LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – A recent Michigan State University study has found a higher than 5% increase in overall accidents including fatal and serious-injury crashes following the speed limit update in 2017 to 75 miles per hour on more than 600 miles of freeway in Michigan.

The initial speed increase has already yielded an increase in accidents across the state, and further increases to speed limits across Michigan would likely incur even more accidents and on larger scale fatalities and serious injuries according to MSU researchers. 

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Roughly 6% of Michigan’s highways – which total almost 10,000 miles in state highway roads – were signed into law in 2016 under Public Act 445 under Gov. Rick Snyder.  The data from Michigan State Police crash data for highways came from 2017, when it was finally implemented and documented crashes from several interstates including: U.S. 10, U.S. 27, U.S. 131, a section of U.S. 31, and Interstates 69 and 75.  

After looking at crash statistics from before the 5 mph increase and after, researchers found that the increase “resulted in persistent increases in traffic crashes across all levels of injury severity” of about 5%, while areas without speed increases experienced a 2% drop in  crashes from 2014-16 and 2018-20.  

“Michigan is not unique at all on this — in comparisons across different states, all of the states that have gone to 75- or 80-mph (limits) have seen significant increases in fatalities, generally,” Professor and associate chair of graduate studies in MSU’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a coauthor of the study, Peter Savolainen said.  

Contrary to some expectations, motorists did not merely increase their speed to match the speed limit. 

“Consistent with what we’ve seen nationally, with that 5-mph increase we didn’t see a 5-mph increase in average speeds — it was in the neighborhood of 2 or 4 mph, typically,” Savolainen said,  “More motorists comply with the speed limit since it was raised to 75 mph, but the fastest-driving motorists “have a tendency to drive the speed limit plus-5, or the speed limit plus-7.”

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One of the cosponsors of the bill, former Representative Bradford Jacobsen believes that all factors are being evaluated in the study. 

“What they don’t do is look at the actual accidents themselves, which is what I think you need to do,” he said. “This doesn’t take into account accidents caused by alcohol, drugs or excessive speed. It’s usually not the speed necessarily, it’s driver error, distraction, excessive speed.”

According to Jacobsen, many of Michigan’s freeways were designed for traveling speeds of up to 80 mph but during the gasoline shortages of the 1980s, freeway speeds were reduced 65 or 70 mph to 55 mph “and things never changed back.” 

Coauthor of the MSU study and MSU graduate researcher Nischal Gupta found that by implementing the changes on more rural freeways with wide shoulders and fewer access points, it provided more areas for avoiding crashes. 

But he also predicts if the legislature sought to extend higher speed limits to other rural areas without these safety features, there could be even more crashes. 

“If you look to expand speed limits in areas with higher crash rates already, you might see more than 5% increases,” Gupta said.