Both opponents and supporters of higher speed limits look at a year of statistics and say the figures prove their case:
Fewer people have died on Indiana roads in the year since the General Assembly raised speed limits, but deaths on the six main interstates with new 70-mph stretches rose by 40 percent.
Indiana police also reported a 10 percent rise in the number of speeding tickets issued on 70-mph sections, an Indianapolis Star analysis of State Police crash records showed.
State Sen. Timothy S. Lanane, D-Anderson, said the surge in interstate deaths and speeding tickets is confirmation the 70-mph limit has encouraged people to step on the gas pedal.
[. . .]
But Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels, who supported the change, cited the overall decline in deaths as a reason to believe the higher limits have, so far, had few consequences on safety.He suggested roads are safer now, saying the rise in speeding tickets has been driven by stepped up enforcement.
One year isn't enough to prove anything, one way or the other. These people are just hanging onto their stands, which is OK, but they shouldn't be using such early numbers to make their cases. It's true that some people will add five miles to the speed limit, no matter what it is, and drive that fast. But it's also true that there's a "flow of traffic" speed that most drivers adopt, and the stated speed limit should have at least some relationship to that. Some studies have suggested that it's not the speed so much that causes a lot of accidents, but too great a difference in speeds.
