Speed and Safety
Ezra Hauer
The speed at which people elect to travel is affected by vehicle and road
design; by limits to speed and enforcement of those limits; by traffic con-
trol, signs, and markings; and so forth. The speed at which people travel,
in turn, affects road safety. In this context two questions arise: (a) How
is the evolution of speed over time and space affected by what drivers
do? (b) How does speed affect safety? This paper reviews what is known,
notes the gaps in knowledge, and describes where opinions differ and
why. Unfortunately, despite decades of speed measurement and moni-
toring, the evolution of speed over time is poorly documented, and the
understanding of what drives the evolution is largely missing. It is
known that speeds evolve over time, but not why; it is known that there
is some spillover of the change from one road to another, but its size or
extent cannot be predicted. This is a neglected field of inquiry. More is
known in answer to Question b. There can be no reasonable doubt that
if speed increases while other conditions (vehicles, roads, medical ser-
vices) remain unchanged, the accidents that occur will tend to be more
severe. However, the prevalent and strongly held belief that the greater
the speed, the higher is the probability that accidents will occur is, at
present, not well supported by research. Even so, given a change in
mean speed, one can predict the consequences in injuries and fatalities
and this paper discusses how to do so.
The relationship between speed and safety is subject to much debate.
Opinions are strongly held and much heat is generated around the
dinner table, in the media, on the pages of professional and scien-
tific publications, and, of course, in politics. The essence of the sit-
uation is a two-link causal chain in which the arrow represents the
word “affects”:
Some of what people do (by vehicle design and advertising, by road
design, by setting speed limits and enforcing them, etc.) → speed
choice → road safety.
These two causal links raise two questions:
Question 1. How does what we do shape the evolution of speeds
on roads?
Question 2. How does speed affect safety?
These are the main questions discussed in this paper. The purpose
is to review what can be regarded as “known,” to note where the
gaps in knowledge are, and to state where opinions differ and why.
35 Merton Street, Apartment 1706, Toronto, Ontario M4s 3G4, Canada.
Ezra.Hauer@utoronto.ca.
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board,
No. 2103, Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington,
D.C., 2009, pp. 10–17.
DOI: 10.3141/2103-02
10
EVOLUTION OF SPEED
Figure 1 shows the time evolution of speed on the rural interstates in
Montana. The horizontal axis is in quarterly units, except for the years
1982 to 1986 and for the “gap” years (1986 to 1995) where no speed
data were collected, and the increments are annual. The solid line is
for the 85th percentile and the dashed line for the median speed.
Between 1979 and April 1987, the speed limit was 55 mph. From
there until December 1995, the speed limit was raised to 65 mph.
Whether there was a jump in April to May 1987 cannot be said
because data collection stopped until 1995. A backward extrapolation
of the later trend indicates that a jump in speed likely occurred. In
December 1995 Montana adopted the “Basic Rule,” which prevailed
until the end of May 1999. According to the Basic Rule, daytime
speeds should not exceed what is “reasonable and prudent” in a police
officer’s judgment, while the nighttime speed limit remained at
65 mph. On May 28, 1999, Montana abandoned the Basic Rule and
raised the speed limit to 70 mph.
Figure 1 represents a phenomenon that is evolving over time. The
left half of the figure, in particular the period 1981 to 1999, shows a
steady upward creep in speed that, over the nearly two decades,
amounted to 10 to 15 mph. What was the cause of this creep which
continued even during times when the speed law and the road
remained the same? There must have been influences other than a
change in speed limit. Then, sometimes in 1998, even before the
Basic Rule gave way to the 70 mph speed limit, the upward creep
seems to have slowed down and stopped. What has changed? Is this
kind of speed evolution typical in other states or countries? Is it char-
acteristic of all road types or confined to rural access-controlled
roads? What drives the upward creep and what stops it? These are
weighty questions that do not seem to have received much attention.
One can easily imagine various mechanisms that might contribute
to the apparent upward drift in speeds.
