Don't drink and drive - or speed
10:29 PM 12/29/03

Reminders not to drink and drive are common during the holiday season, but the manslaughter conviction of U.S. Rep. Bill Janklow, R-S.D., should caution everyone to give up a driving practice that is far more common but just as dangerous: speeding. <

Last summer, Janklow was speeding down a road near his hometown of Flambeau, S.D., when he blew through a stop sign and ran into motorcyclist Randy Scott. Scott died. Janklow was convicted of manslaughter, a felony, and faces up to 10 years in prison. <

Janklow's speeding killed Scott - and killed Janklow's career as well. The former four-term governor of South Dakota is resigning from the House of Representatives on Jan. 20 and will surrender his law license as well. The judge who will sentence him can consider his prior record - 12 speeding tickets before he became governor - as well as Janklow's own admission that "Bill Janklow speeds. Shouldn't, but he does" in his 1999 State of the State address. The judge also has an envelope full of stuff - the public doesn't know what at this point - that may reveal Janklow getting preferential treatment from police since he became governor in 1995. <

Janklow's conviction highlights what every police officer knows: Speeding can be just as dangerous as drunken driving. <

Yes, "everybody does it" - or at least 71 percent of licensed drivers, according to the American Automobile Association. Nationwide, 13,713 died last year in accidents caused by speeding. That's about 400 more fatalities than were caused by drunken driving in 2002. Wisconsin statistics are similar, according to the Department of Transportation, with 270 fatalities attributed to speeding, compared to 292 to drunken driving. <

Moreover, while the number of drunken driving fatalities has fallen 37 percent nationwide in the past 20 years, the number of fatal accidents has been rising steadily in the 22 states that have raised their speed limits to 70 mph or more since 1995. Safety experts say the risk of death in a crash doubles for every 10-mph increase in speed. <

Some Western European nations have already recognized that speeding can be just as dangerous as drunken driving. In England, for example, the government launched a campaign: "Kill your speed - not a child." It also installed lots of roadside cameras to photograph and tickets speeders. (Alas, photo radar is illegal in Wisconsin.) The result of the British campaign: a 50 percent reduction in speeding-related fatalities. <

Let's all slow down. Who among us has not been passed by some idiot doing 80 mph on the Beltline, only to see the same idiot pulling into the parking lot exactly one car ahead of us a few minutes later? That fool risked his life - and yours - to gain a one car-length advantage. It's just not worth it, especially this time of year, when the roads could be unexpectedly slippery. <

Bill Janklow killed an innocent man and smashed his own 30-year career of public service in the process. Learn from his mistake - and slow down.