More than 12,000 deaths — 29% of all crash fatalities — occurred in speed-related crashes in 2021. High speeds make a crash more likely because drivers have less time to react and because it requires a longer distance to stop or slow down. They also make collisions more deadly because modest increases in speed cause large increases in crash energy.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s website has a wealth of information on speeding, and solutions that could be implemented. Go to www.iihs.org and click on “topics,” then on “speed.” Much of the information in this article comes from this site.

People often drive faster than the speed limit and if the limit is raised will still go faster. Research shows that when speed limits are raised, speeds go up, as do fatal crashes. By the same token, lowering speed limits cuts injury crashes.

In a high-speed crash, a passenger vehicle is subjected to forces so severe that the vehicle structure cannot withstand the stress and maintain survival space in the occupant compartment. Likewise, as crash speeds get very high, restraint systems such as airbags and safety belts cannot keep the forces on occupants below severe injury levels.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that the economic cost of speed-related crashes was about $46 billion in 2019.

Speeding has become an epidemic. In a 2021 national telephone survey conducted by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, 50% of drivers said they had exceeded the speed limit by 15 mph on a freeway in the past month, and 40% reported exceeding the speed limit by 10 mph on a residential street.

Drivers who speed tend to be younger than drivers who don’t, and male drivers are more likely to speed than female drivers. Crashes and violations of young drivers are much more likely to be related to speeding than those of drivers of other ages.

New York state’s maximum speed limit on interstate and some limited access highways is 65 mph. Currently, 22 states have maximum speed limits of 70 mph, and 11 states have maximum speed limits of 75 mph on some portions of their roadway systems. On some sections of interstates in eight states, speed limits are 80 mph. In October 2012, a 41-mile stretch of Texas State Highway 130 opened with a speed limit of 85 mph.

To set speed limits for specific roads, traffic engineers for decades relied heavily on the 85th percentile speed, which is the speed that 85% of vehicles are traveling at or below in free-flowing conditions. One problem with relying too much on the 85th percentile speed to set limits is that it’s a moving target. Numerous studies of travel speeds have shown that 85th percentile speeds on rural interstate highways increased when speed limits were raised and then continued increasing as a new, higher 85th percentile speed usually results.

Speed safety cameras can substantially reduce speeding on a wide range of roads. IIHS studies of cameras on residential roads in Maryland, on a high-speed roadway in Arizona and on city streets in the District of Columbia found that the proportion of drivers exceeding speed limits by more than 10 mph declined by 70%, 88% and 82%, respectively, six to eight months after cameras were introduced. Maybe cameras are the solution we are looking for.