In the paper entitled "Did the 65 mph speed limit save 3,113 lives", Charles Lave claims "... the states which adopted the 65 mph speed limit [on rural interstates] saved 3,113 lives in 1987 and 1988, compared to states that did not change the speed limit." If this claim were true, the higher speed limit would have saved almost as many lives as were list on rural interstates in the United States in 1986, the year before any speed limit increases. Lave attempts to justify this claim with the supposition that higher speed limits on rural interstates led to a reallocation of police enforcement resources to other roads and to other problems although there is scant evidence for this supposition. Lave's catchy title and absurd claim may be good theatre, but they contradict the finding of every published evaluation of the effect of raising the rural interstate speed limit to 65 mph - increasing the speed limit has increased fatalities. Lave's analytic approach has no scientific validity and his conclusions must be dismissed as nonsense. (A)
Abstract