She was coming off the on ramp, crossing the Arkansas River and merging onto the interstate at the same time. The traffic was typical for just after 5 in the afternoon. Stop and go, then goooooo. Cars went from zero to 40 in a few seconds, then slammed on their brakes again. This driver almost hit two cars in front of us. When we passed her a mile later, we looked to see if she was impaired, and she certainly was. She held the steering wheel with one hand, and a phone with the other, texting away.
The draft of a plan to raise speed limits in Arkansas is open for public comment, but it doesn't take a math whiz to predict the grisly result if this change in state law is approved. Yet again. Because it's a simple inverse ratio: The higher the speed limit on Arkansas roads and highways, the more funerals. Even the state's Highway Commission, which finds this change feasible, notes that the number of fatal crashes increases when speed limits go up.
Arkansas has been here before. Not only reason but experience says much the same thing: After all, when speed limits were increased in 1996, this state went from recording 46 highway fatalities the previous year to 54 deaths in 1997.
By 2000, the carnage on the state's roads had peaked, to quote the Department of Transportation review of speed limits, "even given the steady increase in the vehicle miles traveled over this period. It could be argued that technology has played a more significant role in the fluctuation of the rates rather than the posted speed limit. For example, continued improvements in vehicle safety design, airbags, better tires and the more recent development of collision avoidance systems has contributed to the declines [in the casualty rates] whereas the explosion of the use of smartphones and texting has contributed to the increases."
But why argue about the causes of these trends instead of putting the weight of state law behind public safety? The life you save may be your own or that of someone in your family.
Listen to Philip Taldo, a member of the state Highway Commission who's concerned not just about speed limits but the general tendency to transform Arkansas from the Land of Opportunity into the State of Permissiveness:
"I am concerned about raising the speed limits for several reasons," he says. "First and foremost, we're in a period in our culture where everybody's got one of these phones in their hands whether they are sitting at a meeting or driving down the highway. And the younger people are even more attached than we are.
"Our state is below the national average in using seat belts," Mr. Taldo continues, "and we also in the past year put beer and wine in every grocery store and quick-stop in the state. We've authorized medical marijuana . . . and then we look at raising the speed limit. It just doesn't look right to me."
Mr. Taldo has a point worth considering. For something is rotten in the state of Arkansas--and it needs to be excised before it spreads even further. What's called for isn't just a lifesaving stand against higher speed limits, but major surgery to remove this cancer on the body politic before it metastasizes. Without principled and decisive action, preferably soon if not immediately, the prognosis isn't hopeful. End of diagnosis. The treatment must be left to the skill and courage, the conscience and convictions, of all of us in this small but wonderful state. Lest it become an example to beware, not emulate.
Higher speed limits? Again? As an editor once told us when we turned in a particular awful piece of prose for his review before publishing: Let's not.
Editorial on 10/21/2017