'How am I driving?' Not well enough

It's a safe bet Bill Janklow regrets those flippant remarks about his tendency to speed.

The US representative and former South Dakota governor - to be arraigned Friday on second-degree manslaughter and three other charges after a crash that killed a motorcyclist last month - has often treated the habit as a socially acceptable vice.

As recently as June he joked about it at a hearing in Nebraska, and his 1999 comments to the South Dakota legislature, when he was governor, have gotten lots of airtime lately: "Bill Janklow speeds when he drives. Shouldn't, but he does. When he gets a ticket, he pays it. If someone told me I was going to jail for two days for speeding, my driving habits would change."

Now Janklow could face far more than two days in prison: up to 10 years if he's convicted.

But his case - and his cavalier attitude - may be emblematic of a deeper problem in America: a culture that often turns a blind eye to, or even openly tolerates, risky driving.

On the one hand, say experts, attitudes toward drunk driving and seatbelts have shifted dramatically. But speeding is another story. Since Congress repealed the national 55 m.p.h. speed limit law in 1995, drivers have been going faster, according to data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. And with higher speeds, deaths go up. (The overall number of fatalities has stayed fairly steady around 42,000 for several years.)

If Americans tolerate a prominent official joking about his lead foot, many remain wary of cracking down on what's often seen as a God-given right.

"In the Rocky Mountain West, it's almost viewed as patriotic," says Chuck Hurley, vice president of the transportation research group at the National Safety Council, with a rueful laugh. "You can speed without any penalty whatsoever - legal or fatal - literally thousands of times, as Governor Janklow did. ... If you look around anywhere right now, the number of people doing the speed limit is a fraction of the people on the road."

By itself, speeding is actually one of the less risky road behaviors. But it lessens reaction time, raises the risk of injury, and when combined with other careless actions - like running a stop sign, as Janklow did when he raced through the rural intersection at 70 m.p.h. on Aug. 16 - it becomes particularly dangerous. Some 32 percent of fatal crashes last year involved speeding of some kind, and about 1 in 5 occurs at or near intersections.

It's one reason several states have passed "aggressive driving" laws, increasing penalties for those caught in violations such as speeding, weaving in and out of traffic, or tailgating two or three times in a short period.

"There seems to be more public acceptance for doing something about aggressive driving than just speed," says Barbara Harsha, director of the Governors' Highway Safety Association in Washington.

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