One such mechanism could be the practice of setting the speed
limit by the 85th percentile of the speed distribution. For example,
assume that collectively drivers elect speeds such that about half of
them drive faster than the speed limit. This behavior, if coupled with
a periodical application of the 85th percentile rule, would cause an
upward drift in speeds as illustrated in Figure 2.
The dashed curve depicts the speed distribution with the prevail-
ing speed limit of 70 km/h. When the speed limit is raised to 90 km/h
to be in line with the 85th percentile rationale, then, by the assumed
behavior, the solid curve will gradually form. This, in turn, will justify
the next round of speed limit adjustments, and so on.
Another behavioral mechanism affecting speed choice could be
rooted in the self-image of drivers. Research shows that the majority
of drivers believe that they are better than average drivers. One way
to confirm this self-image is by driving faster than the average speed.
If the majority of drivers try to be faster than the average, speeds must
continuously increase.
A third possible mechanism might be the building of wider
roads. As lanes become wider, travel becomes faster, as was shown
Hauer
80
75
Base Rule
(Reasonable and Prudent)
70
MPH
55 mph 65 mph
65
60
55
1979 1981 1986 1995 1996 1997 1998
FIGURE 1 Median and 85th percentile speeds on rural Interstates in Montana. (Source: R. Retting of the Insurance Institute for
Highway Safety.)
by Fitzpatrick et al. (1). Therefore, as wider lanes become more
prevalent, the average speed increases.
The time profile in Figure 1 is but one anecdote and the specula-
tion it may engender has no natural end. To be on solid ground, the
evolution of speed by road type, environment, and jurisdiction must
first be documented and then explained by systematic inquiry.
In addition to questions about how speed evolves over time, there
are questions about how speed evolves over space. Is it true that if
the speed changes on one kind of road, some of the change will spill
to other roads too? Is the spillover limited to nearby roads or does it
change norms of behavior more generally? These questions were
investigated by Casey and Lund (2, 3). The authors found that
“allowing higher speeds on some highways . . . causes higher speeds
on local, connecting roads through speed adaptation.” They also
claim that allowing higher speed on some highways “may cause
higher speeds on other, unconnected and distant roads through some
indirect process of speed generalization.” This latter conclusion is
somewhat tenuous because the general increase in speed over time
may have been caused by many factors, not only the increase in
speed limits. At present not enough is known about the spillover and
adaptation phenomena to allow one to predict the size and extent of
the effect.
As will be argued later, one cannot reasonably believe that the pre-
crash speed has no effect on the severity of crashes. If precrash speed
matters to safety, then one ought to understand how what profession-
FIGURE 2 Speed distributions before and after change in
speed limit.
11
85th percentile
Cars 75 mph
Trucks 65 mph
Median Speed
1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
als do shapes the evolution of precrash speeds. Unfortunately, in spite
of generations of measurement and monitoring, the evolution of
speed over time is poorly documented and the understanding of what
drives the evolution is largely missing. This seems to be a lacuna in
extant knowledge, a neglected field of inquiry. The following section
reviews the more commonly explored subject: how safety depends
on speed.
HOW SPEED AFFECTS SAFETY
Guided by the Haddon matrix (4), it is useful to think about the
speed–safety relationship in terms of the “pre-event” and the “event”
phases. In the pre-event phase one asks about how the probability of
an accident occurring depends on speed. In the event phase one asks
how speed affects the severity of the accident. A comprehensive
review of what was known in 1998 about the effect of speed in the
pre-event and event phases can be found in Shinar (5).
Pre-Event Phase: How the Probability of
Accident Involvement Depends on Speed
Does one’s chance of getting into an accident increase with speed?
Does it depend mostly on the deviation from the mean speed? These
questions have not yet received a satisfactory answer. Shinar states,
From a very simplistic point of view it appears that as speed increases,
the time to react to emerging dangers is shortened, and the likelihood
of successfully coping with the imminent crash situation decreases.
Also, even after the driver reacts by braking, the braking distance of
the vehicle is proportional to the square of pre-braking speed. . . . But
reality is much more complicated, both theoretically and empirically.
