Points of Interest | Green Energy News

November 23, 2003 – Vol.8 No.35

POINTS OF INTEREST.

A weekly collection of websites worth visiting.

In response to the oil embargo of 1973, the U.S. Congress directed the Department of Transportation to withhold highway funding from states that did not adopt a maximum speed limit of 55 miles per hour.

The national speed limit was in place. Driving slower would use less fuel. Driving slower would reduce the nation’s dependence on imported oil.

At the time (way back in the 70’s) the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and Highway Loss Data Institute, an independent organization funded by insurance companies, predicted that returning to the pre-1974 speed limits on rural portions of the nation’s interstate highway system would result in 500 more deaths per year on these roads, a 20-25 percent increase.

It seems they were right.

By 1995 with the National Highway System Designation Act, Congress repealed the 1973 ruling and states were allowed to set their own speed limits. Speed limits have shot up, and so have fatalities on rural interstates, as predicted back then by the Institute.

In a recent study the Institute showed that about 1880 more people died during 1996-1999 in the 22 states with higher speed limits on rural interstates. Of those states (all in the Midwest and West) the 10 that raised speed limits above 75 miles per hour had an increase of 38 percent more deaths (about 780) per million miles driven than the states with 65 mile per hour speed limits. The 12 that raised speed limits to 70 had a 35 percent increase - about 1100 additional deaths.

The extensive Institute website has, naturally, a plethora of information on vehicles, crash tests, and vehicle safety, as well as information regarding neighborhood electric vehicles (NEV). The above mentioned study is available and an interactive tool to check vehicle safety on a model by model basis is there too. Visit the Institute at http://www.hwysafety.org/ .