returning home:
"Speed traps have no basis in highway safety whatsoever. It's a scam. These speed traps are just an extra tax."
He urged readers to check out the National Motorists Association and its Web site, www.motorists.org.
But I wouldn't recommend that. Why, they seem almost as radical as the Federal Highway Administration.
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