Haven't entered our Speeding Excuses contest? Enter now!

I don't expect much challenge from car enthusiasts when I argue that enforcement of speeding laws constitutes the greatest wholesale miscarriage of justice known to most Americans and, I suspect, the motoring citizenry of the rest of the world.

Oddly, this is nothing new. It is recorded, for example, that in 1906, the village of Birmingham , Mich. , then a water-mill town and rail stop between Detroit and Pontiac , fined Mr. S. J. Serrell of Pontiac the sum of $10 ($205 in 2005 money) for speeding eight miles an hour along Saginaw Street -today's Old Woodward-in his White steam car.

This raises several questions: How was Serrell's speed calculated, since this was ages before radar guns or even precision speedometers? How was he caught, since the village constable likely was on foot or at best on a bicycle? And how was the issue of 8 mph being an offense arrived at?

These are not issues unfamiliar to anyone who's ever been pulled over for the sin-make that crime-of speeding.

The unfortunate truth is, that while speeding should be related to safety (see below) the actual limit may have been set unscientifically by politicians, usually of the local yokel variety, either to placate citizen complaints or, more likely, strictly as a revenue source.

Misrepresenting safety

It shouldn't be that way. To be sure, speeding is a safety issue, though statistics are sometimes misrepresented. According to a 2005 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration study of the most extensive data on motor vehicle accidents available, the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), 32 percent of all vehicle crash fatalities in 2002 were speed-related. Speeding was defined as too fast for conditions, exceeding a specified limit or racing, as reported by a police officer.

The proportion has changed little over 20 years, although a peak of 37 percent was reached in 1986. Between 1983 and 2002, New Jersey had the lowest overall proportion of fatalities that were speeding-related while South Carolina had the highest.

Most speed-related fatal crashes occur on local and collector roads with relatively low speed limits, often involving only single vehicles on curves. Overall, Saturday in particular and weekends in general were the most common for speed-related fatalities, while peak hours for such crashes were between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m.-no surprises there. What often doesn't get mentioned by advocates of lower speed limits, though, was that 41 percent of intoxicated drivers in 2002 fatal accidents were speeding, versus only 14 percent of sober drivers. Fatal speeding drivers also, disproportionately, were males under 25 years old, again as expected.

All these facts suggest that speed limit enforcement on both main highways and urban streets by and large is unrelated to preventing fatal accidents.

Since 1995, at the U.S. federal level, there have been no limits set for passenger car speeds. Generally speed limits are set at the state, county or local level, but three times in American history, there have been exceptions. During World War II, to conserve gas and tires, speed limits were set at 35 mph.  In 1974, in reaction to the Arab Oil Embargo, President Nixon decreed a limit of 55 mph to conserve fuel. Amidst protests by what David E. Davis Jr. has tagged the Safety Nazis, Congress in 1987 lifted the 55 limit to 65 mph on Interstate-level highways, but kept it at 55 for urban areas.

Before World War II, on America 's mostly two-lane highways, it yoostabee that speed limits were 50-55 mph. After the war, with increasing mileages of four-lane, limited-access roadways, limits edged up to 60-65 mph. There were exceptions: for example, in hilly, winding-road Connecticut when I was in college in the early Fifties, limits were 45 mph even on the Merritt Parkway . Just before Nixon's crackdown, speed limits were either non-existent or pegged at 80 mph on the Interstates of many western states. Indeed, in general, U.S. western states with their long distances traditionally have had higher limits than urbanized eastern states.

My run-ins

Although I'm an aggressive and, I like to think, skillful driver, I have only been stopped three times for speeding in 61 years of driving.

The first time, in 1954 after a holiday trip to Kentucky and Connecticut, I was heading home to Miami in my hand-me-down slushomatic Dodge. It was after midnight on then-two-lane US-41 south of Sarasota , where I had just visited my parents. A Florida Highway Patrol car pulled me over on the empty highway.

Did I know what the Florida speed limit was? "Yes sir, 55 day and 50 at night."

Did I know how fast I was driving? "No sir, I wasn't watching the speedometer, I was watching the road."

"Well, I clocked you at 70."

"I'll take your word for it."

