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Our View | Speed Limits

Legislators should focus on drunken drivers first

Vehicles pass a 65 mph speed limit sign along I-64 in O’Fallon, Ill. On Monday, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn signed into a law a bill allowing motorists to drive 70 mph on rural interstates.

Associated Press


How about a trade? Raise the state's speed limit from 65 mph to 70 mph on rural interstate highways but then pass bills that can have a real impact on safety by toughening up the state's drunken driving laws.

Tougher drunken driving legislation — as has been proposed by state Rep. Jim Ott and state Sen. Alberta Darling — has been allowed to languish too long and expire too often. Too many legislators are more than willing to speed things up on the freeways and build wider and better roads but don't have the will to make those roads significantly safer.

Instead, there's Rep. Paul Tittl (R-Manitowoc), who introduced a bill Tuesday — to a mainly tepid reaction in the Capitol — that would raise the speed limit to 70 mph. And there's Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, who supports the measure, saying, "As people are having to spend more time away from family and working further from home, being able to go a reasonable speed makes sense to get people home quicker and to market faster."

But wouldn't it be better for those people if they had to deal with fewer drivers under the influence going the wrong way on freeways?

Vos and Tittl also argue that another reason for raising the speed limit is to bring Wisconsin in line with its speedier neighbors. Indiana, Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota all have 70 mph, at least on rural interstates. Illinois joined them Monday when Gov. Pat Quinn signed a bill raising the limit to 70 on rural interstates.

But those states also make a driver's first DUI a criminal act. Wisconsin does not, alone among the 50 states. Why not join our neighbors on that, too?

We doubt that raising Wisconsin's speed limits from 65 mph to 70 mph will have a significant impact on either the flow of commerce through the state or on accidents on the interstates. Anyone who travels the state's highways knows that many drivers — probably most — already speed along at over 70 mph.

Adding another five miles to the posted speed limit may encourage those drivers to go even faster but probably not by much.

Some disagree: "Raising speed limits is politically popular, and higher speed limits get people to their destinations faster," said Russ Rader, spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety in a Chicago Tribune article on Quinn's signing of the Illinois bill. "But we have to recognize there's always a safety trade-off. There's no free lunch. And more people will die on the roads as a result."

The institute cites studies that show increased fatalities in states that have raised speed limits and a 2009 study that estimates that more than 12,545 deaths were attributed to increases in speed limits across the United States between 1995 and 2005.

Other studies indicate less of an impact. According to a June Governing magazine article, Purdue University researchers found the likelihood of fatalities and serious injuries didn't increase when Indiana raised its interstate speed limit from 65 mph to 70 mph in 2005.

That same article also quotes Craig Neustaedter, a traffic engineering consultant who helps California cities set speed limits, who noted that speed alone is not typically a primary factor that causes collisions and that freeways are typically designed to safely accommodate speeds of 80 mph. "A change in the speed limit, in and of itself, if done properly... should not create a hazardous condition," Neustaedter told Governing.

Still, we would urge legislators to include in the bill if it is approved a measure to monitor the results and provide a review in a year or so.

More important, we urge those legislators to stop dealing with trivial matters such as speed limits and deal with issues that can have a real impact, such as tougher drunken driving laws — or maybe even jobs.

© 2014, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved.

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