A New Jersey senator wants to make this unwritten speed limit rule obsolete Advocates propose making speed limits and driver training more realistic

John Cichowski | NorthJersey

Show Caption Hide Caption A less dangerous way to learn the road Road safety advocate uses a $140,000 driving simulator to lure drivers to advanced drive red class

If you’ve been speeding with impunity on New Jersey roadways, maybe you're getting away with it because of a short, off-the-record ditty that traffic officers sometimes hum:

“Go 9 miles over the limit and you’re fine, but do 10 and you're mine.”

This little rhyme refers to an unofficial 10-mph threshold (sometimes called the “prevailing speed”) that has often meant the difference between a cop giving you a ticket or nothing more than a yawn as you sped by.

But one state senator — Declan O’Scanlon — is intent on replacing this unwritten rule with strong, official language that would make prevailing speeds on limited-access highways a hard-and-fast law in New Jersey.

“It’s time we stopped issuing tickets that only serve to fatten government budgets at the expense of people who are simply driving normally,” explained the Monmouth County lawmaker.

“Doesn’t he know that speed kills?” counters Arnold Anderson, a former detective, traffic cop and fatal-crash analyst.

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Few ideas annoy cops and traffic-safety experts more than bills that would allow driving habits to dictate policy, especially now. Road fatalities have been rising nearly every year in New Jersey since 2014, a trend that the National Safety Council last week suggested would rise again this year despite a modest, half-percent reduction for the first six months.

Anderson, who teaches recruits at the Essex County Police Academy in addition to his volunteer job as head of the Teen Safe Driving Coalition, is a supporter of the old “9 you’re fine, 10 your mine” strategy and he endorses a competing solution for reducing road crashes.

“I’m a big believer in self-regulation,” he said. “If we really want to improve safety, we’ve got to get drivers to change their behavior. Too many have either forgotten the rules of the road or never learned them well enough at age 17, or they haven’t kept pace with change over the last 40 years or so.”

For several months, a group that includes Anderson and representatives from the state Department of Education, the Motor Vehicle Commission, the Attorney General’s Office, a driver-ed teachers’ group, driving schools, two insurance companies and two colleges has been brainstorming ideas for improving driver behavior among all age groups — from pre-teens to the elderly.

The two ideas — allowing prevailing speeds and training prospective and established licensees — might seem contrarian, but they’re not necessarily incompatible. They’re rooted in old principles.

O’Scanlon wants speeds on limited-access highways, such as toll roads and interstates, to be reassessed and changed periodically by civil engineers — not lawmakers — even if it means limits are raised to 80 mph in some cases. It’s a concept already embodied in state statute and endorsed, in theory, at least, by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

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85th percentile rule

“Road conditions change,” he reasoned, adding that speed limits are regularly monitored by state Department of Transportation engineers to ensure that they match speeds reached by 85 percent of drivers. “Based on such studies, other states have changed their speed limits, but not New Jersey.”

Anderson believes the better way to improve road safety is through education.

The New Jersey Driver Education Improvement Committee wants the state to establish a driver-education curriculum that would introduce vehicle-safety issues in primary grades. Currently, driver-ed is taught in most public schools, but not all, and instructors are only required to parrot information included in the New Jersey Driver Manual, a booklet that does little to teach driving techniques and strategies.

At the same time, Anderson is hoping to find additional ways to lure older drivers back to driver-ed classes for some practical training.

“Professionals including lawyers and doctors go back for training every 10 years or so,” he said. “There ought to be a way to make drivers understand the need to do that, too.”

Although anyone can sign up for a refresher driving class for a modest fee, they’re designed for drivers at risk for losing their licenses and others — often seniors — seeking insurance-rate reductions. Taking such courses can reduce driver's-license points that can cause revocation when point totals reach 12. In some districts, parents have been wooed back to class under a requirement that they attend one introductory driver-ed class with their teens. But bills calling for mandatory attendance have failed to gain gubernatorial support.

European precedents

Regardless of these obstacles, advocates of additional training and prevailing speed have found precedents in Europe.

“The German Autobahn does not impose a speed limit in its fastest lanes,” said O’Scanlon.

But road-testing is much more rigorous there, said Anderson.

“Their driving culture is built around safety,” he added. “In Germany, you must show you can drive well in all kinds of conditions — on urban roads and rural roads as well as the Autobahn.”

Regardless of the 85th percentile rule, some experts consider speed-limit increases to be a sure recipe for pushing fatalities even higher because of a double whammy: Increased velocity packs a more deadly punch while requiring a much shorter, less realistic amount of time for drivers to hit the brakes.

“It’s pure physics,” Anderson said as he rattled off stopping distances under ideal conditions at various speeds:

265 feet at 55 mph

345 feet at 65 mph

388 feet at 70 mph

433 feet at 75 mph

481 feet at 80 mph

Physics versus traffic reality

For O’Scanlon, however, reaction time is only part of the reality of speeding in a herd of traffic on a highway with a speed limit he considers artificial.

“The limit is 65, but everybody is doing 75 to 80 until a cop shows up on the shoulder out of nowhere,” he said, noting his own recent experience on the Garden State Parkway near Cape May. “Everybody jams on the brakes and we very nearly slam into one another. It could have been a disaster, but it was so unnecessary.”

But crashes aren’t usually caused by rampant speeding by large groups of vehicles, Anderson said.

“While it’s true that drivers generally drive as a herd at relatively the same speed,” he said, “it’s the speeders who weave in and out of the herd that usually create the danger.”

Even if the herd was traveling safely at 80 mph or more, he said, some drivers would attempt to pass the herd by weaving through traffic at 90 or more, which would add exponentially to the severity of eventual crashes.

Not necessarily, insisted O’Scanlon.

“If the herd was obeying an 80-mph speed limit,” said the senator, “police could concentrate on nailing the outliers who were going faster.”

Maybe so. Raising limits from 55 to 65 mph in the 1970s didn’t show appreciable gains in traffic deaths, he noted. But raising the limit 10 mph more to 75 would require 88 feet to stop, which is a bit longer than the 80 extra feet needed when 55 was increased to 65.

How might you feel if your car was part of that 8-foot difference?

Retesting? Maybe for some

As for Anderson’s pitch for increased driver training, support has surfaced from an unlikely quarter.

“It’s worth discussing,” said O’Scanlon, a Republican in the Democratic-dominated Senate. “Left lane hogs are responsible for far too many crashes, so I’d favor almost anything to teach drivers to use that lane only for passing.”

Getting licensees to submit to periodic retesting would be a stretch, though, he said. “Maybe people could be sold on an online tutorial — some kind of honor system,” he said. “At least it would be a start.”

License-restriction starts have failed in the past. In 1977, the Legislature passed a law mandating vision retesting every 10 years as a requirement for license renewal, but public displeasure and the expected increased cost for testing doomed this effort.

Vision testing was never imposed even though it became the law.

But Anderson favors voluntary compliance. He’s hoping to entice both young and old to accept a voluntary form of testing at the Essex County Police Academy, where a $140,000 driving simulator has been installed. Resembling a "Star Wars" spaceship cockpit, it features three high-tech panoramic video screens that can simulate the worst of New Jersey traffic.

“It’s programmed to teach you how to react to almost any driving situation,” Anderson said. In other words, “It lets you crash, but you can’t get hurt,” he added with a smile.

The machine — a Doron 550 — was meant to teach police recruits and other emergency responders, but for a $25 fee, almost anyone can sign up for a four-hour course, even if they think they don’t need it.

After all, whether you’re a young driver or an old one, who can resist a giant video game that teaches you how best to protect yourself and your passengers?

Email: Cichowski@northjersey.com