Statistics and probabilities can be puzzling, even paradoxical, as the man knew who wrote:
Very, very, very fewPeople die at ninety-two.
I suppose that I shall be
Safer still at ninety-three.
Which is prologue to today's subject: What were the odds in 1987 that the increases in states' speed limits would result in decreasing statewide fatality rates? Herewith a story about the vagaries of statistical analyses and social policies, a story with a happy ending.
Two scholars who can explain the counterintuitive results of increased speed limits are Charles Lave and Patrick Elias of the department of economics at the University of California at Irvine. The story they tell begins with the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the oil embargo, and the federal law coercing states to enforce 55 mph limits.
The primary reason for the 55 mph limit was fuel conservation, and when the energy crisis passed, Americans grew restless. In 1987, states were allowed to raise their limits on rural interstates and 40 adopted 65 mph limits. Opponents stressed not conservation but safety. Their mantra was, "Speed kills."
Concerning developments immediately after 1987, Lave and Elias note that construing the evidence is a more complex task than some analysts realize. Their conclusion is that, up to a point, higher speed limits save lives.
After 1987, the higher speed limit reduced statewide fatality rates by 3.4 percent to 5.1 percent, compared to the rates in states that did not raise limits. True, the actual number of fatalities continued to increase after 1987, but the volume of traffic increased even faster. The critical measurement is fatalities per vehicle mile traveled in the entire state. Some studies found that raising speed limits on particular highways increased, or did not decrease, fatalities on those particular highways. However, such studies failed to gauge the ways in which all of a state's highways comprise a single interdependent system, and that highway systems and safety systems also are interdependent.
Lave and Elias say the 55 mph limit caused the misallocation of traffic and of police resources. The federal government had demanded strict compliance with the 55 mph limit, which forced state highway patrols to concentrate on speed enforcement on the interstate highways, which have the densest concentration of high-speed traffic. But these are also the safest highways.
Furthermore, many drivers who wanted to speed switched to less traveled, less patrolled but less safe roads.
The 55 mph limit might have decreased fatalities on some roads by increasing patrolling and decreasing traffic volume from what it would have been without that limit. However, the effect on a state's total highways system was apt to be a net subtraction from safety.
Raising speed limits lured some drivers back to safer, more heavily patrolled roads, and allowed highway patrols to shift resources back to the programs they thought most effective. And it decreased a real killer - speed variance among vehicles.
Many collisions occur when cars are overtaking and passing one another. Speed variance among drivers increases when speed limits are set so low that there is a high rate of noncompliance. Raising speed limits reduced turbulence in the traffic stream, leading Lave to say, "Variance kills, not speed."
When in November 1995 Congress empowered states to set such limits as they chose, fatalities did not increase the 10 percent to 14 percent predicted by the Cassandras who foresaw 4,400-6,000 extra deaths per year. Neither did fatalities increase even the 2 percent to 3 percent that would have been expected. Instead, Lave concludes that fatalities have declined slightly (0.14 percent) even as total vehicle miles increased 2 percent.
Sometimes the unintended consequences of a policy - in this case, increased safety from speed limits that were increased for reasons other than safety - are good.