Interstate 95 winds past Chief Street Station in Richmond, Virginia. (Ned Oliver/ Virginia Mercury)

A version of this commodity was commencement published by the Virginia Mercury.

In the starting time one-half of final yr, Americans drove 264.2 billion fewer miles than over the aforementioned timespan in 2019.

Fewer miles driven didn't translate to fewer fatalities, though. In 2020, traffic deaths shot up 7.two% nationwide and speeding-related crashes increased xi%. Here in the commonwealth, that terrifying trend meant that 847 people died in motorcar collisions final year with 406 of those fatalities — roughly 48% — directly owing to excessive speeds.

To reduce the danger of driving, Virginia state officials are now planning a new comprehensive road rubber campaign to slow down drivers. However, controversies around equitable enforcement and the political unpopularity of speeding cameras means that no i can say at the moment what the final program volition look like when details are debuted this fall.

A national template

The coming anti-speeding pilot program represents a multi-state, multi-organization attempt in cooperation with Maryland, the Governors Highway Safety Association, the Insurance Establish for Highway Rubber and the National Road Safe Foundation. While Maryland will serve as the case study for rural anti-speeding interventions, Virginia'due south Department of Motor Vehicles will be focusing on improvements that could be undertaken in urban areas. Using Norfolk every bit a command site, the commonwealth's program will focus on speeding reduction on specific corridors and arterials in downtown Richmond.

The GHSA put forward the $100,000 in funding backside the project, simply all of the analysis and reporting of the findings will be managed past the insurance institute in club to better understand speeding as a national crisis. The ultimate goal of the plan is to develop a template that can be used by other states and communities beyond the country to reduce speeding deaths beyond the borders of the 2 participating states.

"Speeding is a neglected highway safety result," said Russ Rader, senior vice president for communications at the IIHS. "Information technology's a factor in the deaths of more than nine,000 people each yr in crashes. It'due south off-white to say that safety groups around the country have been frustrated that there hasn't been a comprehensive effort to deal with speeding. The efforts take been mostly fits and starts of localized enforcement, merely information technology hasn't been tackled on a national level, then we wanted to launch a programme to practice that."

The wraparound approach of the program that will include the iii "Es" of traffic safe — enforcement, instruction and engineering — hopes to build on the success of the Click It or Ticket campaign that coincided with a national xx% increase in seat belt usage over a 16-yr menstruation. The thought of a coordinated anti-speeding campaign was born out of a GHSA conference in Charlottesville where advocates questioned why speeding wasn't receiving the same attention every bit other, less deadly bad behaviors from drivers.

"Speed has been around as a leading cause of death in crashes for over thirty years now," said Russ Martin, the GHSA's senior managing director of policy and government relations. "Up until a few years ago we weren't talking about speeding as much as nosotros were nigh other issues that were actually causing fewer crashes. It's one of those things people show some discomfort around discussing because everyone does information technology and it involves enforcement which can lead to other issues."

Equitable enforcement

One of the leading hypotheses behind the bound in speeding deaths pins the problem on a drib in 2 factors that unremarkably curb dangerous driving: congestion and enforcement. With vehicle miles traveled already surging ahead of pre-COVID levels, traffic may be back, but the increased sensation around the disproportionate violence Blackness Americans face at the easily of police withal has some uneasy nearly renewed enforcement.

"Enforcement by police officers has been a very important part of the progress that we have made in traffic condom over the past thirty-40 years when yous retrieve virtually seatbelts, boozer driving and teen driving safety, only in that location take been significant equity problems," Rader said. "Europe depends much more than heavily on automated speed camera enforcement, and they have much less of a problem with speeding. Technology is a mode to brand enforcement off-white and equitable considering you're enforcing the law adequately upon all drivers and you're doing it 24/7. Speed cameras should exist expanded with that in mind."

Although the case for increased automated speed enforcement seems sound, currently Virginia police force bans speeding cameras outside of school and road piece of work zones — exceptions that have but been passed past the General Assembly in the terminal two years. The historic lack of support for speeding cameras may mean that the eventual plan may non include a unmarried camera at all.

"We may very well be doing some things around automated enforcement, just we don't know yet," said John Saunders, DMV's director of highway safety. "If nosotros do, at that place shouldn't exist a 'gotcha.' We volition educate the community to the utmost about what we are doing and where we are doing it, so in that location volition be no surprises to the community. We have to do this in a cautious manner that gives the community that assurance that what we are doing is just for their safety."

In the past, speeding cameras take lost the support of communities because they were deployed to generate municipal revenue without prioritizing the stated goal of slowing downward drivers. If Virginia does deploy automated enforcement, Martin believes the republic can do it right.

"We know that traffic enforcement — and especially high visibility enforcement — is super effective, only we know nosotros tin can't ignore these lived experiences," he said "Nosotros support the utilise of automated speeding enforcement, merely nosotros want to see programs that are fully data-driven and nigh rubber, not about generating revenue. Automated enforcement tin can be equitable, only the devil is in the details. If we can get to that place where we tin build loftier-quality programs, then nosotros can build back the support for these programs confronting the controversy that has mired them for some time now."

Safe systems

The controversy effectually enforcement and a renewed focus on equity from policymakers and the general public may hateful that the terminal details of the program could take an entirely different tack toward reducing speeding: "We plan on taking a safe systems approach," Saunders said. "We need to do everything we can to protect the driver and other vulnerable road users because folks are always going to brand mistakes."

The safety systems approach to traffic safety grew out of Scandinavia'southward Vision Zero movement which prioritizes road technology changes to eliminate opportunities for driver error and lessen the destruction crashes cause when they do occur. The solutions proposed under the auspices of Vision Cypher tend to be low-tech, traffic calming measures similar narrowing lane markings, adding bike lanes and lowering speed limits.

"A number of cities in Virginia and we at DMV's highway rubber office have already taken that philosophy on," said Saunders. "Americans have come to just accept that people are going to be killed in car crashes, only it's not reasonable for united states of america to call up like that. I don't know that I will see Vision Zilch realized in my career, simply we can get to a place where it is rare to run into someone dice in an auto crash. It's non like it cannot exist achieved — information technology's being accomplished in certain communities in Virginia every year."

Regardless of whether the democracy can achieve a future with no traffic fatalities, researchers like Rader believe the increased priority being placed on combating speeding tin can just help improve route safety: "Distracted driving gets a lot of attention, simply nosotros don't have many good tools at our disposal to stop distracted driving. In contrast, our toolboxes are full of proven solutions to reduce speeding but we don't always use them. It'south similar having a vaccine against an illness but letting information technology sit on a shelf."