The National Transportation Safety Board has updated its Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements for 2021-22. The list serves as the agency’s primary advocacy tool to help save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce property damage resulting from transportation accidents. The NTSB is primarily an accident investigation agency and has no regulatory authority of its own, however.

Regarding highway transportation, the top safety objectives are:

• Implement a Comprehensive Strategy to Eliminate Speeding-Related Crashes.
• ​Protect Vulnerable Road Users through a Safe System Approach.
• Prevent Alcohol- and Other Drug-Impaired Driving.
• Require Collision-Avoidance and Connected-Vehicle Technologies on all Vehicles.
• Eliminate Distracted Driving.

As to speeding, the NTSB assets that speeding is typically defined as exceeding a speed limit, but it can also mean driving at the speed limit but too fast for road conditions. Between 2009 and 2018, speeding-related crashes resulted in nearly 100,000 fatalities-that is close to one-third of all traffic fatalities in the United States.

Speeding can result in loss of vehicle control, which increases both the likelihood of a crash and the severity of injuries sustained. Higher vehicle speeds lead to larger changes in velocity, which, in turn, lead to higher injury severity–that’s just basic science.

The NTSB argues that speed-limiters on large trucks, automated enforcement, expert speed analysis tools, and education campaigns are underused in our communities. The agency wants these to be implemented to address this safety problem.