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Originally Posted by #-3
When you boil down to it, the evidence doesn't support that being the choice.
The evidence is limited and shows somewhere between a null effect on safety to slightly safer when speed limits are set to the speeds people are driving (on highways). And people are not driving 100/110 on Stony / Deerfoot / Hwy1 / Hwy2.
So the real choice are are advocating for is to be maybe slightly less safe, because it might make you feel slightly safer.
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What evidence is limited?
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and Highway Loss Data Institute calculated the effects of speed increases.
Speed limit increases are tied to 37,000 deaths over 25 years.
Insurance companies are pretty good at zooming in on data and they have a lot of skin in the game because they are the ones paying out on the insurance claims for accidents. I expect they would have a better grasp on this conversation than the politicians in the state of Montana.
Insurance companies do not work on "feelings" they work on data and money.
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For the new study, Charles Farmer, IIHS vice president for research and statistical services, analyzed the effect of changes in the maximum posted speed limit in every state from 1993 to 2017. Looking at annual traffic fatalities per mile traveled for each state and taking into account other factors that affect fatality rates — including changes in unemployment, the number of potential young drivers (ages 16-24) and the seat belt use rate — he calculated the effect of speed limit increases.
Farmer found that a 5 mph increase in the maximum speed limit was associated with an 8 percent increase in the fatality rate on interstates and freeways — the roads most directly affected by changes to the maximum speed limit — and a 3 percent increase on other roads. In total, over the 25-year study period, there were 36,760 more deaths — 13,638 on interstates and freeways — and 23,122 on other roads — than would have been expected if maximum speed limits hadn't changed over that time.
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