""The spokesman for a highway safety group worries about greater risk on Kentucky roads if the speed limit is raised to 70 mph, but proponents say other safety features will prevent the death toll from rising.
Gov. Ernie Fletcher said last Monday in his State of the Commonwealth speech that he planned to propose a speed limit increase on "appropriate" roads.
But Russ Rader, spokesman for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a research organization funded by automobile insurance companies, said that's not a good idea.
"The research is clear that raising speed limits costs lives," Rader said. "People need to weigh the benefits of getting places faster versus the fact that more people will die in crashes."
In 1973, the last full year that Kentucky motorists could legally drive 70 mph on major roads, 1,117 people, a record number, were killed in traffic accidents in the state, Kentucky State Police said.
Kentucky's maximum speed limit dropped to 55 mph in March 1974. The number of traffic fatalities in Kentucky dropped that year, too, to 795.
Kentucky had 976 highway fatalities last year, according to the state police Web site.
Proponents of higher speed limits say that today's vehicles are better built and have more safety features, such as seat belts and air bags, and that roads are safer than they used to be.
"I don't think there's going to be any significant impact on safety with these increased speed limits," said Jerry Pigman, manager of the traffic and safety section of the University of Kentucky Transportation Center.
After studying highway speeds in Kentucky in 1997, the UK Transportation Center recommended that speed limits be raised to 70 mph for cars and 65 mph for trucks on rural interstate highways.
Pigman said that the crash rate on interstates and parkways is one-fourth or one-fifth of what it is on rural, two-lane roads. Increasing the speed limits on interstates and parkways would be "increasing speeds on the safest roads we have," he said. He said he hasn't seen any convincing statistics that show that raising a speed limit from 65 to 70 mph is a significant safety concern.
Fletcher also said in his address that it was time that Kentucky had a primary seat-belt law. Such a law would mean that motorists could be ticketed for not wearing seat belts even if they had committed no other violations.
He said proposals for an increased speed limit and a primary seat-belt law probably would be coupled when they are put before lawmakers.
Kentucky stands to receive more than $11 million in federal dollars if it adopts a primary seat-belt law.
"AAA definitely feels that the time has come for a primary seat-belt law in Kentucky. It's going to definitely help save lives and help save money," said Ann Belcher, spokeswoman for AAA Blue Grass/Kentucky.
As for raising the speed limit, she said it was important that officials look at prevailing speeds, check accident and traffic engineering reports, and look at road characteristics before deciding to increase the limit on a particular highway.
"On some roads it's realistic to have 70-mph speed limits, just as long as they buckle up and they're using safe following distances," Belcher said.
from the Courier Journal
