Here's a great example of the phrase "those who fail to plan, plan to fail:" State lawmakers recently voted to increase the maximum speed limit on some state highways to 70 mph ("Maryland Senate votes to raise maximum speed limit to 70 mph," Feb. 19).
They likely did so without the full knowledge of the costs and benefits of speed limits. Were they clear about how increasing speed limits will improve our quality of life? Did they consult the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI)?
I doubt it, since most lawmakers don't know it exists. It's our Net Gross State Product. It includes the costs, as well as the benefits, of our collective action in Maryland. The GPI clearly lists the cost of motor vehicle crashes, yet our lawmakers went ahead and increased the speed limit anyway.
Car accidents are the No. 1 killer of young people in Maryland, costing all of us over $576 million a year in lost wages and medical costs alone. Reducing, rather than increasing, the speed limit could have added tens of millions of dollars to businesses and reduced thousands of hours of suffering, rehab, mental anguish, jail time and hospital visits, not to mention reductions in long term disabilities, air pollution and traffic jams due to crashes.
The National Safety Council calculates a cost of $1,024,000 per death, $36,000 per injury and $6,400 per property damage crash. Maryland had 465 preventable traffic deaths in 2013, costing us nearly a half billion dollars that year.
We could make a real dent in the state deficit while also increasing our quality of life simply by lowering speed limits and thus reducing the number of crashes. Where's the leadership to make that happen?
Greg Cantori, Pasadena
The writer is past president of Maryland Nonprofits.