America’s roads are probably safer than ever before, new statistics show, and the remarkable success in slashing the highway death toll would be even more dramatic were it not for the push to raise speed limits to 65 miles per hour, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
Last year, 39,235 people were killed on the nation’s roads, fewer than in any year since 1961. And back then, there were fewer than half as many vehicles.
Before that, motor vehicle deaths in the U.S. had fluctuated from 20,000 to 40,000 a year since the mid-1920s. Last year’s death toll was about the same as 1937’s.
The trend is “amazing,” says a researcher for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Motor vehicle crashes are a major cause of death in this country, the leading killer of Americans ages 1 to 34.
Prime reasons for the decline, researchers say, are increased use of safety belts (most Americans now use them, and most states require them), less drunken driving and safer cars, especially those with air bags. In addition, a bad economy has probably cut into the amount of late-night joyriding by young men, the highest-risk group on the highways.
Adding to the trend is an enormous decline in motorcycle fatalities: down 46 percent from 1982 to 1992, partly because fewer people are driving motorcycles and partly because more states require cyclists to wear helmets. Deaths fell among bicyclists and pedestrians, too.
But there is a dent in this otherwise high-gloss picture: the 65 m.p.h. speed limit. Raising the speed limit, permitted by Congress in 1987 and promptly adopted by most states, costs an estimated 370 to 500 lives each year, several researchers say. It’s a small number considering the total, but more than were killed in the jumbo jet that exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland.
The 55 m.p.h. limit, imposed by the federal government in 1974 during the oil embargo, was not designed to save lives but fuel. Absent an energy crisis, one argument goes, the government has no business telling states how fast their residents may drive.
And there is the argument that U.S. interstate highways are the safest roads in the world, designed for driving 70 to 80 m.p.h. if the weather is good. Most traffic deaths occur on two- and four-lane roads with intersections and narrow shoulders, where it’s too easy to run a red light or drive off the road and slam into a tree.
Charles Lave, an economist at the University of California at Irvine who has studied the 65 m.p.h. speed limit, contends lives are saved as a result of the higher speed limit. When more people obey the law, he says, police can devote more of their time to discouraging drunken driving and promoting safety in other ways. Also, he says, more drivers are using interstates, getting them off more dangerous roadways.
On the other hand are traffic safety specialists who note that the 55-m.p.h. limit saved thousands of lives and that going back to 65 has cost dearly.
Speed increases the impact of a crash exponentially and steals precious seconds from drivers trying to avert a collision. Lawmakers may raise the limit in the state for personal, political or philosophical reasons, they say, but they should know the price.
A 1992 report to Congress from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration indicated that though more people obey a 65-m.p.h. limit than obeyed the 55-m.p.h. limit, three times as many motorists drive 70 m.p.h. or faster when the limit is raised to 65.
Says Chuck Hurley, vice president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which supports the 55-m.p.h. limit: “As long as somebody is willing to say it will cost lives, that is an honest statement. It’s the folks who say we can increase the speed limit with no increased risk that bother me.”
Richard F. Pain, transportation safety coordinator of the Transportation Research Board in Washington, doesn’t take a stand on limits, but says that at 65: “If anything goes wrong and you lose it or get into a skid and you’re in some kind of a crash, even if you don’t hit some other car and hit a cactus, at those kinds of speeds, you’ve probably got a fatality. If you were going 55, you might have time to recover, and it would just be a scary incident.
“At higher speeds, it’s much easier for any little thing to go wrong, and then, bingo.”
Pain’s group, part of the National Academy of Sciences, a nonprofit agency chartered by Congress, predicted that raising the speed limit to 65 would increase fatalities about 20 percent. He says they were right.
In states such as Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts, where adults are not required to wear seat belts, the increase has been higher, says Ralph Hingson, head of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department of the Boston University School of Public Health. The death rate on Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont roads rose 33 per-cent after the limit was raised, compared to drops of 50 percent on interstates where the lower limit was maintained and 29 per-cent on non-interstates, he said.
Hurley says he holds little hope that states that switched to 65 m.p.h. will return to 55 m.p.h. soon. But these states, he says, might erase their added death toll by banning radar detectors, increasing enforcement of 65-m.p.h. limits and enacting or stiffening safety belt laws.
Yossi Sheffi, director of the Center for Transportation Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says he does not doubt that driving faster is more dangerous. But he supports raising the limits to 65 in Massachusetts, which is considering the move. The highways are designed for driving fast. And generally, they are safe. “If one says we don’t want accidents, we can eliminate accidents by eliminating driving,” says Sheffi. “The question is: Why 55? Why not 15?
“You strike a balance, and it’s a philosophical question where you strike the balance, not a technical question. It has an element of society making a choice, not engineers making a choice. There has to be some balance between mobility, speed and risk.”