(5, p. 231)
After reviewing the extant evidence, Shinar concludes that, “In sum-
mary, with the exception of one small study . . . , none of the obser-
vational/correlational studies that have been reviewed were able to
measure empirically or statistically control for all the potential factors
that mediate speed and crash probability” (5, p. 251). The purpose of
the discussion to follow is to explain some of the complications that
have hampered progress toward understanding.
Figure 3 is from the patina-covered but still influential report by
Solomon (6). Its most striking feature is that for speeds less than
12 Transportation Research Record 2103

FIGURE 3 Involvement rate by day and night. [Source: Figure 2 in Solomon (6).]

about 50 mph, the larger the speed of the accident-involved vehicles,
the less is their involvement rate. This is the opposite of what the
stopping distance conjecture suggests. Only the right branch of the
U-shaped curve could support the conjecture that the probability of
accident occurrence increases with speed.
In the same study Solomon shows (Figure 4) that accident severity
increases with speed. Thus, at least a part of the increasing tendency
of the right branch of the curve in Figure 3 reflects that the higher the
speed, the larger is the proportion of accidents that are reportable and
get reported.
How much of the increasing tendency of the right branch of the
curve in Figure 3 is due to the increased probability of accident occur-
rence and how much is due to increased accident severity cannot be
said. To explain why, consider the invented example of Table 1.
The story line is that at the end of the “before” period there was an
increase in the speed limit, causing a shift in the speed distribution.
One can see in the unshaded numbers of Table 1 a before-to-after
increase in the number of reported crashes for each severity class. In
inventing these numbers, it was assumed that after the speed limit
change, the number of crashes did not change; only some crashes got
more severe and this caused a transfer of 1% of the crashes to the
adjacent higher severity category. Thus, if in the before period there
were 50,000 crashes that were not severe enough and did not get
reported, then 500 would be shifted into the property damage only

FIGURE 4 Persons injured per 100 involvements and property damage per involvement.
[Source: Figure 3 in Solomon (6).]
Hauer
TABLE 1 Crashes Before and After Change in Speed Limit
Not in Official
Records In Official Records
Unreported Property Damage Nonfatal Fatal
Crashes Only Injury Injury
Before 50,000 6,000 4,000 40
After 49,500 6,440 4,020 80
(PDO) column in the after period. At the same time, 60 (1% of 6,000)
of the PDO crashes would be transferred into the Nonfatal Injury col-
umn and so forth The upshot is that what appears to be an increase in
crash frequency could come about entirely as a result of increases in
severity and without any increase in the probability of crashes to
occur. The general issue of frequency–severity indeterminacy and its
repercussions is described in Hauer (7).
The left branch of Figure 3 also suffers from critical shortcomings.
Foremost is the fact that many of the slow-vehicle accidents in
Solomon’s data involved turning vehicles. Therefore what appears
to be due to low speed may be partly due to the maneuver that neces-
sitated it. This question was later explored in a study by the Research
Triangle Institute (RTI) that found that 44% of accidents and 56%
of accident involvements “had at least one vehicle directly involved
in some turning maneuver or was directly influenced by another
vehicle . . . involved in some turning maneuver” (8, p. 18). The
impact of excluding such involvements from the analysis is shown
in Figure 5.
Another problem affecting both the left and the right branches of
the U-shaped curve stems from a subtle statistical artifact. From the
kind of data assembled by Solomon (6), RTI (8), and Kloeden et al.
(9), one would tend to find a U-shaped curve even if speed had noth-
ing to do with the probability of being in a crash. For example, each
data point in Figure 3 and Figure 5 represents the ratio: (proportion
of vehicles with speed V in crashes)/(proportion of vehicles with
FIGURE 5 Impact of excluding involvements, based on Tables 3.1.1 and 3.1.3
from Research Triangle Institute project (8).
