Another Example Where Liberals Can't Tell Correlation from Causation

The roads are safer than ever following increased speed limits.

Shh, don't tell the Left:

Fewer people are being killed in motor vehicle accidents each year -- despite much higher lawful highway speeds in most states. Yet the same chorus of nags that warned of a B-movie bloodbath should Congress rescind the 55 mph National Maximum Speed Limit now insists that the failure of the predicted carnage to materialize after 55 was tossed in the dustbin of history is only due to the improved built-in safety of modern cars.

Bunk -- and easily dispelled bunk at that.

Congress repealed the 55 mph NMSL in 1995 -- but the nation didn't suddenly swap out its entire vehicle fleet for a new breed of "hyper-safe" cars. The same vehicles that were being driven at 55 mph in 1995 were being driven 65, 70 mph and faster in '96, '97 and '98. Many pre-'95 vehicles are still in service today. They didn't suddenly get "safer" by dint of a change in the law.

Air bags and anti-lock brakes are not new technology, either. They're more commonplace today -- but they were not rarities in '95, either.

To attribute improved safety (and declining fatality rates) exclusively to the material improvement in automobile safety technology is to give too much credit where it isn't due. Improvements in safety technology are real -- but incremental. They are not "night and day" life changing; nor do they take place instantaneously or overwhelmingly.

And yet, the self-styled "safety" lobby -- mainly the insurance industry's PR arm and a few groups of hyperventilating "moms" who worship 55 mph as if it were the 11th Commandment -- argue that the absence of the predicted uptick in motor vehicle fatalities, despite higher post-1995 speeds, is only due to "safer" cars that serve as a counterbalance to less "safe" driving practices.

As any physics student knows, speed doesn't kill----speed differential kills.