A University of Minnesota study analyzed more than 120 million vehicle trips in the U.S. to measure what speeding actually costs – in fuel, emissions, money, and time. The findings, published in Communications Sustainability, noted that drivers who complied with posted speed limits on highways and arterial roads only increased their travel time by an average of 54 seconds per day, based on a mean daily driving distance of 28.6 miles – which works out to about six minutes per week. The trade-off for those 54 seconds is substantial. Researchers estimated that if drivers nationwide stuck to posted speed limits, it could save more than six million gallons of fuel, $18 million, and 50,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per day. Annualized, those daily fuel savings are equivalent to removing about 5.5 million conventional passenger vehicles from the road.
Of the 120 million trips in the dataset, only 43% included at least one speeding event. On those trips, drivers spent nearly 12% of their time above the speed limit, typically by around 11 mph. Meanwhile, speeding was a factor in 29% of all U.S. traffic deaths in 2024, killing 11,288 people – more than 30 a day.
Source: Vice
