This video is going to be about speeding. I know. You think I will sound like your dad or your grandpa, and I am. My daughter is 24-years-old. She started telling me that I was an old man at every birthday, about the time she was 13 or 14-years-old. So I would get a birthday come around, and she would say, “Hey, old man.” Moreover, I started to go gray in my 30s, so it sort of fit. So today, I am going to sound like an older man.
Because I want to talk to you about speeding, our government has something called the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, and among other things, they keep track of statistics about automobile accidents, what causes them, where they are happening, and how they are happening. For example, in 2019, the last year for which data was available when I looked at the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration’s website, revealed that 26% of all traffic fatalities involved speeding as a contributing factor. That means one out of every four people. So actually, more than one out of every four people killed in an automobile accident died due to some party speeding, either themselves, the driver of the vehicle they were a passenger in, or another motorist on the roadway.
Sometimes we think of what we are doing in a car as unique. But by speeding, you are putting every other driver on the roadway, including that young mom or that sweet little grandma who is just trying to get to the grocery store, at risk. Roads are designed with particular speeds in mind. So when you speed, you are not only putting yourself at risk, but you are putting all of the other motorists on the roadway at risk, as well. In addition, you are ignoring what may be thousands of hours of engineering efforts and construction efforts to make a roadway handle a certain speed. So please, drive appropriately for the conditions. That may mean you even need to go below the speed limit. Roads get slick with rain, snow, and other weather conditions. So it is important to slow down. In California Vehicle Code Section 22350, the law here in California requires that drivers travel at a safe speed for conditions that may be below the speed limit.
Nearly 10,000 people died in 2019 simply due to speeding. I recently calculated the average distance people traveled for the holidays, and I compared the average roadway speed that people went to the speed limit. Moreover, on a trip of several hours, speeding usually made a difference of about 15 minutes. This was on a journey approaching 300 miles, the average trip distance I was looking at for this holiday period. So a 300-mile journey, if you are like me and you have kids still at home, will probably take you five to seven hours. On that 300-mile journey, if you are 15 minutes later, but you did it safely and you arrived alive, it was a good decision. So please, pay attention to your speed on the roadway, not just for yourself but also for everyone else. If you have been involved in an accident, whether it is because the other driver was speeding or for any other reason, give us a call here at Arthofer and Tonkin. We want to talk to you today about your accident, and our consultations are free.