The bond for speeding in this county's $50. Ya got that?

"I been on the road a coupla weeks and (looking in my wallet) got 'bout twenty left."

"Could ya raise the rest?"

"Yeah, I could wake up my parents back in Sarasota."

He was silent for a long moment, then said: "Ah'm gonna let ya go.  You're the only honest man ah've met all week. Drive safely and watch ya speed."

In 1978, driving a two-year old Econoline Club Wagon, I was heading out to a golf game early on a Sunday morning, winding through one of the old lakeside resort towns west of Pontiac, trailing a trio of other cars. A local cop pulled me over for going 35 in a 25 zone. I complained that the speed limit on the street I'd just turned off was 35.

"Yeah, but it's 25 going through here," he commented, "The sign's right back there." In the mirror I could see a couple of white rectangles on poles a couple of hundred feet back.

"Well, I was just following those other cars."

"Too bad, but you're the one I clocked."

I'm sure this routine sounds familiar to most of you. So I meekly acquiesced and asked him for directions to the golf course, which he cheerfully provided, along with the ticket. I mailed in the fine-don't remember how much-but was puzzled how I had missed the drop-down speed limit sign. So some weeks later, in the area again, I drove over the same route at a measured 25. I discovered that, as viewed from the elevated driver's seat of the Econoline, the first and higher-mounted of the two signs obscured the second, which was the speed limit sign. With a photograph, it might have been persuasive to a judge-or maybe not, since these fines go into the local coffers, which among other things support the court.

Of course I was not driving dangerously. If it had been later in the day and there were pedestrians along the road, or heavy traffic, that might have been the case. So there was no real safety issue to be guarded under the circumstances. But I knew from having spent hundreds of hours as a ride-along in squad cars during my newspaper days in Florida that patrol work can be immensely boring, and handing out tickets breaks the monotony.

The third time I was nailed for speeding, there is no question it was a revenue-heisting speed trap. The year was 1991, and I was driving a new Continental along I-90 just inside the Ohio line heading west toward Cleveland . I'd been driving all morning on the New York Thruway that had 65 posted, moving right along with traffic at the speed control on 71. I came over a hill on I-90, and there the Ohio Highway Patrol had perhaps a dozen cars pulled over to the side. Eventually the trooper got to me and informed me that I had exceeded the 55 mph limit.

"I thought 65 was the limit on Interstates?" I protested.

"Not in urban areas, where it's 55," he responded.

Needless to say, this open country was no urban area, but along with other speed criminals I had passed over an imaginary line, so I was nailed for $50. Note that this was four years before Congress lifted the limits altogether.

Notably, no trucks had been caught by the Ohio troopers in their revenue net, which of course bore no relation to safety. That's because the truckers still had their Citizen Band (CB) radio warning system. In the Seventies, CBs were quite the motoring fad across Middle America, useful because of warnings of County Mounties and Bears (state cops, so called because typically they wore wide-brimmed western-type campaign hats similar to that worn by the cartoonish bear figure of fire-warning posters in National Forests).

Set up

Highway safety officials maintain that speed limits should be set no lower than 85 percent of the prevailing traffic speeds, because that has been demonstrated to be the safest and most efficient speed. Speed is mainly dangerous if it is significantly faster-or slower-than prevailing traffic.

A recent Federal Highway Administration study showing that neither lowering nor raising the speed limit from the 85 percent level had any effect on actual prevailing vehicle speeds. The conclusion was what most of us already knew instinctively: that drivers travel at the speeds they feel safe, namely that of other traffic. This then argues against proposals to lower speed limits to save fuel on a broad national scale, as Nixon had done. In other words, lowering speed limits won't cause drivers to move more slowly just to save gas.

But we already knew that, because it's always been a matter of choice. If we wanted to save gas, we could always drive more slowly and, heck, even trade in our SUV for a more fuel-efficient car. But then we'd have to give up the boat, too, wouldn't we? Or the camper, or the trailer for toting the snowmobiles and ATVs.

Whatever, we should keep the Feds from setting speed limits so local constables can enhance their village treasuries. I don't know what we can do about local speed regulations, because there the enemy is usually us, the citizenry.