It is a familiar scene during prime-time television: A young woman is shown driving a red Mitsubishi Eclipse down a country road at very high speed. The woman is -on her way to her grandparents' home, and the car is going so fast that it makes the house rumble when she arrives. Meanwhile, the announcer declares: "It's uncommonly fast, and fun to drive, and it makes quite an entrance."
The steady stream of advertisements like these, which continue to promote dangerous driving behavior despite enormous publicity about the epidemic of aggressive driving, has shocked many members of the Partnership for Safe Driving. In March 1999, the Partnership's public policy committee sent letters to the CEOs of 14 major auto-makers in the United States, urging them to stop promoting
speeding and reckless driving in their television commercials. The committee expressed particular concern about the potential of these ads to influence the behavior of young drivers.
Speeding is defined as travelling faster than the posted speed limit or travelling too fast for the road condition - even at speeds under the posted limit. The risk of being involved in a crash increases with the speed a vehicle is being driven because there is less time to react, less control of the vehicle and the distance needed to stop is longer. The risk of a crash in a 60km/h zone doubles with every 5km/h above the limit. That is increasing the speed from 65 to 70km/h doubles one's chance of a crash. The higher the speed a vehicle is travelling when it hits a pedestrian the greater
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