National Motorists Association Blog

By Shelia Dunn, NMA Communications Director

Editor’s Note: This piece originally appeared as the cover story in the Winter 2022 Edition of the National Motorists Association’s quarterly magazine Driving Freedoms. If you would like to receive our magazine, please become a member of the NMA today!

Advocating for speed limits based on sound traffic-engineering has always been fundamental to the National Motorists Association. There has always been resistance from the “speed kills” crowd, but the trove of data proving the effectiveness of the 85^th percentile rule as a determinant of reasonable and prudent travel speeds provides the proof.

Over the past several years, the speed limit landscape has been changing. There is a concerted effort to set speed limits based on intuition and social conjecture more than engineering.

The current dynamic is different from the 1980s and 90s when the NMA successfully led the fight to get rid of the 55 mph national maximum speed limit. This time around, all speed limits, not just those posted on highways, are in jeopardy.

Anti-auto press coverage has grown, spurred by the rising popularity of Vision Zero and Complete Streets movements. Even the venerable AARP has been sending dedicated messaging in support of lower speed limits and traffic calming. The recently enacted $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill includes massive funding for these and other programs designed to restrict driving on all types of roadways.

In last year’s 20 is Plenty (except when it isn’t) NMA weekly E-Newsletter Gary Biller wrote:

“The warning signs have been around for a long time. The scramble to fall in line with Vision Zero demands that traffic fatalities be eliminated regardless of the cost to taxpayers, and society, in general, has even affected organizations like the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) that are supposed to be protecting the engineering standards that keep our roads safe and efficient.

“ITE currently is considering a new policy statement under the heading, “Vision Zero and Safe Speeds.” The recommendation to its membership of traffic engineers and other transportation professionals is to fully embrace and support Vision Zero.”

The NMA has consistently said that the safest roads are ones where motorists proceed at a natural, uniform speed. But unfortunately, in many urban cores, this will no longer be the case; road dieting and putting in physical street impediments such as pedestrian bulb-outs produce traffic congestion on normally smooth-flowing roadways. Most motorists will likely not even be able to drive the posted lower limit of 20 or 25 mph. Through incentives provided by federal and state transportation agencies, communities will narrow streets to implement other exclusive lanes used for buses and bikes, while also installing traffic-calming to further erode smooth and safe travel.

Highways may still have a chance, but there are rumblings from those who want to impose a lower speed across the board for “safety” reasons.

This is not a “here we go again” situation but an all-out war on cars. Anti-auto groups want to make it as uncomfortable as possible forcing motorists to give up four wheels for two or take public transit, which isn’t available to an estimated 45 percent of the US population.

Transportation expert and CATO Institute Senior Fellow Randal O’Toole recently wrote that in California, state legislators want to forbid the state DOT from building or expanding freeways in poor neighborhoods, but rather force residents to ride public transit (if it even exists).

O’Toole highlighted a 2019 survey that found more than 80 percent of Californians earning less than $25,000 per year used a vehicle to commute to work while only five percent used public transit. He noted:

“Seriously, what kind of a sick society do we live in when people who call themselves progressives think that the right thing to do is limit the mobility of the people who need it most? Someone needs to start a social justice movement demanding that low–income people and minorities have the same access to automobiles and highways as middle–class whites.”

The NMA has vigorously opposed a proposed revision of the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), which numerous NMA alerts and weekly newsletters have documented. The final version will likely be issued later in 2022. If the FHWA has its way, not only will the 85th percentile rule become optional, but Vision Zero and Complete Streets will influence all street designs, both new and existing.

In the past year, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB43 into law, which pretty much nullifies the 85^th percentile rule in California and the protection it afforded against predatory speed traps. Beginning in 2022, local California officials can decide, without benefit of engineering data, which streets will have lower speed limits. Police, however, will not be able to enforce new speed limits until June 30, 2024 (or whenever the state creates an online portal to adjudicate the infractions—whichever comes first).

California will be rewriting its MUTCD to accommodate the new rules of default speed limits of 15 to 25 mph in residential and business districts.

