KINDER'S COMMENTARY: HIGHWAYS ARE SAFER NOW AT HIGHER SPEEDS, STATISTICS SHOW

Did you or a member of your family travel long distances to be together this holiday weekend? If you did, you traversed safer roads than just a few years ago. Specifically, they are safer than in 1995, when the new GOP-majority Congress abolished the federally mandated 55-mph speed limit, itself an important step in restoring our freedoms.

Don't expect to hear this from most elite media, or from the bloated bureaucracy at the National Highway Safety Administration. These bureaucrats and other "safety experts" predicted dire consequences and more deaths.

Automotive writer Eric Peters shows that fatality and accident rates have both declined over the last three years. The year 1997 saw the lowest traffic-death rate in the nation's history. Peters writes:

"As the roads have gotten safer, speed limits have increased. ... Twenty-one states have a maximum limit of 65 mph; 17 states have a limit of 70; 10 states have a limit of 75. Montana" -- glorious, beautiful, freedom-loving Montana! -- "has no posted daytime speed limit, requiring only that drivers maintain a `reasonable and prudent speed.'

"These higher speeds are safer because they reflect the normal flow of traffic -- what highway engineers call the `85th percentile' speed. This is the speed most drivers will maintain on a given stretch of road under a given set of conditions. When speed limits are arbitrarily set low -- as under the old system -- tailgating, weaving and `speed variance' (the problem of some cars traveling significantly faster than others) make roads less safe."

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Murder, he wrote: It was good to see Dr. Jack Kevorkian charged with murder this past week, and this by a prosecutor who had won election pledging not to continue prosecuting him for his assisted suicides. But last Sunday night's videotape was too much even for this prosecutor. This time the truly bizarre Kevorkian went far beyond assisted suicide to the active killing of our fellow man.

(An interesting subtext to this melodrama is that "60 Minutes" reporter Mike Wallace, who provided credulous reporting for Kevorkian, is himself a committed fan of Kevorkianism. Wallace has long admired Kevorkian and has a pact with his wife for mutual assisted suicide should they become incapacitated. Although few in public life get this privilege, it helps if you can select your interviewer.)

Of course it was sweeps week -- the period when ratings are established as the basis for advertising rates. This explains the decision by the high command at CBS to feature this sordid episode.

The Wall Street Journal observes:

"CBS defends its `60 Minutes' broadcast of Dr. Kevorkian killing Thomas Youk by saying it provided information about an important issue. But the Media Research Institute's Brent Bozell recalls that CBS reacted differently in 1992 when Michael Bailey, a pro-life Republican, showed aborted fetuses in a campaign ad. CBS blacked out the offending portions and asked whether `any zealot with a candidate's filing fee can put anything on TV.' How about a network's try to boost its ratings?"

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Election updates

Nationwide, Democrats gained about 50 seats in state legislatures on Nov. 3. Missouri was one of only three states to see Republican gains in the Legislature.

In congressional seats, Democrats won 18 of 26 tight races, as more than two million conservatives stayed home. There's the difference between a five-seat congressional loss and a double-digit GOP gain.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.