We Ought Not Tolerate Reckless Driving

Driving from Philadelphia to Margate, New Jersey one Friday afternoon this summer, I was reminded of one of the leading indignities of contemporary American life, or at least such life in the urban areas of the Northeastern United States: drivers who place so little value on the miracle of human life that they are willing to risk high-speed collisions rather than reach their destinations at most a few minutes later.

A blue SUV, merging onto the Atlantic City Expressway, rapidly zipped across lanes of traffic to seek the left lane as quickly as possible, and when the car in front of it was moving insufficiently quickly (though still surely ten miles an hour or more above the speed limit), the driver of the blue SUV began honking frantically. Unable to pass on the right due to the volume of shore traffic (as we call it), this maniacal driver tried to see if he could pass on the left via the small patch of asphalt between the edge of the lane and the grassy median. Unable to squeeze his vehicle through without risking toppling into the wildflower gardens (with their origins in Lady Bird Johnson’s Highway Beautification program), he returned to honking like a madman until the driver of the car in front risked collision himself squeezing his way into the lane to the right. 

If only this were an unusual experience. Just a few days before, my mother reported to the rest of our family that when she was driving on the Schuylkill Expressway in the late afternoon, a severe thunderstorm struck, pelting the highway with near-blinding rain and wind. She slowed down a bit, as is reasonable to do when visibility becomes a challenge. The driver behind her began honking with increasing aggression before joining the lane beside her, gesturing to her with not all five fingers, and then seemingly hurling insults at her that fortunately were not easily deciphered on account of the rainstorm.

"But speed limits in the United States function far more like suggestions than requirements."

To recount all of the road-rage incidents my family members and I have been party to in metro Philadelphia alone would occupy the entire space of this short piece.1

And, for now, we are still the lucky ones, unlike say 18-year-old Bianca Robinson who was shot and killed weeks after graduating high school by another driver over a disputed merge in the Philadelphia suburbs. Or King Hua, a 54-year-old Vietnamese immigrant and nail salon technician who was shot to death beside his wife on Route 320 in Delaware County, Pennsylvania because a passenger in another car believed he was driving too slowly during a morning rush hour in 2022. Or the 23-year-old woman slashed in the face this July in a dispute over a parking space in Queens. 

Driving is—without a doubt—the most dangerous thing most of us do, day in and day out. Estimates vary slightly, but in our lives, we have approximately a one-in-95 chance of dying in an auto accident, and, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, driver error, including reckless driving, accounts for more than nine-in-ten of all accidents.2 Unlike with other types of transportation incidents, most of us know someone who has died in a car accident. I recall vividly the pain that permeated throughout our high school’s community when one of our classmates, Kip Taviano, was killed in a car accident days before graduation.

But so many motorists seem utterly indifferent to the dangers inherent in driving, or the fact that, say, excessive speed is a risk factor in nearly three-tenths of fatal car accidents. Just reducing the number of drivers speeding would represent a significant increase in auto safety. But speed limits in the United States function far more like suggestions than requirements. As such, in my view, if the speed limit is 70 miles per hour, then it should actually be enforced at a bit over 70 miles per hour—not only if someone is driving 95 miles per hour, as tends to be the case in practice. As Montesquieu argued as long ago as 1748, when the laws are not consistently enforced, people lose respect for them. Furthermore, speed limits being a suggestion rather than an enforced regulation contributes significantly to the entire reckless driving phenomenon, in which drivers intent on far exceeding the speed limit tend to claim supremacy on the roads over those who are actually following the rules.

In a perverse situation, those breaking the rules are the ones aggrieved that others are following them, honking at these more mindful drivers and trying, at times, to execute risky passes while enraged at motorists who are complying with the law. 

When it comes to many other forms of reckless behavior, whether jumping off roofs into swimming pools not properly assessed for depth; leaning out to pose for selfies on cliffsides; or teasing dangerous, wild animals, the typical fodder for posts at places such as reddit/r/darwinawards, the danger is typically restricted to the individual foolish enough to prioritize a brief thrill over his life and limb. However, when it comes to driving, the danger extends to innocent people just trying to get from Point A to Point B, to make it to work on time, pick up children from school, buy groceries, or enjoy an outing on the weekend. These are not people who deserve to be collateral damage because someone else is utterly incapable of following traffic laws and determines that arriving somewhere a minute or two faster is worth risking a whole host of lives along the way.3

