The great Charles Krauthammer got one thing wrong in his column yesterday:
And don’t imagine that we do not coldly calculate the price of a human life. In 1974, the speed limit was lowered to 55 mph to conserve oil. That also led to a dramatic drop in traffic fatalities — approximately 3,000 lives every year. This didn’t stop us, after the oil crisis, from raising the speed limit back to 65 and beyond — knowing that thousands of Americans would die as a result.
In fact, the fatality rate was dropping faster before the 55 mph speed limit was adopted in 1974. And thousands didn’t die when it was repealed — in fact, roads became safer as relative speeds got closer and traffic flow more fluid. Your humble Detroit correspondent reported this news on A1 of the Washington Times back in the nineties (“Speeds Increase, Fatalities Do Not”). For additional details, see Cato’s 1999 report, Speed Doesn’t Kill (PDF).
A minor glitch in a piece that is mostly right.