Speeding: almost all of us have done it. Maybe we’re running late. Maybe we’re just impatient. Or maybe we simply think we can get away with it without getting caught.
No matter the reason, that right foot has a tendency to get a little heavy when behind the wheel.
With the Northern Colorado population continually growing, speeding has become an issue throughout Weld County. (Jim Rydbom/Staff Photographer)Adding 10 mph to the speed limit may seem innocent enough — even victimless — but excessive speed increases just about every risk associated with driving.
In more urban areas, it increases the risk of collisions with other vehicles and pedestrians. In more rural settings, it means more collisions with wildlife and a drastically increased risk of death or serious injury in single-vehicle crashes.
But seemingly all jurisdictions agree people simply drive too fast.
“Nationwide, there’s definitely what I would call an issue with speeding,” Greeley engineer Steven Younkin said.
Greeley issued 1,788 speeding citations last year — totaling more than 27% of all 6,553 citations issued. That’s more than three times the number of speeding citations issued in 2023 (555) and 125 more than the total number of speeding citations the department issued from 2020 to 2023.
In 2022, the department issued just 299 speeding citations, roughly 7.5% of the 4,012 total citations given.
The department said it was unsure what exactly led to the jump in citations — which began toward the end of 2023 — saying there was no increased focus or initiative causing the extra tickets to be handed out.
Of the 35 fatal crashes since 2020, Greeley police say excessive speed played a documented role in 14 deaths.
Heavy traffic makes its way down 10th Street in west Greeley during an afternoon rush on Friday. Greeley issued 1,788 speeding citations last year — totaling more than 27% of all 6,553 citations issued. (Jim Rydbom/Staff Photographer)Crash investigators determine whether speed is a factor in traffic incidents by analyzing physical evidence like skid marks, the extent of vehicle damage, debris patterns and taking witness accounts.
In Evans, nearly 68% of all traffic stops were because of excessive speed. The department says officers issued tickets on nearly 90% of those stops.
Evans Police Lt. Gabe Riemer believes as much as anything, people speed because it’s socially acceptable.
“I think everyone kind of looks at the speed limit and they say, ‘You know, it says 30, so I can do 35,’ ” he said. “There is this mentality that speeding is OK.”
Jim Riesberg — a former state representative and the founder of Greeley Walks, a nonprofit that advocates for pedestrian safety — echoed Riemer’s thoughts.
“Most people say we don’t have speed limits, we have speed suggestions,” he said.
For a pedestrian, the average risk of death at an impact speed of 23 mph is just 10%, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. From there, the organization says the risk of death climbs exponentially:
25% risk at 32 mph 50% risk at 42 mph 75% risk at 50 mph 90% risk at 58 mph.“That means going from maybe being injured to probably being killed,” Riesberg said.
Statewide, Colorado State Patrol — which patrols all of the state’s highways and interstates — issued more than 47,000 speeding citations in 2024. Of those, 14,477 were for motorists driving more than 20 mph over the posted speed limit.
“There is a portion of roadway users that when caught speeding, feel like they are being penalized for something that wasn’t causing anyone else a problem,” Colorado State Patrol Chief Matthew Packard said in a news release this year. “It ‘feels’ like a victimless crime. A victimless crime would mean the behavior was consensual and didn’t harm others, yet the reality is that speeding is strongly associated with the worst crashes in rural and urban areas.”
Troopers issued the most citations in April last year, handing out 4,341 speeding tickets. Troopers also investigated more than 560 fatal and serious injury crashes last year that involved speeding drivers.
“Don’t take liberties with other people’s lives,” Packard said in the release. “Your choice to speed wasn’t consensual to others using the same road. While driving can feel essential to sustain most lifestyles, it is still a privilege, not a right. People driving recklessly can and do kill people daily, so rethink your stance on speeding before we need to intervene and remind you.”
Compounding factors
Though higher speeds bring a whole herd of other risks, going fast in and of itself isn’t necessarily the issue.
“A car is built to drive safely at very fast speeds,” Riemer said. “So in a vacuum, speed itself isn’t a problem. But we don’t drive in a vacuum. We drive in residential neighborhoods and highways where there’s pedestrians and animals and a lot of unexpected obstacles that are going to pop up.”
Younkin said freeways — where drivers are routinely going over 70 or 80 mph — are, per mile, the safest streets in America. That is, in large part, because the roadways are built with next to zero interruptions, such as intersecting streets or traffic signals.
On the other side of the coin, residential streets — with many stop signs and intersections — have high rates of interactions between vehicles, but low speeds keep those roadways safe.
Younkin said it’s the middle area — streets and roads with relatively high speed limits, but also a lot of interactions among vehicles — that make up the most dangerous roadways.
Greeley is in a unique situation, Younkin said. With no interstates or other grade-separated throughways, the roads with the fastest speed limits also have a high rate of interactions between vehicles.
