Highways as Speedways? Drivers Push the Limits
By PAUL ZIELBAUER
Early
last Monday morning, Mathew Hennessy, mild-mannered
computer programmer, was driving down the Saw Mill Parkway
toward Manhattan at
100 miles an hour.
Inside his Jeep Grand
Cherokee, things were calm. An old song by the
Cure played low on
the radio as Mr. Hennessy, 27, from New Rochelle,
sank into his leather
seat, gripped the wheel and watched rush-hour
traffic stream past
his window in one long Manet-like smudge.
"Sometimes you get
a guy who isn't looking, and you have to do an
avoidance maneuver,"
Mr. Hennessy, who says he can't talk while driving
fast, later explained.
"Or you have to go faster to get around them."
Though Mr. Hennessy
is clearly an extremist -- he maintains a World
Wide Web page that gives how-to tips on speeding -- he is one of a
growing number of
American drivers who, according to traffic experts,
are pushing highway
speeds to new heights each year.
Steering bigger and
more powerful cars and exploiting increasingly lax
police enforcement,
more drivers than ever are treating speed limits as
suggestions -- and
not very good ones at that, the experts say.
"There's no debate
that speeds now are higher than they have ever been
in the history of
this nation," said Richard Retting, a senior transportation
engineer with the
nonprofit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. "There
seems to be no stopping
that trend."
The trend has drawn
little public notice, overshadowed by more visible
problems like drunken
driving and, lately, the supposed "road rage"
epidemic.
Another factor that
may be veiling the national speeding binge is this
apparent paradox:
although some analysts and consumer groups insist
that higher speeds
cost lives, highway deaths have been falling steadily for
years. Though Americans
are driving more miles than ever, the fatality
rate per highway mile
has declined 11 percent since 1995, when the
federal government
abandoned the national speed limit of 55 miles per
hour.
Whatever the reasons
for the safer highways -- air bags, seat belt and
drunken-driving laws
and better-engineered cars foremost among them
-- it is clear that
those who drive on them have become emboldened to
speed.
The evidence for what
Mr. Retting calls "speed creep" -- the gradual
process of going faster
and faster on the highways, regardless of the
posted limit, is striking:
¶Between 1980
and 1992, the percentage of interstate drivers exceeding
65 m.p.h. more than
quadrupled, to nearly 23 percent from 4.9 percent,
according to Federal
Highway Administration data.
¶In New York in
1991, only 14 percent of drivers ticketed on Interstate
87, which runs from
New York City to the Canadian border, had been
driving over 80 m.p.h.,
state records show.
By 1996, 27 percent were.
¶On many stretches
of Interstates 80 and 280 in New Jersey, fewer than
10 percent of drivers
now obey the 55 m.p.h. limits, state speed surveys
show.
¶And last year,
state surveys of speeds along Interstates 95 and 84, two
of Connecticut's densest
traffic arteries, showed that so-called 85th
percentile speed --
the speed a car should maintain to flow smoothly with
all the other cars
-- reached as high as 74 m.p.h.
Rising speeds are getting
the attention of federal officials. On Jan. 9, the
Department of Transportation
is scheduled to host an all-day workshop
in Washington to figure
out ways to "restore the credibility of speed
limits."
More and more states,
especially those in the West, where highways
often stretch for
uninterrupted miles, admit the growing uselessness of
their own speed limits.
In Utah, a state that
lets rural interstate drivers go 75 m.p.h., people now
often drive 10 to
20 miles an hour faster than they did just a decade ago,
said Craig Allred,
the director of the Utah Highway Safety Office.
Utah troopers commonly
allow drivers an 8-to-10 m.p.h. buffer zone
above some limits.
"The emphasis now is on hazardous drivers," he said.
By raising the speed
limit, and hence reducing travel times along a
mind-numbing stretch
of Interstate 80 in southwest Utah, Mr. Allred
added, officials cut
the fatality rates by keeping more drivers from falling
asleep.
In some states, like
Maryland, officials are combating faster driving with
electronic tools,
like radar posts and variable signs that show motorists
how fast they are
driving, said Manu Shah, a manager of traffic safety
analysis with the
Maryland Department of Transportation.
Everyone has an excuse
for why they speed. Toll-road drivers, like those
on the New Jersey
Turnpike, often feel entitled to speed, Mr. Shah said.
"They think they are
paying for the privilege of driving a little faster," he
said.
Other drivers, especially
those steering burly sport utility vehicles with
mammoth engines, seem
ill- equipped to handle all that power, said Sgt.
Paul Vance of the
Connecticut State Police. These days, his troopers see
more drivers than
ever fly by them at 80 and 90 m.p.h., he said. Once
caught, more of those
drivers now simply blame their vehicles. "They'll
say, 'The car just
got away from me,' " he said.
Federal statistics
show the Northeast, home to some of the most
crowded interstates
in the nation, is also home to the fastest drivers in the
country, including
the likes of Mr. Hennessy, the computer programmer.
Even in dowdy Connecticut
-- the so-called Land of Steady Habits --
drivers nowadays "don't
pay particular attention to speed limits," said
Bob Ouellette, manager
of the driving school in AAA's Hartford chapter.
On the two-lane Merritt
Parkway, for instance, where rush-hour traffic
often flows toward
New York at or near 75 m.p.h., "you're putting your
own life in danger
by driving 55," the posted speed limit, Mr. Ouellette
said.
That is why some people
want speed limits to go even higher, for safety.
If speed limits went
up, they reason, fewer drivers would speed.
"The heart of the problem,"
said James J. Baxter, the president of the
National Motorists
Association, a national lobbying group that is pushing
for higher speed limits,
"is that the legal speeds are not appropriate for
what people consider
to be acceptable.
"If you have a 75 m.p.h.
limit on the New Jersey Turnpike, you're going
to have 90 to 95 percent
compliance," he suggested.
"Then you could focus
on the 5 percent that are rolling down the road at
120."
But would it really
be just 5 percent? "I used to live out west, so I am
very comfortable with
75 and 80 miles an hour, even 85," Suzi Yebio,
23, of New York City,
said during a speeding break Thursday along the
turnpike, her main
conduit to friends in Washington. "If they raised the
limit, I'd probably
do 10 miles more than that."
Then there is idea
of driving as video game, a phenomenon Leon James,
a professor of psychology
at the University of Hawaii, believes now rules
many drivers' approach
to the road.
"It's almost impossible
for most drivers to stay within speed limits," he
said. "The traffic
emotions are very intense and competitive."
Many experts say they
believe speed is a factor behind a boom in
dangerous and menacing
driving tactics.
The latter problem
became so bad in New Jersey, in fact, that in 1997
the state police established
a special telephone number to report
dangerous and aggressive
drivers. It has already fielded more than
30,000 complaints,
said Sgt. Al Della Fave.
Like many traffic experts,
Mr. James believes the burgeoning "road rage"
phenomenon will grow
larger as the nation's roads grow ever more
clogged, compelling
more people like Amy Emke to speed even when
she does not want
to.
"It's the pressure
of the people behind you," Ms. Emke of Wingdale,
N.Y., said Thursday
during a rest break along the New Jersey Turnpike.
"They push you faster."
The Speed Trap Registry lists speed traps around the country.
A book by a deputy sheriff on how to beat speeding tickets.
Beat speeding tickets without getting caught.
NJ State Police Official Page does not mention speed law enforcement.