Chavez Staying in Power; Texas Highway Getting 85mph Speed Limit
COSTELLO: Just about 45 minutes past the hour checking our top Stories. In a little more than a half hour Mitt Romney will tell voters his vision for U.S. foreign policy. He'll speak at the Virginia Military Institute and he's expected to attack President Obama on his handling of the Middle East and Iran. We'll bring you that speech live in our next hour. In health news, 91 people in nine states have now come down with a rare strain of fungal meningitis. So far seven people have died in cases linked to tainted steroid injections. This weekend the maker of the steroid recalled all of the products. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will stay in that office another six years. Chavez won re-election last night; he got more than 54 percent of the vote. 90 percent of the ballots have been counted. Chavez has been in power since 1999. You can't drive 55. Well, no one else can either. Instead of providing more money and manpower to enforce the law, many politicians across the country are upping the speed limit big time. According to the Governor's Highway Safety Association, seven states -- Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia have increased speed limits to as high as 85 miles per hour on certain roads. Some drivers think that's grand. Others don't.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, it is the highest posted speed limit on the whole western hemisphere, right? I mean it is really pretty neat.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Doing 85 miles an hour, all they're doing is asking for more accidents and more deaths; that's about it.</s>COSTELLO: The president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Adrian Lund, joins us now from Washington. Welcome.</s>ADRIAN LUND, PRESIDENT, INSURANCE INSTITUTE FOR HIGHWAY SAFETY: Thank you Carol.</s>COSTELLO: And just to be sure that everybody knows what your organization does, you are like the crash test dummy guy, right?</s>LUND: Yes, we do crash tests but we also look at how other state laws and so forth affect highway safety.</s>COSTELLO: So first off, tell us, when you get into a car accident going 85 miles per hour, what are your chances of survival?</s>LUND: Well, if you actually crash at 85 miles per hour, your chances of survival are probably zero. .</s>COSTELLO: So is it safe to say that speed causes more traffic fatalities?</s>LUND: Absolutely. We know from history of experimenting with national maximum speed limits and so forth that when we reduce speed limits and people go slower, we reduce the number of crashes and we particularly reduce the number of severe crashes that result in death. Conversely, as we have increased speed limits since the 1970s, we have repeatedly seen that the risk of crashing and the risk of fatal crashes on our highways has gone up.</s>COSTELLO: OK. So with that in mind, it is like I just can't figure out why politicians would be OK with raising the speed limit to 85 miles per hour. I mean do we really need to go faster?</s>LUND: Well, that is a political debate, Carol. Some people do want to go faster. Some people are willing to accept the cost. Others deny the cost. There are people out there who think that you can raise the speed limit and because people are already exceeding the old speed limit they think this will make a nation of law-abiding citizens if we just raise the speed limit. But what actually happens is you raise the speed limit, people get used to that, and then they exceed that limit as well, to about the same extent as the old limit.</s>COSTELLO: So in essence what you're saying, oh, people drive 10, 20 miles above the speed limit of 55 anyway, so why not raise the speed limit and then enforce the law. If someone is driving even two miles over 85 miles per hour we'll catch them and fine them big time. You're saying that is not exactly what happens.</s>LUND: That isn't what happens. What we see is that there is only so much money for enforcement. Law enforcement is already stretched thin. So the notion that we're going to enforce the new speed limits a lot better than the old speed limits is just false.</s>COSTELLO: Well, that's what Texas -- this is -- in Texas they have a highway near Austin, a stretch of highway where they will raise the speed limit to 85 miles per hour. The Texas Department of transportation says, hey, we can do that because the highway was built expressly for people going fast and it is safer. How do you respond to that?</s>LUND: I am sure that they have designed this highway well. People will be able to travel faster. It is safer than the old highways. It would be even safer if the speed limit were 80 miles an hour or if it were 75 miles an hour.</s>COSTELLO: So you're trying to maintain the 55 miles per hour speed limit. Are you fighting a losing battle?</s>LUND: I think politically we are fighting a losing battle. The thing that I think concerns me most is that when we look at our 55 miles per hour highways, people are really exceeding the speed limit there. This is something that people don't understand. If you allow higher speeds on some roads, say 80, 85 miles an hour that tends to generalize over to other highways and even on surface streets, city streets. We have measured that people coming off of high speed expressways go faster on those surface streets.</s>COSTELLO: Adrian Lund, thank you so much for being with us this morning. We appreciate it.</s>LUND: Thank you Carol.</s>COSTELLO: Talking about speed, a nightmare finish at Talladega, 25 cars crash on the final lap. One driver said it is a bloodthirsty course.