New Study: Higher speed limits cost lives -- with commentary by Jan Lundberg
by Drive 55 Leaders
20 July 2009
A unique, authoritative national study has quantified the huge extra
number of highway crash deaths since the national speed limit of 55
miles per hour was trashed. The lead author gutsily compares this to
the fraction of people killed in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. First, a
short pertinent story by Jan Lundberg:
"Captain Kirk, it is illogical for a 4,000 pound machine to carry
around a 150 pound creature as a matter of habit." Thus spake Spock,
who provoked this question: Is U.S. society anti-life, as in a
science fiction movie? Consider the plausibility of a Star Trek
episode in which The Enterprise's crew land on a world who's most
powerful nation brags about valuing life more than other nations --
but then needlessly permits highway death, toxification of the food
and water, and altering the atmosphere to destroy the climate. Our
rational space travelers scratch their heads and speculate that
enemies have forced this state of affairs on the planet.
It is finally revealed by a homeless, car-less native to Captain Kirk
that profit and blindly following the elite's wishes are really what
rule the strange land. Finally Spock chimes in with, "This is clearly
a mutation of the civilization that takes over when people give up on
nature." "Spock, you're right. Beam us up Scotty!"
Peak Oil Review's editor Tom Whipple has said for years that we'll
know oil is taken seriously when the speed limit is reinstated back to
55 miles per hour. Besides the death and additional pollution (the
optimum speed of a car is about 45 MPH), there's the urban sprawl
destroying the farmland, the diseases from motor exhaust killing about
100,000 U.S. citizens annually, contribution to oil wars, and the
sedentary lifestyle causing heart fatalities and medical costs many
times over the number directly killed in crashes. In 2008 crash
deaths were "only" 37,313 -- the lowest level since 1961 due to the
recession and $4-a-gallon gasoline.
Dr. McCoy says upon his shipmates' energizing, "So, Jim and Spock, how
did those poor, confused people like your suggestion to reverse
economic growth and go back the elegant Victorian days of bicycles and
sailing ships?" "Bones, we were about to be locked away and forced to
take anti-depressant drugs made at oil refineries. So we put a vial
of that virus from Ecotopia into the water supply and escaped! Maybe
even the Drive 55 Leaders will succumb."
Drive 55 Conservation Project
by Tim Castleman
The repeal of the federal speed control law in 1995 has resulted in an
increase in road fatalities and injuries, according to researchers at
the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health.
The research is published in the September issue of the American
Journal of Public Health. It is the first long-term study to evaluate
the impact of repealing the National Maximum Speed Law on road
fatalities and injuries in fatal crashes between 1995 and 2005.
The law, which restricted the maximum speed limit to 55 mph on all
interstate roads in the United States, was initiated in 1974 in
response to the oil embargo and had an immediate impact.
"During the first year there was a drop of almost 17 percent in
fatalities after the speed laws were reduced to 55 miles per hour,"
said Lee Friedman, assistant research professor of environmental and
occupational health sciences at UIC and lead author of the study.
The law was modified in 1987 and allowed states to raise the legal
speed limits to 65 mph on some interstates. In 1995, the federally
mandated 55 mph speed law was revoked, allowing states to set their
own speed laws.
"The primary finding of our study was that over the 10-year period
following the repeal of National Maximum Speed Law, there were
approximately 12,500 deaths due to the increased speed limits across
the U.S.," said Friedman.
The researchers used a mixed-regression model to take into account
when the speed limits changed in each state and the different
characteristics within and between each state, such as car volume
density, population density, variations in fleet sizes, the types of
vehicles on the road, vehicle quality (newer vehicles versus older
vehicles), as well as driver characteristics.
The primary flaw of previous studies has been that they have only
focused on selected states or regions, said Friedman, or they have
used a simple analysis to look at before versus after implementation
of the law during a very short period of time.
The researchers suggest that policy makers reevaluate national policy
on speed and road safety and consider reduced speed limits and
improved enforcement with speed camera networks to save lives.
Speed camera programs have been implemented in England, France and
Australia and have shown immediate reductions in motor vehicle crash
fatalities, said Friedman.
"This is a failed policy because it was, in essence, an experiment
over 10 years. People assumed that increasing the speed limit would
not have an impact," said Friedman. "We've shown that something has
happened and it's quite dramatic."
Friedman uses the example of the 3,000 people who died in the
September 11th terrorist attacks.
"That tragic event has led to a whole foreign policy," he said. "We
estimate that approximately 12,500 people died as a result of a policy
to deregulate speed enforcement -- four times what happened on
September 11th -- and yet changing the policy to reduce speed limits
may be very difficult."
###
Friedman's co-authors are Donald Hedeker, UIC School of Public Health,
and Elihu Richter, Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
Photographs of Lee Friedman are available upon request.
UIC ranks among the nation's top 50 universities in federal research
funding and is Chicago's largest university with 25,000 students,
12,000 faculty and staff, 15 colleges and the state's major public
medical center. A hallmark of the campus is the Great Cities
Commitment, through which UIC faculty, students and staff engage with
community, corporate, foundation and government partners in hundreds
of programs to improve the quality of life in metropolitan areas
around the world.
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