Speed
kills… and I don’t just mean methamphetamines.
Speeding on our roads is linked to over 36,000 deaths
each year in the US. That’s almost 700
deaths a week… 100 a day.
If
a hundred people die in a plane crash, we go nuts. But if they die on our roads we see it as the
cost of doing business. As one blogger
put it… “it’s high time to stop sacrificing safety on the altar of speed”.
Most
of those 36,000 deaths are pedestrians or bicyclists. But tens of thousands of those deaths involve
the motorists in the cars tied to the “accidents” caused by distracted driving,
drink or drugs or fatigue.
Federal
statistics show if you’re hit by a vehicle going 20 mph you have a 90% chance
of surviving. If the car or truck is
going at 40 miles an hour your survival chances are just 10%. Speed kills.
So why are we all driving so fast?
Because
we have so far to travel and want to save time getting there. In Connecticut, our homes and our work are
far apart because we can’t afford (or don’t chose) to live closer to our
jobs. And either because we don’t want
to (or chose not to), we don’t take mass transit, preferring the cocoon of our
cars.
Sure,
seat belts in cars save lives… if you wear them. And air bags and other tech
in cars are helping us avoid many accidents. But the death toll keeps climbing,
especially where cars occupy the same driving space as bikes and pedestrians.
Consider
New York City.
In
1990 there were 700 traffic deaths in NYC.
But by 2018 that number had dropped to 202, thanks to “Vision
Zero”, Mayor de Blasio’s
ambitious, billion dollar plan to reduce road deaths to zero by 2024. More bike lanes, sidewalks and a 25 mph
city-wide speed limit have made a big difference. But this year saw an uptick in deaths, most
of them involving bicyclists driving on city streets lacking bike lanes.
In
Connecticut we have nowhere near the same density of urban traffic fighting for
space with folks on two feet or two wheels, but neither do we have sidewalks in
many towns. Or bike lanes. But we do have speeders, scofflaws and
insufficient enforcement.
When
it’s not crawling bumper-to-bumper, try driving 55 mph on the Merritt, I-95 or
I-84 and see what happens. As a State Trooper once told me as we cruised along at about 75 mph with the flow of
traffic, “I look for the driver likely to cause an accident” by weaving or not
signaling lane changes. Even those
enforcing our laws admit they don’t or can’t keep up with motorists’ need for
speed.
Even
when the cops do look for speeders, legal radar detectors and laser-jammers
help violators from getting caught.
Attempts to install red-light cameras in Connecticut have always failed
due to a combination of Big Brother paranoia and fears of the safety tech being
turned into an unending revenue spigot for Towns and cities.
Weather
conditions of course exacerbate the problem, especially with those driving the
tanks we call SUVs who think they are immune to the laws of physics.
Posted with permission of Hearst CT Media
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