THROUGHOUT 1995, RALPH NADER, Joan Claybrook, and the rest of the Washington “consumer advocacy” lobby spewed venom at congressional Republicans for the death and carnage that would result from the GOP’s budget and regulatory policies. On no issue was the hysteria more inflated than on what may have been the Republicans’ most popular accomplishment: repeal of the federal 55mile-per-hour speed limit.
“History will never forgive Congress for this assault on the sanctity of human life,” sermonized Nader, the nation’s selfappointed babysitter, in November 1995. Public Citizen’s Claybrook moaned that by raising the speed limit, Republicans “buried moral leadership in the rich opportunities afforded by political power.” On the Today show, Judith Stone, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, predicted “6,400 added highway fatalities a year and millions more injuries.” Federico Pena, then head of Clinton’s Department of Transportation, sanctimoniously declared: “Allowing speed limits to rise above 55 simply means that more Americans will die and be injured on our highways.”
Well, Nader, Stone, Claybrook, and Pena were wrong. Last month the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) disclosed the trafficfatality data for 1996, the first year the higher speed limits were in effect. Fatalities rose by a grand total of 109 — or 0.25 percent. Using the most meaningful comparison — traffic deaths per mile traveled — highway fatalities actually fell by more than 1 percent. And the absolute number of speeding-related deaths fell by 258. That’s right: Higher speed limits corresponded with greater highway safety.
Even more surprising, in the 27 states where the higher speed limits had been in effect for at least six months, highway fatalities were virtually unchanged. California raised its speed limit to 70, and fatalities fell to their lowest level since 1961. In a few states where the speed limit was raised to 75 mph, notably Texas, fatal crashes increased by a disturbing 18 percent. But in six of the eight states that adopted a 75 mph speed limit, there were fewer, not more, fatal crashes.
And then there is the amazing case of libertarian Montana — where federal speed limits are about as popular as gun-control laws and federal Fish and Wildlife Service bureaucrats. Snobbish East Coasters, who still think of big- sky country as filled with witless cowboys, were aghast to learn in late 1995 that Montana would go to no daytime speed limit at all, opting instead for a ” reasonable and prudent” standard. National safety experts gloomily predicted that Montana motorists would have to equip their cars with drag parachutes and that morticians would see a steep rise in their business. Humorist Tony Kornheiser of the Washington Post had a field day writing about the amateur Al Unsers who would take to the speedways in “Big Die Country.” ” Letting people drive as fast as they want isn’t about individual freedom,” he wrote, “it’s about population control. It’s about thinning the herd.”
Guess what? NHTSA figures indicate a 6 percent decline in fatalities on the Montana highways in 1996, though also a slight increase in accidents in the first six months of 1997.
Now, let us imagine for a moment that highway deaths had surged by anywhere near the preposterous 6,400 that the fear-mongers predicted. Across the nation, newspaper headlines would have screamed: “Republican Congress Causes Slaughter on the Roads.” Dan Rather would have led with the morbid story on the evening news. Ralph Nader would have held a wake/press conference with scrolls bearing the names of those killed or maimed thanks to the callous disregard for “the sanctity of human life” of the Republican Congress.
Instead the unexpected good news about traffic fatalities got a yawn from the media, with the exception of CNN, which aired a superb story taking “U.S. highway-safety experts” to task for false predictions of doom. ABC, CBS, and NBC ignored the NHTSA report. Newspaper coverage was sparse. Only USA Today published a major story, but its headline read “Seat Belts Counteract Higher Speed Limits” (even though, according to a NHTSA spokesman, “there’s no real evidence that seat-belt usage has gone up much in the last few years”) .
Later this fall, NHTSA will release a $ 200,000 study mandated by Congress on the effects of the higher speed limits on highway safety. The study may very well conclude that on the specific highways where speed limits were raised, when other safetyrelated factors are controlled for, higher speed limits did coincide with increased injuries. But what is already certain is that the “health and safety” lobby was blowing smoke with its mantra of 6,400 more deaths.
