The following letter to the editor was submitted by Andover resident Jesse Jacobson, who holds a PhD in transportation systems from MIT. The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Andover News. You can learn more about our policy on opinion and commentary on our Mission and Policies page.
At the September 30, 2024 Select Board meeting it was suggested that speed limits are too onerous to enforce.
Make no mistake: speed kills. Simplifying to the extreme (sorry, I need this paragraph to explain some physics), the energy of an object in motion (such as a vehicle) rises with the square of the speed of the object. This relationship of square means that a vehicle travelling at 40mph has 2½ times the energy of a vehicle travelling at 25mph. And absorbing even a little-bit of that extra energy in an accident can devastate the human body, whether a bicyclist or pedestrian.
Andover already provides education, emergency services, clean water, parks, public transportation and roadway maintenance, and regulated entities provide electricity and natural gas (not an exhaustive list). And, on August 15, 2023, the Select Board voted to join Vision Zero, a strategy aimed at eliminating traffic fatalities and severe injuries.
Yet, why do we still debate whether the safety of all road users can be guaranteed because it is too onerous? What are the priorities that appear to put off compliance with Vision Zero? Is compliance with Vision Zero, after the August 15, 2023 Select Board vote, still the policy of Andover?
Jesse Jacobson
Andover
About the author: Even before graduating with a civil engineering degree, the author participated in a major forensic study of 10 fatal freeway crashes. After earning a PhD in Transportation Systems from MIT, he worked for a few years at a research unit of the US Department of Transportation. He was also briefly the subject-matter expert at USDOT for Right-Turn-on-Red. He works closely with George Thorlin, the founder of Andover Safe Streets.
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