Speed Limit 50 Except When We Don’t Like It

By John Carr, NMA Massachusetts Activist Vermont speed law is simpler than most. The speed limit is 50 except as posted following an engineering and traffic investigation. (23 VSA 1007, 1081) City officials in Burlington decided the law does not align with ...

Speed Up For The Children?

By John Carr, NMA Massachusetts Activist Last time I suggested we were barking up the wrong tree by quoting statistics for car-pedestrian crash survivability. A 1995 article in the British Medical Journal asked how often people were hurt by cars. "How dangerous ...

These Cherries Are Delicious, But Deadly

By John Carr, NMA Massachusetts Activist You've probably heard the factoid: so many percent of pedestrians die when hit by cars going at such and such a speed. At best, these figures were cherry picked from several studies of pedestrian safety ...

Justice, Injustice, Or Payback?

By John Carr, NMA Massachusetts Activist The Boston Globe published what's intended to be an exposé of lax handling of drunk driving cases in Massachusetts. The conviction rate in DUI cases is 90%. Reporters want it to be over 95%. 85% of defendants ...

Tell Me A Fairy Tale

By John Carr, NMA Massachusetts Activist A federally funded study (released earlier this month) warns that texting while driving is more dangerous than previous studies may have led you to believe. If the PR cycle follows its typical course this will ...

What Do You Mean, I Look Fast?

By John Carr, NMA Massachusetts Activist We reported last year that the Ohio Supreme Court considered a police officer's visual estimate of speed sufficiently accurate to uphold a conviction for speeding. A law overturning that ruling went into effect September 30.

Warning: Pay No Attention To This Message

By John Carr, NMA Massachusetts Activist "One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit of continually stating and repeating the very very obvious." -- Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Massachusetts has ...

Don’t Drive Faster Than Your Speedometer Will Go

By John Carr, NMA Massachusetts Activist Wayne Crews recently posted an editorial on cost-benefit analysis and regulations. It's worth a read. In the 1970s the Carter administration prohibited speedometers from indicating speeds over 85 miles per hour. The idea was ...

Speed Limit Legislative News

By John Carr, NMA Activist It's the time of the year when many state legislatures convene. In Iowa, a bill would raise speed limits on two lane roads from 55 to 60. According to the DOT, the 85th percentile speed is slightly ...

Asking The Right Question

By John Carr, NMA Massachusetts Activist Often in science you want to measure something you can't look at directly. You might read in the paper that scientists have measured the temperature thousands or millions of years ago. They haven't. They ...