Highways, such as U.S. 34 and U.S. 85, account for just 9% of Greeley’s more than 473 miles of roadway, but 54% of the city’s fatal and serious injury crashes take place on highways, according to the city’s Vision Zero report.
The report was compiled as part of the city’s effort to eliminate all fatal and serious injury crashes. It focuses, in part, on what areas are the most dangerous for drivers and pedestrians, as well as other factors that contribute to the most severe crashes.
One of those other factors covered extensively in the report: speed. “Safe speeds” was the first thing listed as a proven strategy for achieving Vision Zero.
“Reducing speeds on Greeley’s streets is one of the most important things we can do to prevent traffic fatalities,” the report read.
Greeley City Council in January approved the Safe Streets 4 All Vision Zero Action Plan, a strategy that aims to eliminate serious injuries and fatalities in traffic incidents. When presenting the plan, city staff proposed reducing the default speed limit from 30 mph to 25 mph, as well as constructing more roundabouts and protected bike lanes.
From 2014 to 2023, there were 76 fatal crashes and 269 serious injury crashes on Greeley streets. Of those, 67% were on roads with a speed limit of 35 mph or higher.
For every 10 mph increase, the likelihood of a fatality doubles, according to the National Association of City Transportation Officials.
Traffic flies by on one of the busiest intersections on Main Street in Windsor on Friday. (Jim Rydbom/Staff Photographer)That’s because speed makes basically everything about driving more dangerous — from making simple maneuvers more difficult to reducing the effectiveness of safety features, such as airbags and seat belts.
At higher speeds, drivers also have less time to react to sudden changes in traffic, pedestrians or merging vehicles, drastically increasing the chances of collisions. For example, traveling at 60 mph instead of 50 mph cuts reaction time by 20%, according to State Patrol.
Increased speed also means an increased amount of time it takes to stop. At 60 mph, troopers say your car needs about 240 feet to complete a stop, compared to 180 feet at 50 mph.
And while it may seem obvious, the faster a vehicle is moving, the harder it is going to crash into whatever gets in its path, severely increasing the rate of serious injuries or fatalities.
Someone going 80 mph instead of 75 mph would have to travel 100 miles to save roughly five minutes, according to a study conducted by AAA Colorado. The study estimates the average driver saves only 26 seconds per day by speeding. And that’s assuming the driver doesn’t get into a crash or pulled over for speeding — either of which is likely to create a considerable delay, if not prevent arrival altogether.
“If you’re speeding by 10 miles per hour, you’re really only going to get there a minute or two sooner,” Platte Valley Fire Protection District Battalion Chief Ryan Fossen said. “But when you increase your speed, there’s an exponential increase in force.”
Penalties and prevention
Despite the common belief you won’t get pulled over if you’re not going more than 5 mph over, going just 1 mph over the posted speed limit could warrant a ticket.
In Colorado, the penalties for speeding are:
1 to 4 mph over: $30 fine 5 to 9 over: $70 fine, plus one point off your license. 10 to 19 over: $135 fine, plus four points off your license. 20 to 24 over: $200 fine, plus six points off your license. 25-plus over: $150 to $300 fine, and/or 10 to 90 days in the Department of Corrections 25-plus over in a construction zone: $300 to $1,000 fine, and/or 10 days to a year in the Department of Corrections.Police can also issue citations for driving a speed that is not reasonable and prudent given road conditions, as well as for exceeding a safe speed on a bridge or driving so slow that it impedes the normal and reasonable forward movement of traffic.
Primarily through those citations and other penalties, speeding — and all the risks it brings — is actually one of the few offenses officers can truly be proactive in preventing.
“As a police officer, it’s hard to go out and say, ‘Hey, I’m going to stop a murder today’ or ‘I’m going to stop a sexual assault today.’ You want to be a presence, but it’s hard to stop directly stop those things,” Evans Police Lt. Gabe Riemer said. “But you can stop those vehicular homicides and vehicular assaults by enforcing traffic laws.”
But Riemer doesn’t believe policing alone will stop people from going too fast. In his experience, facing a $100-plus fine and losing a few points off their license is a risk most drivers are willing to take.
“It is a deterrent, and it’s one of the few things that we can do to hold people accountable,” he said. “But if you really want to change behavior, you’ve got to hit people on an emotional level where they can relate.”
Since many people don’t think of going an extra 5 or 10 mph as that dangerous, it is easy to forget the people — both others and themselves — they are putting at risk. Though unpleasant, Riemer believes it is important to remember and acknowledge real-world examples of the tragedy excessive speeds can cause.
“I think there’s a lot of value in those emotionally charged, real-life accounts of how tragedy hits home,” Riemer said. “Because we can all relate to those stories.”
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Excessive speeds, which surged in Greeley last year, make nearly every aspect of driving more dangerous )
Also on site :