Speeds increase fatalities do not; NHTSA warning fails to pan out
June 14, 1999
By Henry Payne
Copyright 1999 Scripps Howard News Service

Washington, DC - In 1995, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration predicted that repeal of the federally mandated 55-mph speed limit would result in an additional 6,400 highway deaths each year.

The prediction was about 6,400 deaths too high.
This month, NHTSA announced that fatality rates on U.S. highways had fallen to 41,480 in 1998 from 41,817 in 1995, even as every state but Hawaii scrapped the 55-mph speed limit. For the third year in a row, the fatality rate per 100 million passenger miles dropped _ from 1.8 in 1995 to 1.6 in 1998, a record low.

State highway engineers say the reduction in fatalities is evidence that the 55-mph mandate, enacted in 1974, was ill-considered, and states' rights advocates criticize the agency for politicizing the 1995 debate with apocalyptic predictions of carnage on the highways.

"There was never any factual basis for the 6,400 figure," says Jim Baxter of the National Motorists Association in Waunakee, Wis., which has long opposed the 55-mph mandate. "It was just an alarmist statistic. Speed in and of itself does not cause accidents until it exceeds the design of the highway."

"The new fatality numbers are certainly great news," says NHTSA spokesman Tim Hurd. But he notes that fatalities on roads with posted speed limits of 55 or greater increased from 22,404 in 1997 to 23,272 in 1998. That number, he says, affirms agency fears that higher speed limits "are not a good idea. When you go faster, it takes longer to react."

As for the agency's 1995 prediction of 6,400 more deaths, Hurd says it was "just a worst-case scenario."

But in November 1995, the 6,400 figure was the centerpiece of a public campaign by NHTSA and the insurance industry to oppose a bill in Congress that would allow states to set their own speed limits. Safety activists warned of a blood bath.

On NBC's "Today Show," Judith Stone, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, a lobbying group for the insurance industry, said higher speed limits would cause "6,400 added highway fatalities a year and millions more injuries."

After President Clinton reluctantly signed the legislation, Ralph Nader concluded, "History will never forgive him and his allies in Congress for this assault on the sanctity of human life."

In addition to the record low fatality rate, continuing a steady downward trend from 6.1 deaths per 100 million passenger miles in 1956 when construction began on the interstate highway system, NHTSA's 1998 report also shows record lows for injuries and crashes.

In Colorado, where highway fatalities have fallen by 11 percent since the state hiked its speed limit to 75 in 1996, Colorado Department of Transportation engineer John Muscatell says the problem with the 55-mph limit was that it "caused a greater differential in speed."

On highways designed for 65-75 mph, Muscatell says the 55 limit is artificially low, thus widening the speed "band" and increasing the incidence of rear-end crashes and side swipes. "I want to see everyone at the same speed. I want to keep everyone within a 10 mile per hour band of each other," says Muscatell.

Ray Bass, chief engineer for Alabama's Department of Transportation, agrees that speed differential is the more important factor for safe highways. He says Alabama sets speed limits according to the "85 percentile rule," or that speed under which 85 percent of cars travel.

"If you drove 55 mph, you got run over," he says. As a result, Alabama raised its speed limit to 70 and its fatality rate has remained unchanged since 1995.

Colorado's Muscatell believes NHTSA oversimplifies the debate when it puts so much emphasis on speed. He says a variety of factors account for Colorado's declining death rate, including tougher enforcement of drunk-driving laws and a crackdown on seat-belt use. "Passengers wearing seat belts have increased from 50 to 65 percent in the last four to five years," he says.

Safety activist Stone, however, is not willing to concede that NHTSA's 6,400 fatality prediction was in error.

She says the estimate assumed that "every state would raise their speed limits on every highway, and that did not happen." She points to studies done by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety that found that on highways with higher speed limits, fatalities increased by 12 percent in 1996 and 15 percent in 1997.

Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., a proponent of states' rights legislation, says such interpretations of the data are flawed.

In a study of the declining fatality rates, Moore writes that "one impact of raising speed limits on highways is to reduce the travel times on those roads, thus drawing traffic from the more dangerous secondary roads." As a result, he concludes, higher speed limits in many states result in a few more deaths on interstates, "but far fewer deaths on statistically more dangerous back roads."

He also notes that in the 11 states that have posted speed limits higher than 70, fatality rates have actually declined faster than the rates in states that have not.

Asked if Colorado would ever consider lowering its 75 mph speed limit to 55 again, transportation engineer Muscatell says: "Whatever we're doing is working. We're not going to change a thing."