Some Cut Penalties : Rural States Chafe at 55 Speed Limit

The radar machine mounted on the dashboard squealed and its red light flashed: “70.” Al Salvatore steered his brown highway patrol cruiser through the grass ditch dividing Interstate 94 and made a U-turn in pursuit.

Alden Carlson, a 68-year-old farmer from Kulm, N.D., was plenty worried when Salvatore pulled him over on that barren stretch of roadway in eastern North Dakota last week.

“I was in a rush, is all,” Carlson said. “And this road gets tiring.”

Carlson wasn’t able to wriggle out of getting a speeding ticket, but it wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be.

For going 70 m.p.h., he was fined just $15. Thanks to a new state law, however, he emerged with no “points” on his driving record--no blemish that might threaten his license or drive up his insurance rates.

“It’s not bad,” Carlson said, “but I still thought I was only going 65.”

Wide-Open Spaces

North Dakota is one of several states in the northern Plains and wide-open West that are trying to tiptoe around the nationwide 55-m.p.h. speed limit. They are softening penalties for speeding even though it means risking millions of dollars in federal highway funds.

On the eve of the vacation travel season, with gasoline prices low and falling, many Americans are planning long road trips across the country for the first time in years. They will, in many cases, be the beneficiaries of a battle that is shaping up between rural states and Washington over how strictly the 12-year-old speed limit should be enforced.

South Dakota cut its fines for speeding in half last year, and a new law, effective this summer, will also end the assessing of the bad-boy points, provided the offender was going no faster than 65.

In Minnesota, where a driver’s license is in jeopardy after three citations, tickets issued for speeding after Aug. 1 will no longer be counted against a driver’s record unless the speed exceeds 65 m.p.h.

Depends on Congress

Several states, most recently Nebraska, have adopted laws that would raise their speed limits above 55--but only if Congress abolishes the nationwide limit. The United States enforces the 55 maximum nationwide by threatening to cut the federal highway allotment if the state’s drivers are going too fast.

Nevada has tried the barter system. It passed a law that would make use of seat belts mandatory if the federal government lets it post a 70 m.p.h. speed limit on some roads. So far, there is no sign that the federal government will go along.

State lawmakers are finding it more difficult than ever to keep their constituent motorists happy while holding actual road speeds low enough to keep the highway money flowing.

Soon after North Dakota began assessing penalty points at 71 m.p.h. rather than 65, the average speed on its highways began to rise, Salvatore and other patrolmen said.

“The points are the only real deterrent out there,” Salvatore said. “The fine is kind of lax.

“North Dakota is a pretty conservative state, but when it comes to speed limits, the people are a little more liberal. A lot of them just like to go a little faster than the law allows.”

The problem in places such as North Dakota is the road itself. Interstate 94 spans the breadth of the state. Curves on the 360-mile road are as rare as towns, and the treeless landscape is about as scenic as salt flats.

“You could drive it with your eyes closed,” said Terry Christjohn, from Alabama. He was pulled over doing 67 last week near Jamestown--about 100 miles west of Fargo and about 100 miles east of Bismarck.

Margo Rowland, 25, was driving--while reading the Minot, N.D., newspaper--when she got a $10 ticket for going 65. She was in the midst of a 4 1/2-hour trip from Minot to her home in Fargo.

Miles Without Traffic

“When you get out here and don’t see another car for five miles, it’s hard not to just let it go up,” said Norman Nordmark, 70, of Landa, N.D., who was stopped doing 69.

Federal law does not take scenery or traffic into account, however. The law is 55 m.p.h., no matter how straight, how flat--or how free of hazards--the stretch of road.

Motorists, state legislators and even some highway patrol officers in this part of the country say that the federal limit is just too restrictive and, worse, that it diverts attention and resources from more pressing threats to safety on the road.

“Why must I have a trooper stationed on an interstate, at 10 in the morning, worried about a guy driving 60 m.p.h. on a system designed to be traveled at 70?” asked Jerry Baum, director of the South Dakota Highway Patrol. “He could be out on a Friday night watching for drunk drivers.

“If we would spend a little of the money that’s been spent trying to get people to drive 55, and spend it on stopping the drinking driver, we’d have saved 10 times the lives.”

Fatalities Are Fewer

The National Safety Council and the Federal Highway Administration point out, however, that the 55 limit saves thousands of lives each year. They say that the chance of fatal injury in an accident is twice as great at 65 as at 55.

But that does not convince many people in North Dakota, which had the second-lowest fatality rate in the country per million miles traveled in 1984, and will probably have the lowest rate, when figures are tallied, for 1985.

Safety is not a concern to North Dakotans. Boredom is. Many of them say that driving at 55 on roads designed to be traveled at 70 or 75 is nearly impossible. Sometimes they don’t try.

“We set our cruise controls on 69--and build about $200 a year into our personal budget for speeding tickets,” said one state official who takes frequent road trips.

In good weather, most accidents on rural interstates occur when a motorist drives off the roadway. Some drivers say that the extra time on the road actually makes it more likely that they will fall asleep at the wheel. It takes seven hours, for example, to cross North Dakota at 55, but only five hours or so at 70.

