PODCAST:
August 20, 2026 ~ A new study shows that most drivers ignore speed limits and drive above the speed limit. The Division Director of the Office of Highway Planning, Alicia Sledge, joins Chris Renwick and Lloyd Jackson to discuss why this is.
Despite being the leading cause of auto crash fatalities, a new study suggests that drivers view driving over the speed limit as an acceptable practice.
A new study from AAA Foundation’s Traffic Safety Culture Index project surveyed over 16,000 drivers on their attitudes toward speeding, finding that drivers viewed a common social threshold for speeding at around 10 mph over the posted
limit, which many participants viewed as acceptable and unlikely to result in enforcement. The study also found that surrounding drivers speeding may also influence one’s personal driving habits, with 49% of drivers agreeing
with the statement: “It’s safer for me to drive with the flow of traffic than obey the speed limit.”
“Within Michigan, as far as just 2025, we did have an increase of nearly 9% in speed-involved crashes,” said Alicia Sledge, division director of the Office of Highway Planning. “So that went from 22,000 to over 24,000 crashes last year, so that was exponentially a large number of speed-involved crashes.“
