Detroit is the worst place to speed in the country, according to the Speed Trap Exchange, a web site where users can post the whereabouts of speed traps all over the country.
In anticipation of holiday travel, the site put out a list of the top ten places in the U.S. with the most speed traps, based on user postings. “There are more than 10,000 postings total on the site, 2,000 of which are from Texas,” said Aaron Quinn, the site’s communication director. “Detroit’s suburbs have more than 100 postings.”
Quinn said that the purpose of the Speed Trap Exchange is to draw attention to areas where speed limits are arbitrarily low and to let people know about variations in enforcement of speed limits between different regions. “In some areas, everyone drives 10 mph over the speed limit and it is accepted by the law enforcement agencies,” he said. “And in some areas they pull you over if you go over the limit by 1 mph.”
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, speeding is the second highest cause of fatal car accidents in the U.S. and accounted for 13,189, or 30.4 percent, of the 43,443 traffic-related deaths in 2005. Only drunk driving kills more people on the road, taking 16,885 lives in 2005, according to the most recent NHTSA data. Together drunk driving and speeding account for nearly 70 percent of the total number of fatal crashes in 2005.
