A SPEED limit law that’s used across the US has been blasted as outdated for its impact on road safety.
Rose Hammond, an elderly resident of Sylvania Township, Ohio, has been advocating for a reduction in the speed limit on a local road.
An elderly resident in a township in Ohio has urged offials to lower a local road’s speed limit[/caption]
The route has two schools, a church and park in its vicinity, but experts say the current speed limit is technically too low[/caption]
The verdict reflects frustrations with the decades-old 85% rule[/caption]
However, according to a report by ABC News, the “85% rule” has unexpectedly determined that the current speed limit should in fact be increased by 5 mph instead of lowered.
Now, experts believe this contradiction underscores the challenges of using an outdated system to address modern safety concerns.
Hammond says Mitchaw Road, a two-lane road that passes her assisted living community, also includes a church, two schools and a busy park that hosts youth sports leagues.
“What are you waiting for, somebody to get killed?” Hammond asked officials.
But after county engineers analyzed Mitchaw Road’s speed, they actually found that, technically, its speed limit is 5 mph too low.
This is due to the 85% rule, a general method used to set speed limits on roads – based on the principle that the safest speed for a road is the speed at which 85% of drivers are traveling under normal, free-flowing traffic conditions.
The ruling assumes that the majority of drivers will naturally choose a safe and reasonable speed for the road and that the speed limit should reflect this behavior.
It works by traffic engineers measuring the speeds of vehicles on a road and identifying the speed at which 85% of the vehicles are driving at or below.
This speed is then rounded to the nearest 5 mph increment and used as the posted speed limit.
This is done to minimize the variation in speeds between drivers, as research from the 1930s and 1940s suggested that roads are safest when most drivers are traveling at similar speeds.
However, in recent times, the rule has been criticized as it tends to see an increase in speed limits over time.
It also does not consider modern factors like pedestrian safety, urban environments or the presence of schools, parks and other areas with high foot traffic.
Indeed, it’s seen to prioritize vehicle flow over the safety of all road users, including pedestrians and cyclists, and some cities and states have been moving away from the 85% rule – instead setting speed limits using methods that account for road context, pedestrian activity and crash risks.
Leah Shahum, who directs the Vision Zero Network, a nonprofit advocating for street safety, said: “The 85th percentile should not be the Holy Grail or the Bible, and yet over and over again it is accepted as that.”
However, Jay Beeber, executive director for policy at the National Motorists Association, believes the 85% rule is usually the safest way to minimize the variation in speed.
“It doesn’t really matter what number you put on a sign,” Beeber said.
“The average driver drives the nature of the roadway.
It would be patently unfair for a government to build a road to encourage people to drive 45 mph, put a 30 mph speed limit on it, and then ticket everyone for doing what they built the road to do.”
In the case of Ohio and Mitchaw Road, the speed limit will seemingly stay the same – with Ohio law setting maximum speeds for 15 different types of roadways regardless of the 85% rule.
But the state does now give more consideration to roadway context and allows cities to reduce speed limits based on a large presence of pedestrians and cyclists.
“States have very slowly started to move away from the 85th percentile as being kind of the gold standard for decision-making,” said Michelle May, who manages Ohio’s highway safety program.
“People are traveling and living differently than they did 40 years ago, and we want to put safety more at the focus.”
How to fight a speeding ticket
According to a legally reviewed post, there are five effective strategies to fighting a speeding ticket if it was wrongfully issued.
- If pulled over and issued a ticket, drivers can argue or dispute a driver’s personal opinion. When issuing a speeding ticket, an officer is required to write their opinion and come to an “objective” conclusion. If the ticket was written based on that judgment, it can be contested. An example would be if you were going 75 mph in a 65 mph zone because others were traveling at the same speed, you could argue that it would be more dangerous to travel at 65 mph.
- You can dispute the officer’s presentation of evidence. If you were ticketed for something like running a stop sign or making an illegal u-turn, you can’t contest that if an officer saw you, but you can call things into court like eyewitnesses, diagrams, or photos.
- Argue that the ticket was issued by a “mistake of fact.” This is tricky, but a “mistake of fact” is a mistake made by a driver about a situation that was beyond their control, or if a driver legitimately did not know they were violating the law. For example, you were driving in two lanes because the lane markers were so worn down that you could not see them.
- You could say circumstances justified your driving. You could say you were speeding to pass a possibly drunk driver, or avoiding an accident by rapidly changing lanes. However, the argument won’t work if there’s proof you continued to speed after passing.
- Similar to the above, it could be argued that speeding was necessary to avoid harm. The key is to argue that if you weren’t speeding, you or someone else could have been harmed.
- Consult a traffic attorney, if all else fails. Many have free consultations to decide whether or not there’s a case.
Source: FindLaw