13
speed V on the road). The speed in the denominator is measured fairly
accurately; the speed in the numerator is less accurately determined
because it comes from estimates by police, the crash-involved drivers,
or accident reconstruction. Therefore, even if the two true speed dis-
tributions were equal (i.e., if the probability of a crash for all speeds
were the same), the distribution of estimated V in the numerator would
be wider than that in the denominator. To visualize the consequences
of the two kinds of speeds being measured with differing accuracies,
assume that the speeds on the road are normally distributed with a
mean of 60 mph and a standard deviation of 3 mph and that the pre-
crash speeds of crash-involved vehicles have the same distribution.
Assume further that the process of precrash speed estimation for
crash-involved vehicles adds some uncertainty and therefore the esti-
mates of their precrash speeds are normally distributed with the same
mean (60 mph) but a slightly larger standard deviation of 4 mph.
Dividing the ordinates of the wider normal probability density by the
narrower one shows that Solomon’s procedure is expected to yield a
curve like that in Figure 6, even though it should be a horizontal line.
A fuller explanation is provided by Hauer (10). That Solomon’s curve
is partly a statistical artifact was recognized and forcefully stated in
1970 by White and Nelson (11). However, in 2003 Solomon’s results
were still being used as an argument against differential speed limits
for trucks and cars (12).
To explain his surprising results, Solomon showed his data in
another way. Instead of travel speed on the horizontal axis of Figure 3,
he subtracted the mean speed, making the horizontal axis into varia-
tion (deviation) from mean speed. This led to his interpretation that
it is not speed that affects the probability of accident involvement but
that “the greater the variation in speed of any vehicle from the aver-
age speed of all traffic, the greater its chance of being involved in an
accident” (5, p. 1). Inasmuch as this amounts to just a shift of the hor-
izontal axis, this interpretation suffers from all the shortcomings and
uncertainties already discussed.
Attempts to replicate Solomon’s U curve were not successful.
Munden (13) found that drivers observed once during his study did
not yield a U-shaped curve. Drivers driving habitually at less than or
more than the average speed did show a mild U-shaped curve. There
14
FIGURE 6 Curve expected from Solomon’s procedure (mean speed
= 60 mph,  denominator = 3 mph,  numerator = 4 mph).
are, of course, reasons why some drive habitually slowly and others
drive fast. Perhaps these are the same reasons and personal traits that
make some of us cautious and others aggressive and it is these very
reasons that are causally related to both speed choice and involve-
ment in reported accidents. Thus, for example, old drivers who drive
slower and are more fragile may be found disproportionately on the
left branch, whereas the young who tend to drive faster and have a
high accident involvement may dominate the right branch. Fildes and
Lee (14) also found no trace of a U-shaped relationship.
In summary, it is still reasonable to believe that the longer it takes
to stop a vehicle, the larger is the probability of accident involvement.
However, the tortuous history of research on this subject counsels
caution. There is tension between our inability to show that the higher
the speed the larger the chance of an accident and the pivotal role that
the stopping distance plays in highway geometric design.
Event Phase: How Accident Severity
Depends on Speed
Damage to vehicle and to occupant depends on pressure, decelera-
tion, change in velocity, and the kinetic energy dissipated by defor-
mation. All of these are increasing functions of precrash velocity.
What is predicted by Newtonian physics is amply supported by data.
Figure 7 shows the results of a 10-year study of crashes for restrained
front-seat occupants.
In this figure injury severity on the vertical axis is represented by
MAIS, the maximum Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) scores of six
body regions. The AIS represents the “threat to life” associated with
an injury. The horizontal axis is Δv, “the change in velocity of a vehi-
cle’s occupant compartment during the collision phase of a motor
vehicle crash” (16). Figure 7 shows that the proportion of occupants
sustaining a moderate or more severe injury increases with Δv. Thus,
for example, in a crash in which Δv is 30 to 34 km/h, about 40% of
female restrained front-seat occupants will sustain an injury for which
MAIS ≥ 2, but when Δv is in the 50 to 55 km/h range, about 75%
sustain such injury.
