DRIVE TIME

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Staff Writer

O'ahu doesn't have a speeding problem. It has a speed limit problem.

No, I don't agree with that statement, but there are more than a few people out there who do. Every time I write a story about speeding and traffic safety, I hear from them.

You probably know them, too. They live in our neighborhoods and drive on our highways and, sometimes, they even make some sense. They're not late-night racers or young street punks. They're simply people who think we should be allowed to drive a little faster without consequences. They're the ones who helped kill Hawai'i's experiment with traffic cameras.

The thrust of their argument is this: Speed limits are rather arbitrary numbers imposed on us by bureaucrats or police without any connection to reality. It's perfectly safe and reasonable, desirable even, to drive most of our roads at 10, 15 or 20 mph over the posted limits.

"Yes, I speed — safely," one driver wrote to me last week. "And I will continue to do so as long as the speed limits are too low and result in congestion and unsafe conditions."

"You and the cops want to lower the bar on incompetent drivers, incapable drivers, distracted drivers and unsafe vehicles," someone else said in an e-mail.

And those are some of the more printable versions of the argument, which generally holds that if traffic is flowing freely at, say, 75 mph, what's the problem?

Many of the people writing last week wanted to challenge assertions by government officials that speeding is rapidly becoming the leading contributing factor in traffic fatalities.

"But you don't cite how many of those fatal speeders were also drunk. How many of those accidents occurred late at night? How many were one-car accidents? Facts please!"

That's fair enough. I'll work on that.

But you get the sense from most anti-speed limit people that they think they speed and still drive safely.

"I know I can drive 90 mph on the freeway sometimes without causing any problems," one caller said. "If everybody just drove 10 mph over the limit first thing in the morning on the highway, we'd reduce a lot of our traffic congestion."

Like I said, I don't agree with a lot of this. Safety considerations should always be more important than getting someplace in Hawai'i a few minutes quicker than normal. I don't think police speed traps are out there just to make money for the city, either. (Well, maybe a little bit.)

But you can't deny there's a lot of this talk going around, so I felt it was worth giving people their say.

If you'd like to read more about this and other "unreasonable" rules imposed on the nation's drivers, check out the National Motorists Association Web site, www.motorists.org.

Reach Mike Leidemann at mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.