FITSForum: Speed Kills

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by DAN REIDER

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There are a number of issues that transcend political, gender, race, religious and economic differences in today’s American society. One such issue is the cause of traffic injuries and fatalities. We are all aware of the causes of most automobile accidents but have seen very little progress over the past few decades in reducing driving fatalities in almost every region of the Country. While it would be unrealistic to think it would be easy to reduce the high number of traffic accidents and fatalities each year, there are ways that have been discussed for some time now among various concerned citizen groups which they believe could save many lives without any significant changes to the way in which most of us get around in our vehicles. 

Growing up as part of the baby boomer generation, we were reminded constantly of the number of soldiers killed in Vietnam each week. The outrage was present no matter where you went- school, work, parks, etc. – towards what many felt were senseless or at least unnecessary deaths.

While we cannot exactly compare the deaths in a very unpopular war to the deaths on roads and highways, the consequences of a death to family and friends is pretty much the same in each case. Why then was there such outrage towards the 58,000 men killed in Vietnam during the 10+ years of that war – and seemingly very little outrage towards traffic deaths which are occurring at about 2/3 the rate of the Vietnam war but are occurring at that rate each year? On some level there should be outrage that more is not being done to reduce traffic deaths- especially since we have some of the technologies to do so. 

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One such suggestion is requiring people drive closer to the posted speed limit. Whether that is 5 MPH or 10 MPH over the posted limit is up for discussion, but most would agree that acceptable driving speeds are not 20 MPH over the posted limit.

Asking drivers to obey traffic laws via public service announcements on television and radio has obviously not worked. Some drivers believe the speed that they should be able to drive is the speed at which they personally feel safe driving. We see these drivers driving on the highways every day driving 15 MPH, 20 MPH or more over the posted speed. Their opinion is that if they wreck and kill themselves that it is their own fault. It is hard to understand why those drivers don’t seem to understand that sometimes they are not the ones in the wreck, but they are possibly the cause of the wreck.

Somehow, they don’t seem to understand that weaving in and out of traffic at high speeds, not using turn signals, running up on top of a driver and other maneuvers we all see on the roads every day could easily lead to the cause of the accident without them actually being involved in the accident. No amount of public service announcements has or will change this to any substantial degree. And automative vehicle speed control as being implemented in some European countries has received little or no support from any of our leaders and does not appear a viable option at this time. 

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?? Snow is here!! ?? Troopers have been working throughout the morning and already stopped a car for traveling over 100mph in a 60 zone on I77 in the snow. Putting our troopers and everyone else at danger. Please slow down. pic.twitter.com/fwUgdNnpf4

— Master Trooper Hannah Davidson (@SCHP_Troop4) January 31, 2026

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Some insurance companies now offer incentives to drive better, meaning to drive more within the posted speed limit. While these programs are aimed at supporting safe driving habits, I have got to believe that most of the drivers participating in these programs were drivers already driving closer to the posted speed limits and not currently driving significantly over the speed limit.

Now, why is fast driving prevalent almost everywhere without almost no fear of any consequences? In talking with law enforcement, the response I get is that they are doing the best that they can with the limited staffs that they have to enforce speed limit laws. While most of my daily driving is on the roads of the Carolinas and Georgia, I can assume in many other states it is rare to see the highway patrol with a car pulled over for speeding. I know that vehicles do get stopped for speeding, but the number is such a small, almost insignificant, percent of all the speeding drivers.

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While asking drivers to drive slower, use turn signals, slow down at yellow lights, actually stop at stop signs, etc. is a necessary step, this is clearly not working – and public service announcements cannot be the sole answer to this problem. Unfortunately, there are many behaviors these days which are only changed where there are significant consequences.

If, for example, an action has a negative impact on one’s finances, it has been shown that there is often, but not always, a change in the behavior which caused the financial loss. People in their normal lives have to deal with this all the time – increased insurance rates for smokers, increased automobile rates for drivers with bad driving records, higher interest rates for loans for persons with bad credit ratings, etc.

