Posted on: Saturday, December 22, 2001

Editorial
Time for a fresh look at our speed limits

Few decisions have stirred as much debate in Honolulu as the plan by the Department of Transportation to use cameras to catch and ticket speeders and drivers who run red lights.

People have come up with a number of arguments against the cameras: government intrusion into privacy, lack of due process, yellow lights are too short and speed limits are too low.

Courts have agreed there is no merit to the privacy and due process arguments. They have said there are no privacy rights when traveling on a highway. And, as long as drivers can contest a camera-generated ticket, they can't make due process claims.

But there might be some room for at least a discussion on the arguments about the timing of yellow lights and speed limits.

We don't pretend to be traffic engineers or experts, but we do wonder if there shouldn't be a reasoned, overall look at speed limits around town.

In general, we would agree that saying speed limits are too low is an easy cop-out by some of our lead-footed brethren. But both road and car technology have improved dramatically over the years, as has road usage.

Certainly, tweaking is done to traffic design as patterns change. But we do wonder if some speed limits aren't, in fact, too low and, conversely, if some aren't too high. And, are traffic light sequences set correctly for our now-more-congested roadways?

As we embark on a new world of traffic enforcement, the titans of traffic owe it to the rest of us to assess whether signals and speed limits make sense for the area and usage. That is little enough to ask.