Road Rules: Speedy drivers

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This week I’m going to respond to a recurring question that comes up when I talk with people about traffic and traffic safety: Why are so many drivers speeding?

Talking about speeding is actually kind of tricky, because we don’t all agree on what it means. So many traffic violations are, for the most part, binary. Either you’re wearing your seatbelt or you’re not. You’re holding your phone or you’re not. You have a driver license or you don’t. The light is either red or it’s not. You get the idea. Speeding is a little different. Yes, there is a posted maximum speed limit, and you’re either over it or you’re not. But both culturally and from an enforcement standpoint, we tend to approach speeding as a gradient rather than an absolute.

Here’s what I mean: I’ll assume you consider yourself a law-abiding person. If you’ve ever looked down at your speedometer and noticed that you were driving 62 mph in a 60 mph zone, did you feel guilt or the urge to hit the brakes? Unless the speed check was the result of seeing a patrol car, probably not. But there is a speed at which you’d feel like you’ve crossed a limit. The comedian George Carlin nailed our cultural attitude toward speeding when he said, “Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”

The same goes with enforcement. I recall a conversation I had with a traffic officer who said, “We’re not looking to nail you for two miles an hour over the speed limit. We’re talking about the goofballs that are driving like, you know, NASCAR.” I’m sure you’ll get his attention before you hit NASCAR speeds, but you get the point.

In that context, let’s talk about drivers who respect the speed limit. (“Respect the speed limit” is not a legal term. As the law says about the posted speed limit, “… no person shall drive on a highway at a speed in excess of such maximum limits.”) By “respect the speed limit” I mean that drivers are traveling at a speed that other road users and the people enforcing traffic laws don’t find concerning. As an example, I’ve never heard of someone getting a ticket for doing less than 5 mph over the speed limit in a 50 mph zone, so I’d say that falls within the window of respecting the speed limit. Respecting the speed limit may look different in other situations, like a school zone.

Last summer I borrowed a radar gun from a local law enforcement agency and measured the speeds of 158 cars on a straight, flat stretch of road with a 50 mph speed limit. In this case study of one, 92 percent of drivers traveled within five mph of the speed limit or slower.

You don’t just have to rely on my single experiment. The Washington Department of Transportation tracks vehicle speeds on 160 highways all over Washington. I haven’t checked them all, but on most of the highways I looked at, around 85 to 90 percent of drivers were within five mph of the speed limit.

Most Washington drivers respect the speed limit; that’s the conclusion that the data support. It’s not that so many drivers are speeding; it’s that the 10 to 15 percent who do speed are involved in 30 percent of fatal crashes in Washington. Many wise people have said that your habits determine your future. That’s certainly true for the few who choose to speed.

Doug Dahl is a manager with the Washington Traffic Safety Commission, Region 11 and publishes TheWiseDrive.com.

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