Photo by Abhi Here.

Over the past few issues of themail@dcwatch, longtime DC activist Gary Imhoff has defended speeding as acceptable behavior on city streets. On September 13, he referenced a Washington Times editorial which noted that the District’s speed and red-light cameras issued slightly more than double the number of tickets they did two years ago. The editorial also complained about the cameras now mounted on street sweepers. Mr. Imhoff claims that “drivers seem to be content with being shaken down.” He calls for “retaliation at the polls” against politicians who support camera enforcement.

In the next issue, Philip Wirtz, sought clarification. It seemed that Imhoff and his supporters “are not questioning the legitimacy of the law,” he wrote. “They are questioning the legitimacy of enforcing a good law…Isn’t this really just ‘sour grapes’ about being caught?”

Imhoff responded this week. “There are two major types of crimes,” he tells his readers. Some, like murder, should be dealt with strongly and swiftly. “But other acts aren’t bad in themselves, though they may be illegal.” Mr. Imhoff counts speeding as one of these benign offenses. It’s exactly this type of rationalization that led many people to drink and drive before it became socially unacceptable. The very same delusion leads people to engage in distracted driving today.

By now, most people accept that drunk driving and distracted driving are dangerous behaviors. It may come as a surprise to Mr. Imhoff that speeding — even 10 mph over the limit — is also a reckless behavior that endangers the safety of road users. Has he ever heard the slogan, speed kills? A pedestrian is at least seven times more likely to be killed if struck by a vehicle traveling 30 mph than a vehicle traveling 20 mph. Perhaps Mr. Imhoff should reconsider his belief that driving 10 mph over the speed limit involves “no moral failing.”

It is certainly a problem when a road is designed to encourage speed yet has an artificially low speed limit and speed cameras. That’s an unfair trap that should be remedied by either an appropriate speed limit or a slower, safer road design. Mr. Imhoff also makes a valid point that traffic law and enforcement should have an “actual impact on safety.” But whose safety? For Mr. Imhoff’s answer to this question, we only need to go back to 2007. “The major purpose of normal traffic laws,” he wrote, “is to make driving safer.” Pedestrians and cyclists are absent from Imhoff’s windshield perspective. No wonder he thinks speeding on city streets is acceptable behavior.