How People Drive

Dear Neighbors,

I do not advocate for people to drive any speed they want. If a driver is recklessly endangering others they should be dealt with by the police. I advocate for people to drive the safest speed, which they do 85% of the time.

The reality of driver behavior is that people drive a speed they feel safe. To test this, the Federal Highway Administration performed a study where they raised and lowered posted speed limits to see what drivers would do. The results were that people did not vary their speed more than a few percentage points from the 85th Percentile Speed (the safest speed). [https://www.motorists.org/issues/speed-limits/effects-raising-lowering/]

The Legislature wants to ticket you for driving safely. Posted limits are 8 to 16 mph below the safest speed, so arming municipal police with RADAR will result in tens of millions of dollars of tickets every year to people who drive safely.

PA House Bill 1275 and now Senate Bill 607 are pushing the enforcement-for-profit racket so that drivers all over Pennsylvania will be caught in RADAR speed traps for driving the safest speed, not because they are dangerous drivers run amok.

The media regurgitate the falsehoods of the RADAR lobby and ignore alternate sources of information that expose the errors and the real goal of RADAR: your money.

I urge you to contact every elected official you can and tell them you are on to the scam: tell them to reject the enforcement-for-profit racket and tell them to deliver real highway safety with engineering and education, reserving enforcement for the 3% to 5% of truly dangerous drivers.

If they are serious about your safety, the Legislature will pass a law to post all speed limits at the 85th Percentile Speed, and make speeding tickets points-only with no fine. Contact Senator Dinniman and Representative Shusterman and tell them to VOTE NO on HB 1275 and SB 607. http://www.senatordinniman.com... http://pahouse.com/Shusterman/...

Sincerely,

Tom McCarey Member, National Motorists Association