By Kirk Laughlin

Drivers soon will be allowed to cruise Kentucky highways at faster speeds.

Gov. Ernie Fletcher signed a bill on March 21 that will raise the speed limit on Kentucky’s rural highways from 65 to 70 mph by mid-June. The bill passed the state Senate with an overwhelming 35-2 vote on March 7, after passing the House 62-27.

University of Louisville sophomore Jake Masters, a biology major, said the bill will allow for better traffic flow. “[Motorists] will be able to drive more comfortably,” he said.

The bill will not affect the speed limit in urban areas such as Louisville. Instead, the Department of Transportation will assess the feasibility of raising the speed limit on certain patches of roadway and decide where an increase is safe.

Sen. Tim Shaughnessy (D-Louisville) was among those opposed to the bill, fearing a higher speed limit would increase Kentucky’s highway death toll.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the correlation between speeds and accidents, and the faster you go the more likely you’re going to die,” Shaughnessy said after the final vote.

U of L freshman Sean Warren, a bio-engineering major, said, “This will be good and [it will] allow for a quicker commute.” However, Warren said he is worried about high-speed congested areas and unskilled drivers taking to the roads at higher speeds.

The Kentucky legislation follows several states that have raised speed limits to 70 or 75 mph since 1995 when the federal government repealed a requirement that all rural highway speed limits be set at a 65 maximum. But since the repeal, highway fatalities have neither significantly increased nor decreased according to statistics by the Government Highway Safety Agency.

“The nation should have experienced a significant decline in total fatalities and injuries given the tremendous increase in safety belt use coupled with the increasingly safe design of vehicles,” said GHSA Chair Lt. Colonel Jim Champagne. “However, it appears these benefits have been offset both by increasing speed limits and the public exceeding these increased posted limits,”

Highway fatalities make up 12 percent of all traffic-related deaths and college-aged people 18 to 24, make up a third. Twenty-six out of every 100,000 college-aged students will die in a highway fatality each year according to GHSA statistics that have held steady over the past decade.

“The time has come to increase the speed limit on Kentucky’s interstates and parkways,” Fletcher said. “Data from other states and the conditions for implementation in this legislation give me confidence that 70 mph will not mean a loss of highway safety.

A similar bill failed to pass the House in the last legislative session because it included a plan to raise the speed limit from 55 to 65 on all four-lane roads in rural areas, not just limited-access highways.

Kentucky will join Indiana and Tennessee as one of 31 states with speed limits over 65 mph.