The 55 ceiling began as a temporary measure intended to save fuel in 1974. The savings were immediate and substantial, and so was the drop in the number of fatal accidents. In 1975, the speed limit was made permanent.

Penalty for Deviation

Now, a state in which more than 50% of the drivers are exceeding that limit can lose as much as a tenth of its share of the $3.8-billion federal highway kitty. Speeds are measured by sensors implanted in the pavement, but the final federal tally is a percentage based on a complex formula that takes into account factors such as malfunctioning speedometers.

While no state has ever been accused of falsifying its speed data, law enforcement officers know where the monitors are, if not precisely when they are operating. Rumors abound of officers working the test area with radar and ticket books--or simply parking a marked patrol car on a bridge over the highway as a deterrent to speeding.

Thus far, no state’s federal highway allotment has been cut, but three states--Arizona, Maryland and Vermont--could face penalties for violating the 50% limit in 1984. In 1985, Arizona, Vermont, New Hampshire and Rhode Island were over the limit, according to the Federal Highway Administration.

Many other states have come close. North Dakota, for example, had 49.74% of its motorists violating the 55 limit last year--and 49.91% the year before.

Low Fines, Good Record

Montana has long had what are probably the mildest penalties for speeding--a $5 fine for any speed over 55. Yet the state comes out surprisingly well when the government calculates compliance with the 55 limit. Last year, 56% of vehicles on Montana roads were going the speed limit or less, according to the government.

Randy Yaeger of the Montana Highway Patrol said that it is not the fine that keeps people within the law, but the delays when they have to stop to be ticketed.

Other rural states with long interstate highways have also had relatively modest speeding penalties for some time.

Kansas assesses no points against a driver’s license at 65 or below. The fine for going 65 there, however, is $36, while the same violation would cost $19 in Wyoming or just $10 in Nebraska. (In California, the fine would be about $30, depending on the county, and would become part of the driver’s record.)

Some state lawmakers think the federal government will abolish the 55 m.p.h. limit eventually, but it is more an expression of hope than a prediction.

No state wants to find itself, as Arizona does, facing the loss of highway construction funds. A few years ago, Arizona reduced the penalty for speeds up to 65 to a $15 fine--and no points on the record.

Then the federal government found that Arizona had failed to comply with the speed guidelines. In fact, it had one of the higher percentages of motorists traveling faster than 55 in each of the last two years.

Now the state Legislature is thinking about returning to the stiffer penalties, and state officials are trying to “bring 55 to the forefront of public thought” again, said Paul McGonigle of the state Transportation Department.

The state has already put up electronic signs on a stretch of Interstate 10 between Phoenix and Tucson. Sensors pick up the speeds of cars and if they are going too fast, the sign on the bridge lights up with the message: “Your speed exceeds 55 miles per hour.”

“We’re going to show that we’ll do all we can to be in compliance,” McGonigle said. He added that the state’s highway system is almost complete, “so it’s real important to us to get the federal funds.”

No state has openly defied the nationwide limit, but several states have made symbolic gestures.

Nebraska, Nevada Gestures

Nebraska recently passed a law raising its speed limit to 70--if a similar measure passes Congress. North Dakota for several years has had a law on the books that will raise the state’s speed limit immediately--if Congress abolishes the 55 rule.

Nevada’s law raising the speed limit to 70 on certain roads will go into effect this summer--if the federal government promises not to penalize the state.

“Realistically, no one expects the feds to roll over,” said Wayne Teglia, director of the Nevada Motor Vehicles and Public Safety Department.

“It’s just an attempt to say we don’t feel 55 m.p.h. is realistic or enforceable in certain parts of the state. You can drive 200 miles on well-paved, wide highways here without seeing much more than a gas station,” Teglia said.

Highways Different

Urban and rural highways are as different as “elephants and pistachio nuts,” said Dan Parker, spokesman for the California Transportation Department. A state report to the Legislature recently recommended that California increase the speed limit selectively on interstate-quality freeways in rural areas.

North Dakota Highway Patrol Supt. Brian Berg does not want the 55 limit raised, but he thinks the government ought to relax its compliance requirements.

Sees Margin of Safety

“Most of the rural states are together on this,” Berg said. “We know that 85% to 90% of our drivers are going under 63 miles an hour, and we feel we have a very safe system with that.”

If the limit is raised to 65 or 70, Berg says, people will still go 10 to 15 m.p.h. faster.

No matter how relaxed the rules, however, a driver can get into trouble relying on good graces.

While hurrying to meet a highway patrolman for this story, this reporter was stopped for speeding in North Dakota.

The cruise control on the rental car had been set on 67, well within the range at which no penalty points would be assessed. Serene in the knowledge that he would receive a small fine and be sent on his way without a permanent record of his indiscretion, he was surprised to be told he had been clocked at 71.

Officers say that speedometers can be 5 m.p.h. or more in error, but the driver does not have much of a case when he knows he was doing 10 or 12 m.p.h. over the speed limit anyway.

“Speedometer was off, eh?” Salvatore said when the reporter arrived for the interview.

“We hear it a lot.”

Times researcher Wendy Leopold in Chicago contributed to this report.