Report: More Bleed From Speed

High speed limits are to blame for nearly 1,900 extra highway deaths over a three-year period, according to a report released Monday.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety says the deaths occurred in 22 states from 1996 to 1999, reports The New York Times.

The study looks at the impact of the 1995 repeal of federal speed limits of 55 miles per hour, or 65 miles per hour on rural roads.

Since then, 28 states have raised their speed limits to 70 miles an hour or higher. Montana experimented with having no daytime speed limit, then established a limit of 75 miles per hour.

The report uses a study not by the U.S. Department of Transportation but by the Land Transport Safety Authority of New Zealand, which compared deaths in 22 states that raised their speed limits with deaths in 12 states that did not. There were an additional 1,880 deaths in the states that raised speed limits, according to The Times.

The study also found that a higher speed limit leads to more driving at excessive speed. While only 1 percent of drivers hit 80 mph in 65-mile-an-hour Maryland, nearly a quarter of drivers surpassed 80 mph in Colorado where 75 is the limit.

"These are the fastest speeds we've ever observed," institute engineer Richard Retting wrote. The report criticized the automobile industry for making cars faster and more powerful than necessary.

The 10 states that raised limits to 75 mph — all in the Midwest and West — experienced 38 percent more deaths per million miles driven than states with 65-mph limits, or approximately 780 more deaths.

The 12 states that raised their limits to 70 mph — including California, Florida, North Carolina and Missouri — saw a 35 percent increase, or 1,100 additional deaths.

Geographical differences in states may have contributed to the numbers. For example, the report said, drivers may go faster in Western states where cities are farther apart. The report didn't examine the effects of other trends, such as the increasing number of sport utility vehicles on the road then.

The Insurance Institute said there is no doubt, however, that when speed limits increase so do deaths. When the national speed limit of 55 mph was adopted 1974, fatality rates dropped, the Insurance Institute's chief scientist Allan Williams said.

The Insurance Institute's separate study of speeds in Georgia, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Mexico, Colorado and California also found that when rates are raised on rural interstates, speeding increased on urban interstates.

Average travel speeds on urban interstates in Atlanta, Boston and Washington were the same as or higher than on rural interstates near those cities, even though the speed limits on those urban interstates were 55 mph. In Atlanta, 78 percent of drivers on one urban interstate exceeded 70 mph, the report found.

The study was financed by the insurance industry, prompting critics to suggest that insurers might desire lower speed limits because they charge higher rates to people who get speeding tickets.

According to IIHS statistics, 42,815 people died in 2002 in automobile crashes, making it the leading cause of death for Americans under 34 and costing the economy about $200 billion.