Georgia Injury Law Blog

There is a silent killer on our streets, and unfortunately, it receives very little attention. Speeding–related accident deaths in the United States are on the increase and fast rising. This is in sharp contrast to other countries in the European Union, for instance, where speeding-related traffic fatality rates have actually been falling.

There has been plenty of discussion about the increase in traffic accident fatalities in this country in 2020, in spite of the fact that there were fewer vehicle miles travelled that year. There is a long history in this nation of attempts to curb speeding, but it took the pandemic to bring speeding to the forefront of the national traffic safety discourse. Most developed countries, including those in the European Union, have actually seen their traffic accident fatality rates drop significantly in recent years, and they have their regulations against speeding to thank for it.  In the United States, the exact opposite has happened, and we can look to the changes in how regulators in the United States view speeding to understand the reasons for this.

The European Union and the United Kingdom have mandated that by the year 2022, all new automobiles sold in these countries must come with speed limiters. The mandate also requires that cars come with intelligent speed assistance technology which restricts the speed of a car based on existing GPS data and external speed limit signs, by 2024. Drivers can override the technology if they choose to. However, the mandate requires that the data be stored in black box data recorders that can then be investigated in the event of an accident. Regulators in these countries believe that these rules will lead to a reduction in traffic accident fatalities by as much as 20%.

The head of the National Transportation Safety Board says that focusing only on individual driver behavior or actions may not be sufficient to helping reduce the number of people killed in traffic accidents in Georgia and across the United States every year.   She instead is calling for an approach that takes into account all of the different factors that contribute to the various driver behaviors resulting in accidents.

The National Transportation Safety Board is primarily an investigative authority which conducts investigations into air, road, land, and water accidents that involve mass fatalities or casualties. The Board advises or provides recommendations based on those investigations, and is not a regulatory authority. It cannot pass regulations based on its own recommendations. However, the Board’s recommendations are taken very seriously by state administrations, especially those that are looking at making their roads safer.

Jennifer Homendy, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board, was speaking in remarks to a conference of the Governors Highway Safety Association, and says that an overall approach to increasing traffic safety must take into consideration the fact that so many states have enforced higher speed limits than recommended. Speeding, for instance, continues to be a major killer on American roads, and we must evaluate whether the systems in place to date actually encourages drivers to speed. She points to states that have prohibited local authorities from setting their own lower speed limits for motorists. She also points to the responsibility of manufacturers who frequently design automobiles that are made to travel at more than 100 mph, or sell cars that have no installed speed limiters to prevent excessive speeds. Road design that encourages speeding could be just as much to blame as individuals who take advantage of these roads that are built for excessive speeds.