For as long as I have been involved with safer teen driving, one statistic has continued to bother me. In 2007, four Connecticut teens (a 19 year old driver and three 16 and 17 year old passengers) died in a crash in which the police estimated the car’s speed, on a relatively rural two lane road, at 140 MPH.
As far as I know, there is no place in the United States where it is legal to drive a car faster than 75 MPH. Which raises two questions: why do we allow auto manufacturers to build and sell cars that go significantly faster than 80 MPH, and why does the traffic safety community not use the relatively simple and available technology of speed governors/controls to deal with the deadly phenomenon of speeding? If driving faster than 75 is universally illegal, what would be the objection to a national legal restriction saying that no car (other than a police car) shall be capable of achieving a speed of more than 80 MPH?
I am not so naive as to not know who would protest this – the auto manufacturers sell cars by showing professional drivers on closed courses driving at speeds far above the legal limit, and chase scenes in movies thrive on MPH well above any lawful — or sane — limits. But are advertising and entertainment so powerful that we cannot institute a mechanical control on our own cars in the name of safety? The auto industry is working on so many safety technologies, such as crash sensors and drowsy driver alerts – why not also reduce the maximum speed of our cars? It would seem to be a no-brainer that setting a maximum possible speed of 80 would reduce crashes and save lives just by eliminating the many instances of speeding above 80 MPH.
For parents of teen drivers, there is now a widely available technology that offers perhaps the next best thing, which is monitoring devices that notify parents if a vehicle has been driven above a certain speed. For such technology, my advice is the same as for all other types: if you can afford it, buy it. I am a fan of any device that makes teen drivers more cautious, and electronic/email oversight is one example.
But to return to the original question, could not the auto industry help this cause immensely by not making cars that go faster than 80?
