Increase enforcement along with speed limit
“I Can’t Drive 55” is a thundering Sammy Hagar hit from 1984 that still pops up occasionally on classic-rock radio stations, and it seems to be the credo of all too many drivers on area highways.
The speed-limit sign says 55 mph? Heck with it, set the cruise-control for 77 mph and those slowpokes ahead of me better get out of my way.
We will concede the 55 mph speed limit seems like a quaint anachronism of the energy-crisis epoch of the 1970s. Vehicles nowadays have better, safer designs along with accessories like air bags and back-up cameras that help minimize the possibility of accidents and severe injuries. After a century of people getting behind the wheel, we’ve learned more and more about how to design roads to make them safer. Traveling at 65 mph on most interstate highways in decent weather and with no other hazards is probably a safe proposition.
The problem, however, as anyone who has been out on any of our local highways realizes, is the speed limit is rarely adhered to. If you travel north on Interstate 79 between Washington and Pittsburgh, a driver actually traveling 55 mph on that hilly, winding stretch is a rarity. Something like 68 mph is about the standard, with plenty of vehicles zipping along much faster. Most drivers feel like they can get away with it, and the reality is most of them do.
That’s what makes the decision by Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission to raise the speed limit to 70 mph on a 33-mile portion of I-79 that extends from the south junction with Interstate 70 to the West Virginia border a source of concern. Drivers who might very well have been traveling at 70 mph all along now might feel less compunction about pressing the accelerator down a little bit more.
Other highways in the commonwealth, including 400 miles of the Pennsylvania Turnpike where the speed limit had not already been set at 70 mph, are also seeing an increase in their speed limits. Both PennDOT and the Turnpike Commission decided to give the increases the green light after studies on a 100-mile portion of the turnpike and on parts of Interstates 80 and 380 found increasing the speed limit had no effect on the number of accidents that occurred.
Nevertheless, a study released last month by Insurance Institute for Highway Safety estimated, between 1993 and 2013, when speed limits started to creep up nationally, somewhere around 33,000 more people died on our roads as a result of accidents than they otherwise would have had speed limits not increased. Granted, we have seen fatality rates decline over the last couple of decades, but the study contends the decline would have been even greater had speed limits not gone up.
Charles M. Farmer, the vice president of research for the institute, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “The high speed limits are negating the other advances we have made in safety to a high degree. People don’t stick to the speed limit. If they were driving 10 miles above the speed limit, they will still drive 10 miles above it when the limit is raised.”
As the speed limits head skyward, we hope enforcement will be correspondingly stepped up. That seems to be the best way, and perhaps the only way, to ensure 70 mph remains the actual speed limit, and not something much faster – and more deadly.