While the financial penalty is already in place for drivers stopped for various driving violations, there is no way the majority of the driving violations we see every day are being adequately assessed to violators due to the lack of sufficient law enforcement. Without adequate law enforcement, a deterrent, and perhaps the major deterrent, to speeding has been removed. But what if something could be done with the current level of law enforcement available? What if we already have the technology to help people understand that there are consequences to driving far above posted speed limits? One such scenario has been discussed for a number of years by various parties but does not seem to be gathering much momentum.

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Assume that you are driving to work at 7:30 AM one Monday morning traveling at 80 MPH where the posted speed was 60 MPH. You get to work and settle in for a typical workday. Three days later you open your mail and you have a ticket for $250 and a link to a short video clip. When clicking on the video link, there is a five-second clip of your vehicle at 7:30 AM that past Monday morning with a radar image showing 80 MPH in a posted 60 MPH zone.

You wonder when and how the video was taken, by whom, and how they knew it was your vehicle. In this scenario, the law enforcement officer was driving an unmarked vehicle equipped with a high-quality video camera linked to the law enforcement’s data base. A software program would pick up the license tag as well as capture a short video of the vehicle listing the posted speed and the actual speed detected by radar if the vehicle was driving more than the allowable speed over the posted limit. Simultaneously, the software program would access the highway department’s data based to determine who was the owner of the vehicle and that person’s address. The program would automatically prepare the letter to send to the owner of the vehicle along with the appropriate link to the video clip should the owner want to see the reason for the ticket. 

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“How do you send a ticket… without knowing who the driver was?”

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The biggest complaint to this method of ticketing owners for their vehicle driving above acceptable driving speeds is that the driver at the time of the violation is unknown. It could be the owner, a family member, or friend. The owner conceivably could argue that the vehicle had just been stolen. Since the driver of the vehicle is unknown, some would say: ‘how do you send the ticket to the vehicle’s owner without knowing who the driver was?’

This is a valid argument except in the vast majority of cases the owner of the vehicle would know exactly who was driving the vehicle at that time. The owner would then have to decide who was responsible for paying for the fine if they were not the one driving. And, since the actual driver of the vehicle could not be verified by law enforcement, no points against anyone’s driving record could be assessed – unlike when there is an in-person traffic stop. 

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To better understand how beneficial such a process could be in slowing down traffic to acceptable speeds, I played the role of the unmarked law enforcement official. I drove in the afternoon traffic on highways around a large city in South Carolina. In a 40-minute period, I was passed by 15 vehicles going 15 MPH, 20 MPH or faster above the posted speed limit. If this proposed ticketing system were in place, in those 40 minutes, $3,750 in fines (at $250 per vehicle) would have been issued by a single law enforcement vehicle. Compare that with how many traffic stops could have been made in that same 40-minute timeframe if the officer had to actually stop the vehicle, have the driver pull over to the side of the road and then write an actual ticket at the time of the stop.

Keep in mind that the ultimate goal is not collecting fines from speeders. The goal is to have drivers slow down to acceptable speeds. Perhaps the future driving speeds of all 15 drivers receiving tickets in the above example might be reduced in the future to more acceptable speeds. If that happens in enough cases, maybe some or many accidents and highway deaths could be avoided.

In a small state like South Carolina, over 1,000 persons die each year in driving related accidents. Many, many more are severely injured. If each death or accident with a severe injury affects ten or more family, members, relatives or close friends, we are taking about tens of thousands of people impacted each year – just in South Carolina. If we could reduce this number by even 25%, this would positively impact many thousands of lives just in South Carolina. Imagine what an impact this would have throughout the entire country on hundreds of thousands of people if we could reduce accidents by even 10% or 15% in our country?

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…

Dan Reider was a consulting mechanical engineer for more than 30 years designing primarily educational and healthcare facilities. He is currently working as a Project Manager for the Construction and Planning Department at the University of South Carolina.

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