Where, then, did the 6,400-deaths estimate come from? “That figure was a myth from the start,” says Jim Baxter of the National Motorists Association. ” Advocates of 55 simply ignored all contrary evidence on speed limits and safety.” The speed-control lobby say they got the number from NHTSA. But in a memo on the subject, NHTSA says it “never issued a forecast on the impact of the repeal of [the 55 mph speed limit]. . . . Some groups have been attributing forecasts to the Department. The 6,400 deaths are not projections. The figure shows the magnitude of our highway safety problem — if we saw a 30 percent increase in fatalities.” And NHTSA conceded that it could not “prove scientifically” that higher speed limits would cause a 30 percent increase in deaths. In other words, the figure was pure conjecture, an unrealistic high-end estimate — yet the speed-control lobby paraded it about as incontrovertible fact.
Moreover, even back in 1995, there was all sorts of contrary scientific evidence to refute the number. The Federal Highway Administration’s own 1992 study of 100 sites in 22 states had found that “raising the posted speed limits did not increase accidents.” More to the point, after 1987 when the speed limit was raised to 65 on some rural highways, fatalities on those roads actually fell from 2,700 to 2,500 per year.
Another member of the “speed kills” coalition making hysterical claims back in 1995 was the autoinsurance industry. Big companies like Geico, Hartford, and Kemper opposed repealing 55. The week before Bill Clinton (reluctantly) signed the higher speed limits into law, David F. Snyder, spokesman for the American Insurance Association, warned that they would “add $ 20 billion a year in costs to taxpayers and insurance policyholders.” Just the opposite happened. Data obtained from the National Association of Independent Insurers shows that in 1996 autoinsurance premiums fell by 2 percent — the first decline in more than a decade. The Wall Street Journal reports that auto- insurance companies like Allstate have had banner profits this year — a performance hardly consistent with surging traffic accidents and claims.
One reason the fatality and accident rates have not risen with higher speed limits is that an estimated 70 percent of highway drivers routinely exceeded the 55 mph limit. The major effect of the 1974 oil-crisis-era speed limit (enacted, believe it or not, to save gas) was to create a nation of scofflaws. For the 20 years it was in effect, “double-nickel” was America’s most openly disregarded law since Prohibition. It spawned whole new multi-million-dollar industries in CB radios and radar detectors or “fuzz busters.” In the 1980s, Arizona and Maryland even lost federal highway money for their routine noncompliance with 55. In Montana the legislature, to protest the federal speed-limit law, imposed a $ 5.00 maximum penalty for speeding, which became a kind of toll for driving 75 mph across that barren 560-mile-long state. Legend has it that troopers, after issuing a $ 5.00 ticket, would tell drivers, “Hold on to that receipt, bud. It’s good for the whole day.”
So far the evidence suggests that Americans have not responded to higher speed limits by converting the highways into stretches of the Indianapolis 500. Average highway speeds have risen only by an estimated 2 mph on highways with the new limits. “The main issue for our members was simply having the right to drive at safe speeds legally and not have to worry constantly about getting pulled over,” insists the National Motorists Association’s Jim Baxter. Most American drivers would no doubt agree.
The speed-control freaks may not think that faster travel is worth the slightly greater risk of injury; but the vast majority of American motorists have indicated by their driving that they think it is. Besides, some of these same opponents of higher speed limits advocate raising Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards that push Americans into smaller, less safe cars and unarguably increase highway deaths. So much for the “sanctity of human life.”
Especially out West where highways streak across endless, sparsely populated spaces, the tortoise pace of 55 mph became an irritating symbol of Washington’s meddling. For most members of Congress, repealing the federal speed-limit law was strictly a freedom and federalism issue. For once, states’ rights prevailed.
The health-and-safety fanatics lost because, as Rep. Bud Shuster, head of the House Transportation Committee and himself an opponent of higher speed limits, put it, “They had no credibility, with their wild statements.” So now that the “consumer advocates” have been proven wrong, have they recanted their claims? Hardly. When informed of the improved highway-safety record and asked to account for her prediction of 6,400 deaths, Judith Stone told USA Today, “We never said it was going to happen overnight.” She seemed almost disappointed.
by Stephen Moore; Stephen Moore is director of fiscal policy studies at the Cato Institute
