Speed Kills— But You Can Help Stop It

“You can’t tackle our rising epidemic of roadway deaths without tackling speeding,” said NTSB Acting Chairman Robert L. Sumwalt, “and you can’t tackle speeding without the most current research. Speed kills.” Photo: Minnesoto DOT/Julie Bottolfson

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A new report issued by the National Transportation Safety Board points an unwavering finger at the deadly toll that speeding by motorists keeps taking on our highways.

In its study, NTSB found that speeding was linked to 112,580 fatalities resulting from highway crashes of passenger cars between 2005 and 2014. In that same period, only car crashes involving alcohol consumption killed more persons… 368 more to be exact, for a ghastly total of 112,948. In no regard, then, is there any good news here.

But the thing about speeding— and the board gets right to this point in a press release announcing the actions it is taking to hopefully reduce this cause of carnage— is that to speed is not socially taboo. That is to say, there is no stigma to getting caught speeding, unlike with driving drunk or drug-impaired or perhaps, for that matter, driving while fatigued or distracted.

The other thing about speeding, so it occurs to me anyway, is that intentional speeding is not necessarily driven by other factors. Yes, drivers who are impaired by consuming alcohol or drugs or who are distracted by texting etc. might well speed (I’m assuming that when tired behind the wheel— as I have been more times than I care to admit– drivers tend to poke along or drift off the road rather than accelerate much, but correct me if I’m wrong). But the speeding driver is more than likely not to pull all the other fatal stunts that a drunk or drugged or distracted or fatigued driver might inadvertently pull before causing a crash.

My point being that if …Read the rest of this story

Source:: http://www.truckinginfo.com/blog/passing-zone/story/2017/08/speed-kills-nearly-as-many-as-drunk-driving.aspx