In the United States, roughly 40,000 people die in traffic every year. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, motor-vehicle speeding killed over 10,000 people in 2019, which means around a quarter of all traffic deaths in this country are speed-related. The NHTSA attributes our speeding epidemic to four factors: traffic, running late, anonymity (drivers become detached from their actions while in their vehicles), and disregard for others and for the law.

It’s easy to blame the driver who goes flying by you weaving between cars at 100MPH for the entire problem, but the truth is, we’re all to blame. It’s just that what each of us considers speeding is sort of relative. Anyone driving slower than you don’t know what they’re doing and anyone driving faster than you is a maniac.

The problem is speed limits don’t work this way, they’re fixed. Let's look at when the maximum speed limit even applies:

  • Perfect atmospheric conditions (Daylight, above 32, but below 90 degrees, overcast or sunny, but not the low sun that could blind people, clean road surface.)

  • Perfect traffic conditions ( Light traffic, road visibility is good)

  • Average vehicle (Cars) (Not SUV, pickup truck, van, Truck) Heavier vehicles take longer to stop, are harder to control, and should be going slower. 

  • Changes to the vehicle (more the two people in a vehicle or added cargo that adds weight means you should reduce your speed to make up for it.)

  • Driver’s ability level (every driver has a personal limit on what they can handle based on their experience level and skill set. A new driver that just got their license might not have the experience and skills to maintain control if something goes wrong at even 45 MPH)

Let’s assume you’re in the average four-door sedan with an experienced driver and one passenger, that the driving conditions this day are perfect and traffic is light. In this situation, the driver could safely and legally drive up to the speed limit. If anything changes though, a new driver takes the wheel, we put them in an SUV with a couple more people in the vehicle, temperatures drop, it becomes night time, we’d have to adjust our speed for our situation and driver slower to have the same control. 

Is this how we drive as a society? Some people might, but most people don’t. Research shows that the average U.S. driver drives between 5MPH and 10MPH over the speed limit. I’ve had countless people tell me that when they were learning to drive a parent, friend, or in some cases even a Drivers Ed instructor told them they could drive 5MPH over the speed limit and they won’t get a ticket or get in trouble. 

I can’t speak to whether or not you’ll get a ticket or not, but I can speak to whether or not this is safe. When you travel down a road with a posted speed limit of 35MPH but you’re going 40-45MPH you will have significantly less control over your vehicle at the high speeds. Not a little less control, but a heck of a lot less control. It could easily be the difference between a crash and no crash and therefore potentially between life and death. 

The New York City DOT has noted that a pedestrian struck by a driver at 25MPH is half as likely to die as a pedestrian struck at 30MPH. If this type of information doesn’t change our collective behavior I’m not sure what will