Session Date: August 17, 2005
Annual Meeting Session Summary: Speed and Traffic Safety
By Guy Bergstrom
Communications Officer, Washington House Democratic Caucus
This summary is provided for information purposes only. NCSL does not endorse any views it contains.
SEATTLE – Piles of statistics and the laws of physics prove that speed is not your friend when it comes to a traffic accident.
There is a surprise in the numbers, though: being too slow is also dangerous.
That’s what Richard Retting, of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, told state legislators and legislative staff at Speed and Traffic Safety, one of the 150 sessions that took place this week at the National Conference of State Legislatures' 2005 Annual Meeting. Retting is one of two panelists who took part in the session.
“When drivers go much faster or much slower, there’s a big increase in crash risk,” Retting said.
That’s because many crashes are at intersections and involve slowed or stopped vehicles, Retting said. That conclusion came from two landmark studies in the ‘60s, using data from the ‘50s, that found a U-shaped curve between speed and crashes.
Retting described a J-shaped curve of the relationship between speed and the risk of injury or death. The chance of an injury crash or fatal wreck goes up exponentially with speed.
When the national speed limit of 55 mph went into effect in 1974, he said, traffic fatalities dropped 16 percent. Over the years, an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 lives were saved.
In 1987, the national speed limit was partially repealed to 65 mph, leading to a 48 percent increase in drivers exceeding 65 mph.
In 1995, the national speed limits disappeared, boosting the percentage of cars going faster than 70 mph by 15 to 50 percent and increasing the speed variation in traffic by 5 to 15 percent. That bigger difference between the slowest drivers and the fastest drivers is dangerous, Retting said. The mix of faster drivers with slower drivers means more congestion, slower roads and more wrecks.
However, the number of police officers hasn’t kept up with the number of cars on the road. To keep up, other nations and states have started using automated speed cameras that hand out tickets.
In British Columbia, these cameras cut speed-related crashes by 25 percent and ambulance trips by crash victims by 11 percent. In Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, an experiment showed an 86 percent drop in the number of cars going faster than 11 mph over the speed limit in D.C. locations with speed cameras compared to similar spots in Baltimore without cameras.
Former state trooper Lowell Porter, the other panelist at the session, pointed out that traffic crashes are the No. 1 cause of death for people ages 3 to 33, with speed a factor in 31 percent of all fatal crashes. That’s 13,380 lives lost nationally and a cost to society of $40 billion.
Porter is now the director of Washington state’s Traffic Safety Commission. He said unless trends change, speed will overtake drunk driving as the leading cause of fatal crashes.
The stereotype is that most fatal crashes are on interstate highways, Porter said. The truth is 86 percent of fatal wrecks are elsewhere: state highways, county roads or city streets.
Porter said Washington state has had success with unmarked police cars specifically watching for aggressive drivers. Counties are also adopting the methods pioneered by the State Patrol and they’re finding that this is most effective when it’s based on measurable data: specific cars and drivers, times, locations and dates.
Automated enforcement with speed cameras, Porter said, is another tool that Washington state is starting to use. A new law (Senate Bill 5060) gives local governments the power to use these cameras at stoplights to catch red-light runners, in school zones and at railroad crossings.
By law, the cameras don’t take pictures of the front of the car and the driver, he said, but of the rear of the car and the license plate. Unlike a ticket written by a police officer or state trooper, the speed cameras produce traffic infractions, paid by the car’s registered owner instead of the driver. The infraction is processed like a parking ticket and doesn’t go on the driver’s record.
Porter said barriers to speed-camera systems include the start-up cost, and the public perception that “Big Brother is watching you.” The cameras use a type of light that doesn’t have a visible flash when it takes pictures at night, he said, so some drivers don’t know they got caught until they get a ticket in the mail.
Overall, Porter said, speed cameras have been proven effective at reducing crashes and fatalities, increasing the ability of law enforcement to keep the roads safe without increasing personnel costs.
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