Using National Accident Sampling System data about passenger
cars involved in accidents from 1980 through 1986, Joksch (17) found
that the probability of the driver being killed in a reported motor vehi-
cle accident was (Δv/70.6)3.88. The NHTSA (18) provides equations
Transportation Research Record 2103
100
Source: CCIS Study 1983 - 1992
75
Probability MAIS ≥ 2
50
25
Male (n=61)
Female (n=34)
0
+70
0-4
5-9
10 - 14
15 - 19
20 - 24
25 - 29
30 - 34
35 - 39
40 - 44
45 - 49
50 - 54
55 - 59
60 - 64
65 - 69
Δv in km/h
FIGURE 7 Results of a 10-year study of crashes for restrained
front-seat occupants. [Source: Adapted from Mackay (15].]
to calculate the risk of injury to equal or exceed all six MAIS injury
levels. Thus, for example, for MAIS = 6 (unsurvivable injury), the
probability of a passenger vehicle occupant to die is e0.1525ΔV − 8.2629/
(1 + e0.1525ΔV − 8.2629). The models by Joksch and the NHTSA give sim-
ilar results. The conclusion is inescapable; the severity of injury and
the chance of dying increase dramatically with Δv.
How Safety Changes When Mean Speed Changes
The main question is, how does the number of accidents, by sever-
ity, depend on the distribution of speeds? For some reason most of
past research is not about this question but about (a) how the prob-
ability of accidents depends on speed and (b) how the severity of
outcome once an accident has occurred depends on speed. The
hope was that the answer to the main question would emerge from
answering questions a and b. However, for reasons already explained,
there is no consensus on the answer to question a. In addition,
while it is clear that severity increases with speed, it is not easy to
estimate Δv or to know how it depends on the distribution of
speeds; Δv depends not only on the precrash speed of one vehicle
but also on the speed and direction of the other vehicle(s) in the
crash, on their relative masses, and on other factors. In short, based
on the information in the earlier sections, the main question of
interest cannot be answered.
Some researchers did not succumb to the analyze-first-and-
synthesize-later habit and strove to answer the question of interest
directly. Using results from several studies in which mean speed
changed from before to after, Nilsson (19) found that if the mean
speed of a road changed from –v0 to –v1, the ratio of accidents (N1:N0) of
a given severity was proportional to the ratio (v–1:v–0)α with α = 4
for fatal accidents, α = 3 for fatal plus serious injury accidents, and
α = 2 for all injury accidents. This “power model” was later refined
in Nilsson’s doctoral dissertation (20). Elvik et al. (21) assembled
Hauer 15

α
⎛ v⎞
N = N0 ⎜ ⎟
⎝ v0 ⎠

if f(v– ) equals 1 + βv–, then

N = N 0e
(
α ( v − v0 )+β v 2 − v 20 )2

FIGURE 8 Change in mean speed versus
relative change in fatal accidents.
a large data set from 97 published studies containing 460 results
about –v 0, –v 1, N0, and N1. Their data about fatal accidents are shown
in Figure 8.
Each point in the figure is one study result. Most results are in the
“expected” regions. That is, when the mean speed increased, so did
the number of fatal accidents and vice versa. Similar results were
obtained for injury accidents. Elvik et al. (21) also used Nilsson’s
power model and their estimates of α are listed in Table 2.
The power model implies, for example, that a 3-mph reduction
from a mean speed of 30 mph will cause the same reduction in the pro-
portion of crashes as a 6-mph reduction from a mean speed of 60 mph.
Because this implication was thought to be counterintuitive by some,
Hauer and Bonneson (22) were asked to examine whether the data
prepared and used by Elvik et al. provide empirical support for the
power model.
