NATIONAL MOTORISTS ASSOCIATION


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Hello Massachusettsians,

The summer's end is here and so is another look at motorists issues in the Commonwealth.


The new Sagamore Bridge

This $58.2 million "flyover" was supposed to be the solution to the rotary-caused delays that has plagued generations of vacationgoers. When the state officials were selling the project to us two years ago, they claimed: 'The improvements are expected to reduce travel times from just north of the bridge to Route 6 on the Cape Cod side from 27 minutes to 6 minutes.'

It turns out that as Cape-bound traffic approaches the bridge, the road now drops from two lanes to one. And sure enough - as every driver knows - lane-drops create traffic jams. 'Ease of getting on and off Cape Cod was fourth or fifth on the list,' announced a state bureaucrat earlier this year. Hmm. For some reason the rest of us thought traffic was the issue...


Insurance

Have you ever wondered why GEICO, Progressive and Allstate have been running ads in MA, even though none of them are writing auto insurance here? (I guess that makes "Allstate" an oxymoron... )

Anyhow, the reason they are not in MA is because - according to them - they wouldn't be making enough money here. I bet that these and the lesser companies behind de-regulation of the MA auto insurance rates are not spending millions on advertising simply because they'd like to provide "greater choice and savings for consumers," as they claim. They are using New Jersey as an example of a state that de-regulated recently and saw a drop in insurance rates. However they are not telling us Massachusetts saw an identical drop last year as well.

Speaking of insurance: In March, Gov. Patrick assembled a panel to make recommendations regarding the auto insurance rates. Since the panel consisted of only insurance industry reps and generic consumer advocacy groups, among their recommendations was stricter enforcement of traffic laws, which any motoring public representative would have had opposed.


Statistics are in

Traffic deaths in the United States fell to their lowest total in five years in 2006, and the rate of deaths per miles traveled dropped to a record low, federal safety officials announced.

Highway crashes killed 42,642 people last year. That compares with the 43,510 who died in 2005, according to the agency's latest figures. The fatality rate of 1.42 deaths per 100 million miles traveled in 2006 was the lowest rate ever recorded by the Department of Transportation. In Massachusetts, fatalities went down from 441 to 430 (a 2.5% drop) and our fatality rate of of 0.7 deaths per 100 million miles traveled in 2006 remained the lowest rate in the nation.

At the same time, hospital-acquired infections caused an estimated 90,000 deaths last year nationwide. Perhaps the most effective way of reducing the number of victims of automobile accidents is to get the health-care professionals who take care of them to wash their own hands better...

So watch out for those speed traps out there. If you fall in and you happen to be a teenager, you will get screwed. On the other hand, if you are pregnant you'll probably get off with a warning. Because this is about safety. Not.

Ivan
MA State Chapter Coordinator


P.S. Here is note from John Carr, our State Chapter Activist:

According to a report in the Boston Globe, Massachusetts Highway Department officials are still waiting for approval from the State Police before raising the speed limit to 65 on the rebuilt Route 3 from Burlington to New Hampshire. The department's speed study found traffic speed over 70 miles per hour. There is no safety or engineering reason to keep the speed limit so low to make over 95% of drivers in violation. A reasonable speed limit would be 75 or 80, not 55. Members should write to Governor Patrick asking him to overrule the police attempt to ensure that they have an excuse to ticket any driver on the road.

Last spring I drove through the town of Lancaster comparing posted speed limits to authorized speed limits. Most of the town's speed limits were posted without the legally required state approval, either lower than the authorized speed limit or without authorization to post any speed limit signs at all. Letters to the town and MassHighway seem to have started some action -- at least one of the illegal limits has been fixed, and the police chief said he would look into doing new speed studies. As of late August the speed limit on Route 117 west of town is still posted 5 miles per hour below the legal speed limit.

On the other hand, the Route 146 work zone in Worcester remains a speed trap. One of the illegal speed limit signs was removed, however some still remain -- the posted 50 mile per hour zone southbound does not legally exist. MassHighway would rather not spend the energy to determine a reasonable speed limit in this area until construction is complete. Meanwhile, State Police are more than willing to ticket for exceeding an unreasonable speed limit.

John
MA State Chapter Activist

8/07

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