In the same 20 is Plenty NMA newsletter mentioned above, NMA Research Fellow Jay Beeber is quoted from a post he made to an ITE member forum about the speed limit slogan:

“Can we please stop pushing the ‘20 is plenty’ nonsense and other arbitrary setting of speed limits? This is not a scientifically-based approach to speed management. The foundation of engineering is science and data, not ideology. The overwhelming scientific evidence is that arbitrarily lowering (or raising) speed limits on local roads has little to no effect on actual speeds, and therefore little to no effect on safety. There are scores of studies over the years that prove this. All it does is make violators out of the vast majority of drivers.

“I realize that for some, criminalizing driving is a feature of these policies, not a bug. But this approach can lead to very negative societal consequences. For example, anyone concerned about the over-policing of minority communities for minor infractions should recognize that criminalizing a majority of the driving population will make this problem much worse. I wonder how you might feel if you pushed this policy, and someone gets pulled over for going 30 mph in a 20 mph zone that was previously 25 mph, the stop goes south, and someone ends up dead.

“It has been said before, and it bears repeating over and over since it has still not gotten through to some folks, but the only way to reduce speeds (assuming that’s a necessary policy on a particular roadway) is to change the nature of the roadway in some manner that changes the driver’s perception of their speed. Otherwise, you are on a fool’s errand and will simply create pain and misery for the populace, give people a false sense of security, waste resources that could otherwise be put to effective safety measures, and create disrespect for traffic control devices, elected officials, and law enforcement.

“Massive enforcement efforts will not achieve the desired goal. Drivers are capable of complying with an uncomfortably low-speed requirement for about a block or two (such as a school zone). After that, the natural tendency to match your speed with your perception of the “comfortable” speed for that situation and roadway will take over. Humans cannot control these perceptions as they are primarily a function of the autonomic nervous system, and no amount of draconian penalties can change the natural perception-reaction response.”

However, many cities across the country under the guise of Vision Zero, continue the pursuit of lower default speed limits.

Here are examples of recent headlines:

• Denver might lower some speed limits to 20 mph. Here’s where and why. . . .
• Raleigh, NC city leaders reduce speed limits on over 100 streets in 2021
• Parma, OH considers lowering the speed limit on side streets.
• Norfolk, VA reduces speed limit on neighborhood streets to 20 mph.

American streets were designed for vehicles to move goods and people first and foremost. Data from a recent Brookings Institute study illustrate the dominant modes of personal mobility over those roads:

Drove alone                                                      76.3%
Carpooled                                                           9.0%
Used public transit                                          5.1%
Worked from home                                         5.0%
Walked                                                                  2.7%
Took a taxi or rode a motorcycle               1.2%
Bicycled                                                               0.6%

Today, anti-auto groups want to flip the script, subjugating the role of the personal automobile to public transit, walking, and bicycling. They don’t address how many people outside of densely populated urban centers in the Vision Zero world will maintain jobs to take care of their families, or how the restricted movement of goods and services will stifle the economy.

A recent Next City post looked into using data analytics for Vision Zero programs. The article showcases information from Bellevue, Washington, (population 144,403 in 2019). In 2015, Bellevue adopted Vision Zero, and shortly after, officials measured and analyzed 4,500 hours of video footage across 40 intersections. The data correlated to eight million road users, with motorists accounting for 97.3 percent of road users, followed by pedestrians at 2.6 percent and bicyclists at 0.1 percent, numbers quite consistent with the Brookings Institute study cited above.

City officials used the data to identify and prioritize budget and policy proposals related to biking, pedestrian infrastructure, and other street improvements. Bellevue also allocated $2.5 million of the city’s 2021-2027 budget to implement rapid road safety projects (RDPs) along five high-injury corridors. RDPs can be implemented in six months or less and include pavement markings, colored paint, pavement treatments, flexible delineators, street sign changes, traffic light signal timing changes, and changes to the street’s speed limit.

In the long run, collecting data like this might do some good to enhance both traffic flow and road safety. But in the end, according to long-established Vision Zero precepts, the driver is the one responsible for accidents involving another non-vehicle road user, whether it is the driver’s fault or not. In an illustration of just how ingrained and inflexible that mindset is, advocates have stricken “accident” from their transportation vocabulary, replacing it with “traffic violence.”

We live in a weird time. Eighty-nine percent of all Americans aged 25 or older hold a driver’s license. In most of the country, people travel primarily by a four-wheeled vehicle. That just might not be the case if opponents have their way in this changing landscape of speed limits and other anti-auto measures.