Additional law enforcement will be out for the next several days for a new initiative focused on speeding.

Iowa State Patrol District Four Resource Officer Shelby McCreedy tells Raccoon Valley Radio the speed project initiative is allowing law enforcement not only to issue citations for speeding but also the opportunity to educate the motoring public about the risk factors of speeding. McCreedy points out that speed continues to be the leading factor in a fatal traffic related crash. She notes that they calculate force by using the speed that a vehicle is traveling multiplied by your body weight at the time of impact.

“Even ten-miles-per-hour over the speed limit increases your chance of death by 2.5 times if you’re involved in a crash. So it doesn’t take triple digit speeds to kill you in a crash.”  

McCreedy says one of the main reasons why people choose to speed is because their schedules are overbooked and so they leave themselves less time to get to a destination.

“And there’s this misconception that if I just drive faster I’ll limit the amount of time (I’m on the road), and that’s really not an effective idea at all, because really you’d have to be driving for hours in order for that to really impact your travel time.”  

The speed project initiative is September 27th through October 4th.