The relationships in Figure 8 can be represented by the separable
differential equation
dN
= af ( v ) dv
N 1. Compute dN. Model A predicts dN = 0.1046 × 500 × (−1.2)
the solution of which depends on what f (v– ) is. Thus, if f (v– ) is
constant, then
and so forth. It follows that the power model is the right choice if the
data indicate that f(v– ) equals 1/ –v . Whether this is true can be exam-
ined by plotting (1/N0)(dN/dv– ) against –v 0. No such dependence was
found, certainly not one indicating that f(v) is halved for a doubling
of v, as implied by the power model. The plots were completely flat
and the most that could be assumed is that f(v– ) might change linearly
with –v . For this reason, f(v– ) = 1 + βv– was chosen.
The parameters α and β were estimated by weighed least-squares
such that the weight of each study result takes into account both the
number of accidents and the method used. Their estimates for two
alternative models (A and B) when d –v is measured in mph are listed
in Table 3. If d –v is measured in km/h, multiply α and β by 1.609.
These parameters are to be used in differential relationships:
dN = αN (1 + βv ) dv (1)
and
N + dN
AMF = = 1 + α (1 + βv ) dv (2)
N
where AMF is the accident modification function. To illustrate
the application of these equations, consider the following numerical
example: A measure is expected to reduce the mean speed by 1.2 mph.
The mean speed “before” was 60 mph and the number of fatal accidents
was 500. The task is to compute dN and AMF for fatal accidents.
= −62.8 fatal accidents. Model B predicts dN = 0.2666 × 500 ×
(1 − 0.0098 × 60) × (−1.2) = −65.9 fatal accidents. For fatal acci-
dents the power model uses α = 3.6 from Table 2 and predicts

N = N 0 e α ( v − v0 ) ( N + dN ) = ⎛ 58.8 ⎞ 3.6 = 0.93

1 N ⎜⎝ 60 ⎟⎠
if f(v– ) equals , then
v
or dN = 500 × (0.93 − 1) = −35. The power model estimates, in this
circumstance, a substantially smaller reduction in fatal accidents.
TABLE 2 Estimates of  Elvik et al.
2. Compute AMF. Model A predicts AMF = 1 + 0.1046 × (−1.2)
Severity Estimate of α 95% Confidence Interval = 0.874. Model B predicts AMF = 1 + 0.2666 × (1 − 0.0098 × 60) ×
(−1.2) = 0.868. The power model predicts 0.93.
Fatalities 4.5 4.1–4.9
Seriously injured road users 2.4 1.6–3.2 –
TABLE 3 Estimated Parameters When dv
Slightly injured road users 1.5 1.0–2.0 Is in mph
All injured road users 1.9 1.0–2.8
(including fatally) α̂ β̂
Fatal accidents 3.6 2.4–4.8
Fatal accidents
Serious injury accidents 2.0 0.7–3.3
A 0.1046 Set to 0
Slight injury accidents 1.1 0.0–2.4 B 0.2666 −0.0098
All injury accidents 1.5 0.8–2.2 Nonfatal injury accidents
(including fatal) A 0.0670 Set to 0
PDO accidents 1.0 0.0–2.0 B 0.0838 −0.0051
16
As is obvious from Figure 8, there is considerable noise in the
data. This noise reflects in part the randomness of accident counts,
in part the variety of circumstances under which the data were
obtained, and in part the variety of causes of change in mean speed.
The question of whether these results would apply regardless of the
cause of the change in mean speed cannot be well answered at this
time. If the observed change in the number of accidents reflects
mainly the associated change in severity, then the results may apply
generally.
In the numerical example, the introduction of some measure was
expected to reduce the mean speed by 1.2 mph. Although all com-
putations depend on this expected d –v , it was not made clear where
such an expectation originates. The most common measure by
which speed is influenced is a change in the posted speed limit. The
relationship between changes in posted speed limit was examined
by Elvik et al. (21). They found that, on the average, “the change in
the mean speed of traffic induced by a change in speed limit appears
to be around 25% of the change in speed limit” (21, p. 90). This
probably varies by setting. Thus, for example, in rural settings, the
change in mean speed was found to be, on average, 42% of the
change in speed limit.
SUMMARY
Two questions have been discussed: “How does what professionals
do affect the evolution of speeds?” and “How does speed affect
safety?” That more was said about the second question than about
the first does not reflect their relative importance. It reflects only the
amount of attention they received in research. Clearly one cannot
anticipate how safety is affected by what we do without answering
both questions.