In addition to reminding well-intentioned drivers about the danger inherent in the activity and how much safer it becomes when one follows the speed limit, puts one’s cell phone away, takes a taxi when intoxicated, avoids driving when tired, and simply prioritizes getting to one’s destination in one piece, harsh penalties are needed for those who wantonly flout traffic safety. Whether that is teenagers drag racing on Roosevelt Boulevard, an activity that too often claims the lives of bystanders and non-participants, or those drivers who manically swerve in and out of traffic, gaining a cheap thrill at the risk of irreparably harming others, the penalties need to be both harsh and consistently enforced: to discourage once and for all the sort of behavior that seems to say, "Wherever I’m going at whatever I speed I want is more important than anything else."

Now, this is, after all, the age of technology, for better or worse, and though one might be reasonably concerned about our overreliance on it, I do have some faith that such advancements can help us combat the reckless driving phenomenon, as well as begin to pare back the approximately 40,000 Americans killed each year in auto accidents. This spring, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin signed into law HB2096, which enables the Commonwealth of Virginia to install in the vehicles of drivers convicted of reckless driving a device that physically prohibits the car’s engine from exceeding the speed limit by more than ten miles per hour. While I am habitually sensitive to the privacy and liberty-related questions that can flow from the widespread adoption of technologies such as these, at present, this technology is only introduced to those duly convicted of reckless driving, and it is quite similar to the breathalyzer devices sometimes mandated to be installed in the vehicles of individuals convicted of driving under the influence. 

Relatedly, while further research might still be required to determine if the potential for an increase in rear-end crashes from drivers slamming on their brakes to avoid red light cameras is outweighed by their ability to dissuade drivers from zipping through red lights, they surely can help catch those aforementioned drag racers on Roosevelt Boulevard. And, furthermore, one wonders if the eventual possibility of self-driving cars might serve to ameliorate how dangerous driving is. But, at the very least, particularly in cities such as Philadelphia, instead of laxing traffic enforcement, seeming to tell drivers that our roads are the Wild West and ought to be treated as such, we must demand that those who drive recklessly are held responsible.

In the 1960s, in the aftermath of the publication of Unsafe at any Speed and a national outcry about auto safety, President Lyndon Johnson chillingly reminded the nation that more Americans died in car accidents up to that point in the 20th century than all American wars combined so far in that century. He pledged that the United States would commit itself to making safer its roads and highways and signed into law the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act and the Highway Safety Act. And great strides have since been made (though critics of Ralph Nader and the efforts of this period correctly observe that auto fatalities had already declined dramatically since the 1910s, and that President Johnson’s efforts ought not be given undue weight). Nevertheless, far too many Americans perish each year driving to and fro, at rates that are simply unacceptable.

While those following the issue might reasonably disagree as to whether more safety measures ought to be demanded of auto manufacturers and the like, we know that driving recklessly, tailgating, and speeding greatly increase the risk of an accident. As such, there should be little hesitation about asserting that those who cannot drive in a responsible manner need to be fined, temporarily stripped of their driver’s licenses—whatever it takes to drill home that drivers must treat roads as the inherently dangerous places that they are. 

Erich J. Prince is the editor-in-chief at Merion West.

Endnotes

1. I barely escaped a potentially violent end on Conshohocken State Road in February of 2024, while on my way to a nursing facility to visit an ailing family member. The driver behind me, seemingly a teenager out joyriding with a gaggle of friends in a souped-up Toyota, was unimpressed with my driving at the speed of traffic. He pulled mere inches from my bumper and began honking furiously. When I made the mistake of beeping in return, he pulled up next to me and then in front of me before stopping his car on a diagonal blocking both lanes of the direction I was headed, clearly seeking a confrontation. By some stroke of fortune, for once, the opposite direction of Conshohocken State Road was free of oncoming cars, and I was able to zip to the other side of the road from whence I came and escape the would-be altercation, later arriving very frazzled and jarred to see my aged aunt. 
2. By comparison, a person has a roughly one in 11 million chance of dying in a plane crash in his lifetime; one in 15,300 for being killed by lightning; and, for the typical American rail passenger, there is a one in a million chance of dying in a train accident.
3. On top of everything else, in an interview for this piece, Michael Lizzi, a New Jersey attorney who frequently represents individuals injured in reckless driving incidents, indicated that the minimum liability coverage for auto insurance in many states does not come close to compensating fairly victims of reckless driving crashes.