Thousands of speeding tickets are issued in Denver each month, generating millions of dollars each year.
So I know you speed.
I too have, in the past, engaged in the practice. Fine police officers in half a dozen states can testify to this fact.
Here in Colorado, a sinister hidden camera has sent me photographic proof.
The thing is, I consider myself one of the most conscientious and cautious drivers around. I’m sure many of you speedsters do. As I see it, speed limits are often just … you know, mistaken.
My theory was recently bolstered by a Colorado Department of Transportation document – which I found via the blog Left Off Colfax – claiming most of us ignore unjust speed limits anyway.
According to CDOT’s “Why Speed Limits?” establishing “realistic” speed restrictions is more vital than trying to control drivers. Studies demonstrate that most citizens will drive at a speed warranted by conditions and ignore the speed limit when it is too low or too high.
“A realistic speed limit is voluntarily obeyed by the reasonable majority,” it states.
“Reasonable” and “realistic” are the key words here. Words that government agencies rarely use.
Even better, the average citizen can get involved by alerting authorities about these unrealistic limits. “Anyone,” explains the document, “may report a road segment where the speed limit seems to be too high or too low.”
Hey, I’m “anyone.” So I call Stacey Stegman, spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Transportation, to figure out how Colorado can begin increasing speed limits across the board.
Stegman explains that Colorado is continually re-evaluating speeds and the goal is to put “realistic” limits in place. “One of the main criteria is what we call the 85-percentile speed,” she explains.
Here’s how it works: The optimum speed limit is one where the greatest number of vehicles are traveling at similar speeds. This reduces conflicts caused by “speed differentials” and keeps accidents at their lowest level.
So the 85-percentile speed is one where 85 percent of the traffic is moving together, and it is widely accepted as being nearest to the “just right” speed.
This makes a lot of sense. So can everyone please pick up the pace and straighten out these low speed limits?
Not exactly. It’s more about the wisdom of crowds.
“The speeds we go are really often based on human nature,” says Stegman. “We are, for the most part, responsible drivers. We don’t drive too fast or too slow. The vast majority of people drive at a reasonable speed. It’s because of that that we look at the situation in this way.”
Stegman tells me that oftentimes Coloradans want to introduce lower speed limits to enhance safety, when, in fact, higher speed limits are the ones that can bring speeds down.
Take a recent example. On some western stretches of Sixth Avenue, the speed limit has been increased from 55 to 65.
“What’s happening is that some residents were upset about the rise in the speed limit – they’d like to lower it to keep it safe,” she says. “But when we changed the speed limit, we saw that speeds didn’t go up. On average speeds actually went down, because drivers found the speed more reasonable.”
Since the new sensible limit was enacted, drivers were more inclined to follow and the average fell from 69 mph to 66.
Counterintuitive maybe, but not new.
A few years back, National Motorists Association president Jim Baxter claimed that in the early 1990s “compliance with the 55 mph law was only about 5 percent – in other words, about 95 percent of drivers were exceeding the speed limit.”
Since 1995, when some states raised speed limits to 75 and 80 mph, the vehicular death rate on the highways has fallen rather dramatically.
Slower is not always safer.
Disclaimer: Always follow the law. (If you have complaints about the speed limit in your area, contact your municipality. If it’s a highway problem, contact CDOT.)
David Harsanyi’s column appears Monday and Thursday. He can be reached at 303-954-1255 or dharsanyi@denverpost.com
