Dennis (Bighead)
Junior Member
Username: Bighead
Post Number: 167
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, July 14, 2003 - 11:39 am: | |
This is a great article from the NY Sunday Times Magazine.
vty,
--Dennis
_____________________
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/13/magazine/13WWLN.html?pagewanted=all&position=
2 Fast 4 Safety?
By WALTER KIRN
Out on the long, lonely highways of the West, the mythical backdrops for countless car commercials and millions of summer family vacations, the speed limits make criminals of everyone -- minor revolutionaries, even. Up ahead, nothing but sky and flattened jack rabbits. In the rearview mirror, ditto. How many more hours to Yellowstone National Park? With only the road signs themselves for landmarks, there's often no way to judge. And so, to convince himself that he's making progress, Dad kicks it up to 80, 85, and then -- as the kids start whining for a bathroom break -- to a solid 90; 90 feels right. Sure, it's against the law, but what's the law, particularly to an American with a V-8, an empty cooler and a full bladder? The law is a nag. The law is petty, irrelevant. Speed kills -- of course it does. But slowness tortures, particularly when the next town on the map (which may or may not turn out to be a town, in the sense of having a gas station or a store) is exactly 216 miles away.
For anyone who has ever undergone such Western automotive agonies and reacted by putting human law aside and heeding natural law instead (Thou Shalt Reach Old Faithful Before Dark), no news could be more intriguing than the following: according to a recent academic study, raising speed limits to 70 miles per hour, and even higher, has no effect whatsoever on the death rates of young and middle-aged male drivers. That's right, guys: if you're under 65 and you find yourself cruising the great wasteland somewhere between Denver and Portland, say, you can rev things up with a clear conscience -- soon maybe even in Oregon, whose Legislature is considering upping its maximum speed limit from a poky, painful 65 to a brisk and wholesome 70.
Like most studies that seem to grant us leave to indulge our lazy, bad habits, this one comes with an asterisk, unfortunately, that it would be cruel not to disclose (despite the fact that as a young male Westerner I'd love to bury the finding in a footnote): higher speed limits do increase the death rates of women and the elderly. The scientists can't agree on the reason for this discrepancy, and if they're wise they won't try, lest they end up confirming the prejudices of people like my old high-school buddy who cursed every time a female driver of any age had the nerve to appear in the mirrors of his Chevy Nova.
Common sense would suggest a straightforward correlation between higher speed limits and the risk of accidents, but common sense also suggests -- out West, at least -- that when there's nothing to have an accident with, it's not momentum that matters but simple alertness. A few years ago in Montana, my home state, there was no posted speed limit on highways, just a vague rule about driving in a ''reasonable and prudent'' manner. This haziness forced motorists to think, adjusting their speeds according to the conditions while hoping that lurking state troopers agreed with them. I felt flattered by this invitation to use my judgment and drove more consciously than I ever had. I felt like a grown-up. Then they changed the law, instituting a top limit of 75 m.p.h. Suddenly, I was a rebellious child again. Whether it was day or night, raining or sunny, I treated 75 as a new minimum -- as the opening bid in a floating poker game.
Seventy-five, you say? I'll raise you four. No sirens yet? I'll raise you six.
Montana's highway death rate did drop -- at first -- but now it's back up, to near its highest levels. No one knows why, but when I'm feeling contrary I wonder if it's because, in certain realms, responsibility for your own decisions sharpens the senses, while regulations numb them. Or maybe I'm just nostalgic for that day when I was crossing the Badlands at 95 and a trooper pulled me over -- not to write me a ticket but to warn me that I was a mile from the North Dakota border and might want to save myself a little money by easing up some. I felt like tipping the guy.
A friend of mine, Ross, a former Navy pilot who regularly drives between Phoenix and Seattle by way of empty Nevada, argues persuasively that velocity isn't as treacherous as it's said to be; the real risk is variations in velocity. ''When you're in the Navy flying formation at 350 knots'' he says, ''everybody's fine, but if one guy's going 340, you've got a problem.'' For Ross -- and I've heard of experts who agree with him -- unrealistically low speed limits widen the gap between law-abiding slowpokes and the restless majority, resulting in lots of risky passing maneuvers and general chaos.
So what's the answer? Over in congested, brainy Europe, some people think they've found it, and they're testing it: a computer gizmo that makes the car decelerate when it hits the maximum posted speed on any given stretch of road. The system is complicated, involving satellites and Global Positioning gear. It's a grand opportunity for new bureaucracies and the further infantilization of the public in the name of the greater social good -- objectives Europeans value as highly as Americans value four-wheel drive. Think of it: the automobile as governess, slapping drivers' wrists when they get sassy. The device should include a taped lecture on immaturity that automatically takes over the stereo when somebody turns up Eminem too loud. Over there, they might go for this system, but not here -- not west of Maryland, at least. Our cars are supposed to deliver us from our parents, our teachers, our rulers, not sit in for them.
There's a price to be paid for such liberty, naturally, although it's still unclear how high a price and how comfortable we feel paying it. That depends on which road you're on, I guess: one with a stoplight on every other block, or one that runs flat and straight to the horizon. A horizon that, no matter how fast we're driving, and no matter how often we reassure the kids that they'll spot Mount Rushmore any minute now, Americans know in our guts we'll never quite reach.
Walter Kirn is the author, most recently, of ''Up in the Air,'' a novel. |