VOL. 6, NO. 12
MAR. 19, 1965

Traffic Tickets Usually Go to Safest Drivers
Contrary to common belief, fast drivers are not the worst menace on the road. Auto deaths are not increasing; the annual death toll has dropped several times during the past three decades. In January of: 1964 Cook County's fatalities were 32. This January the number had decreased to 17.

Safety campaigns today tell the dangers of high speed driving and that the solution is to lower speed limits. By scaring the timid, campaigns only add another factor to the highway problem. In fact, lowering speed limits tends to induce accidents, not prevent them. These disclosures make a mockery of the nation's speed laws, speed limits, and speed enforcement, under which some three million Americans were arrested for speeding last year. Tickets, under our present system usually go to the safest drivers.

The logic to this seemingly confusing fact is simple: a sustained high-speed traffic flow is far safer than a shifting current of fast and slow moving vehicles. It's best to maintain a speed limit which acknowledges most motorists' desire to get where they're going in a shorter time.

A recent study by a group from Harvard looked into an accident that the police believed was caused by		 "speeding" and by drinking. There were actually four causes of the accident that killed two people. Maintenance failure, inadequate driving skills, inadequate highway environment, and lack of restraining devices were the actual factors.

This also confirmed a typical Harvard finding: the group has never investigated a multiple death accident without finding that at least half the deaths could have been prevented with seat belts. Yet only a small minority of Americans use them. Like most of the accidents studied at Harvard, this one had not one cause, but many. None of them was speed.

The solution to our driving problem is a complex one. It's not reckless driving and speed that cause persons between 16 and 24 years of age to be involved in 50 per cent of all accidents. High school drivers' training courses would eliminate most accidents caused by inadequate driving skills.

Howard Pyle, President of the National Safety Council, has said, "Speed by itself has decidedly been overemphasized as a major cause of traffic deaths." Americans will have to dismiss the comfortable, but inadequate, myth that "speeders" and "reckless madmen" are the principal cause of accidents.