The Governors Highway Safety Association, “the states’ voice on highway safety”, suggests that the national speed limit repeal has caused more people to die. Acidman calls bullsh*t. I tend to agree.

The data they’re listing doesn’t seem to take into account any increases in traffic, it merely compares numbers for the years 1994 and 2004. I don’t see any comparisons state-to-state. Does West Virginia, with it’s 70 mph speed limit on interstates, have a higher or lower rate of accidents (per capita) than, say, Virginia, with its 65 mph limit? Is the rate of fatalities significantly different?

What about those states where the limits didn’t change? The overall speed limit in Virginia is the same as it was before the national goverment lifted its limit. How do the number of fatalities there compare to the numbers ten years ago? Have they dropped significantly (as the GHSA says they should’ve done)?

Now, I admit that none of the statistics I’ve listed mean much more than the data the GHSA actually shows; highway fatalities involve a lot of variables; tracking the effect of just one of those variables is difficult. Still, their data leaves a lot of questions that could be answered fairly easily, and I’m wondering why they don’t show any of it.

Still, my big issue here isn’t the data used, it’s the sheer stupidity of going to the federal government for something that’s not a national issue. When the national speed limit was established (in the ’70s?), the motive wasn’t to save lives, it was to conserve fuel as we faced an oil crisis. That was a national issue, and the federal government reacted (whether it did so rightly is another discussion). In the ’90s, the federal government made a move that’s almost unthinkable: it gave up power, turning the responsibility back over to the states.

Why doesn’t the GHSA go to state governments with their data and present it, allowing the states to make the decision as appropriate for each state’s terrain and populace? States that’re largely unpopulated or flat could safely have higher speed limits than states that have large cities or hilly terrain that makes it more difficult to build straight (or multi-lane) roads.

As I understand it, the GHSA was originally made up of the representatives of various states that shared data to study traffic safety. I suspect they’re unwilling to consider a state-by-state solution because such a solution would mean that each state would want to look at its own information more than a comparison to other states. The GHSA looks for a national solution because that’s what it was set up to do, and to avoid becoming obsolete, it needs to encourage national traffic laws. (When the only tool you have is a hammer…)

That produces a bias that should make any of the data from the GHSA slightly suspect, and I’d hope that anyone (especially legislators) who considers the GHSA’s data would keep that in mind.