How many have to die before people learn? Again!

STORY at the Christian Science Monitor

At the age of 48, I grew up during a period in our country during which people had learned the follies of speeding cars. During the late 60's and through the 70's speed limits across this nation had been scaled back to a maximum of 55mph. It had been the costly lessons of the 50's that had taught us that speed equals fatalities. High death tolls during the 50's, coupled with the rising cost of gas and shortages of fuels during the early days of OPEC together encouraged our nation's leaders to set strict speed limit rules on our highways. Almost immediately this resulted in fewer fatalities, fewer multi-car crashes and better gas milage for motorists.

So what happened? The excesses of the 80's happened, that's what. Spurred on by Reaganomics, our nation's leaders, (mostly the same ones that fixed things two decades before!), started repealing laws on curbing highway speeds because WE as a nation demanded more, more...more! It wasn't enough that lowering the speed limit caused fewer traffic fatalities, the reasoning went that since cars were being built with more safety measures installed in them, it was therefore safer for cars to travel at higher speeds. That's like saying that since we have better medical procedures now, it's safer to run with scissors!

Now here we are again, looking at high gas prices, huge multi-car pile-ups on the freeways and more fatalities involved with car crashes than anytime since the 50's. It's time once again to put on our common sense caps and lower the nations speed limits. It doesn't have to go all the way back to 55mph, although I'd be okay with that myself. I think setting a speed limit on all of our nation's highways to 65 mph would be enough to turn back the clock on death by automobiles!