If you thought the 55-mph “National Maximum Speed Limit” (NMSL)
was a dead letter — gone and over with — maybe you better grab a
chair and sit down. There’s a movement afoot to restore this
Carter-era tool for mulcting motorists — under the guise of
“protecting public health” — and by misrepresenting the truth
about the safety of America’s highways.
An agglutination of bureaucrats calling itself the Governors
Highway Safety Association — “representing federally funded state
highway offices nationwide” — is beating the kettles about what it
claims is an “epidemic of speeding” (that is, driving faster than
55-mph) and a supposed uptick in traffic fatalities caused by
driving faster than 55.
According to a recent GHSA press release: “Since Congress
repealed the national speed limit in 1995, much of the public has
perceived speed limits as merely guidelines and not the law.”
Abandonment of “Drive 55” has fostered dangerous attitudes toward
speed limits in general, the group says — and that as a result,
the roads are more dangerous than they used to be. Kathyryn
Swanson, chairman of the GHSA, claims that “speeding is not getting
the attention it deserves on the national level despite the
critical role it plays in traffic deaths, one of the nation’s most
serious health problems.” Translation: Bring back 55 and break out
the radar guns and ticket pads.
But leaving aside the garbled thinking that equates the act of
driving faster than a number on a sign with physical illnesses like
cancer or diabetes — a verbal shuck and jive of Clintonian
stupendousness — there’s absolutely no support for GHSA’s
implication that because people now routinely get to drive faster
than 55-mph without having to worry about being waylaid and
ticketed for “speeding,” the roads are therefore less safe.
The federal government uses a mathematical formula to calculate
and express highway fatalities in relation to the total mileage
driven annually by the nation’s “motor pool” — all the cars on the
road and how far they’re driven. This is expressed as deaths per
100 million Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT). In 2002 — the most
recent year for which data is available — there were approximately
1.52 deaths nationwide for every 100 million Vehicle Miles
Traveled. That figure is unchanged from 2001 — and represents the
lowest fatality rate per VMT in decades.
But here’s where it — and the Governors Highway Safety
Association — gets tricky.
In 2002, there were 42,850 motor vehicle fatalities in this
country — the highest number since 1990. This figure is the one
being waved around like a bloody shirt to gin up support for
lowering speed limits — and for aggressive enforcement of existing
ones.
So what’s the catch?
Go back and read the last couple paragraphs carefully. Yes, more
people were killed in motor vehicle accidents in 2002 than in 1990.
But — and it’s a pretty big “but” — the overall fatality
rate per 100 million vehicle miles traveled has not gone
up at all. It has stayed the same.
What this means is that while there were indeed more fatal
accidents in ‘02, there were also more cars on the road — and
those cars were racking up more miles — making it a statistical
wash. Claiming that the roads are less safe because there were more
reported deaths without factoring in the increase in traffic and
the miles being driven is massively dishonest. It’s like saying
that America is “disease ridden” — relative to Switzerland —
because more people have heart disease here than there. It’s true,
of course, that there are more cardiac cases in a nation of 300
million than in Switzerland, a country of 15 million — but what
matters is the cardiac rate in relation to the population.
Numbers can’t be considered in isolation.
In fact, since the total number of highway deaths per VMT has
remained about the same (or declined) for the past several years —
while the number of cars on the road and the annual mileage being
driven have increased quite significantly — it can be very
credibly argued that the overall safety picture is actually better.
We’ve got more cars out there being driven by more people for
greater distances — and no increase in the death rate.
But you won’t hear that from the Governor’s association.
