Traveling at a speed that is reasonable and safe improves overall traffic flow and enhances public mobility. The nation's roadways are designed using specific standards to promote both efficient traffic flow and roadway safety. One way to achieve this balance is through setting and enforcing speed limits. However, often times speed limits are set lower than what a majority of drivers select as a travel speed. As a result, compliance rates suffer and enforcement agencies are overwhelmed. Adopting a speed management plan incorporating a rational speed limit setting approach may help mitigate this problem. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) have established that speeding is a serious traffic safety problem and created the Speed Management Task Force to seek solutions to the speeding problem (1). One item on the Speed Management Taskforce's Work Plan developed in 1997 specifically pertained to the recommendations and guidelines in a report prepared by the Transportation Research Board (TRB) which was contracted by the Department of Transportation and the Center for Disease Control to evaluate speed limit setting criteria and enforcement strategies to mitigate speeding. Activity 2.3.1 of the Speed Management Work Plan calls for speed limit setting and enforcement demonstrations incorporating the guidelines in the TRB report. The Report advocates having speed limits set using a rational scientifically based procedure and encourages enforcement to target the egregious violators of the newly established speed limits. The effectiveness of the criteria in the TRB Report needs to be evaluated.
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