Road safety organizations team up to fund speed reduction projects

Three national roadway safety organizations are partnering to fund and evaluate pilot projects by two states to reduce speeding.

The Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA), Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and National Road Safety Foundation (NRSF) will give Maryland and Virginia $100,000 each to develop, implement and evaluate speed management pilot programs.

More than 9,000 people die each year as a result of speeding-related crashes.

The new pilots aim to develop a template for effective speed reduction strategies that can be duplicated in other states and communities and will launch once traffic patterns stabilize enough for IIHS experts to conduct a valid before-and-after evaluation.

“Though speed management has been a problem for decades, speeding became even more acute during the COVID-19 pandemic, as less traffic has prompted some motorists to drive at high speeds on highways and city streets across the nation,” said GHSA Executive Director Jonathan Adkins.

“Enforcement challenges, rising speed limits — which IIHS research confirms have cost thousands of lives — and public acceptance of speeding create a demand for new strategies.”