The discussion of the first question is anecdotal and speculative
in tone. This paper has shown how speed has evolved over time in
one specific case. This allowed the author to ask, If it evolves, what
drives the change? The question could be answered only in gener-
alities: perhaps it is the smoother ride, the wider lanes, more travel
on freeways, and so forth. There might even be mechanisms that
would drive an upward drift in speed. But speculation is of little use.
The extent and universality of the speed drift are not even known.
What is missing is knowledge of fact.
Similar to the question of how speed evolves over time is the ques-
tion of how it spreads over distance (space). It has been established
that there is some speed inertia, a carryover from a faster to a slower
road. However, it is not well known how this decays with distance
and, more importantly, whether and to what extent the increase in
speed on one set of roads spills over to other, more distant roads.
Three questions were addressed more extensively: (a) How does
the probability of accident involvement depend on speed?; (b) How
does the severity of the outcome depend on speed?; and (c) How
does safety change when the mean speed changes? On the first ques-
tion there are strong beliefs supported by weak evidence. To many
it seems obvious that the faster one drives the more likely one is to
crash. This is why the dependence of the stopping distance on speed
plays such an important role in geometric design. Others believe that
the likelihood of a crash has more to do with deviation from mean
speed. The paper explains why what seems obvious is not easy to
demonstrate. First, the early research did not distinguish between
slow and turning vehicles. Second, from the kind of data used one
cannot possibly know whether the observed differences in relative
accident rate are due to probability of accident involvement or due
Transportation Research Record 2103
to severity of outcome. Third, past studies neglected to account for
the fact that the speed on the road and the speed in a crash are esti-
mated to a different accuracy. The result is that the relative rate pre-
sents itself in the form of a U-shaped curve, even when in reality it
is a straight horizontal line. In short, all can still believe what they
choose; at this point the answers from research are inadequate.
The question of how severity depends on speed can be answered
with clarity. The mechanism of damage to vehicle and occupant is
well understood; it is clear that damage increases with precrash
velocity, and what physics predict is amply supported by data. As a
result, one can show how the probability of being killed or sustain-
ing an injury of a given severity in an accident increases as a func-
tion of the change in velocity. That is, if one can estimate Δv, the
change in velocity of the passenger compartment at the time of the
crash, it is possible to associate with it a probability of injury of any
given severity.
The hope may have been that, by establishing (a) how the proba-
bility of accident involvement depends on speed and (b) how accident
severity depends on speed, one could answer the question of interest:
How does the number of accidents by severity depend on speed? This
hope turned out to be vain for two reasons. First, the answer to ques-
tion a is not clear. Second, outcome severity depends not on speed but
on the change in speed Δv, which, in turn, depends on many factors,
not only the speed of the crashing vehicle. Therefore, the question of
interest had to be answered directly.
There are many research studies about the safety effect of counter-
measures that changed the mean speed on roads. Summarizing
their results, Nilsson (19, 20) and Elvik et al. (21) suggested using
the power model. The implications of the power model are some-
what counterintuitive and, on closer examination, are not in accord
with their data. Hauer and Bonneson used Elvik’s data to estimate
a different model (22), one that is largely free of counterintuitive
implications. The results are presented in Equations 1 and 2 and in
Table 3.
In conclusion, there can be no reasonable doubt that if speed
increases while other conditions (vehicles, roads, medical services)
remain unchanged, accidents will be more severe and therefore more
accidents will be reported. Given a change in mean speed, one can
predict the consequences in injuries and fatalities. The link between
what we do (by vehicle design, advertising, speed limits, infrastruc-
ture standards, etc.) and the speeds on the road is less clear. We know
that speeds evolve over time but do not know exactly why. We know
that there is some spillover of the change from one road to another but
cannot well predict its size or extent.
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The Safety Data, Analysis, and Evaluation Committee sponsored publication of
this paper.