Connecticut’s Left-Lane Law Isn’t a Green Light to Start Speeding
Connecticut’s new left-lane rule is a good example of policy aimed at reducing speed variance, not encouraging people to drive faster.
Starting October 1, 2026, police will be able to ticket drivers who stay in the passing lane without actually passing. The point of this law isn’t to punish “slow drivers.” It’s designed to prevent situations where traffic gets bunched up behind someone holding the left lane, which then encourages sudden lane changes, passing on the right, frustration, and risky interactions.
The safest traffic flow is when most vehicles are traveling at roughly the same speed. Keeping the passing lane open helps reduce those speed differences and cuts down on the kind of conflicts that lead to crashes. It’s a reminder that addressing speed variance doesn’t mean “speeding is good.” It simply means that smoother, more predictable traffic patterns are safer for everyone—whether you’re a fast driver, a cautious one, or anything in between.
Are Slow Drivers The Problem? Or Is Speed Variance?
When we talk about speeding, most people instantly think “the faster you go, the more dangerous it is.” That’s partly true, but there’s another important detail that often gets overlooked.
Research going all the way back to the 1960s shows that crash risk isn’t just about speed by itself—it’s about how different your speed is compared to everyone else on the road.
In other words, the problem isn’t only fast drivers. Slow drivers increase crash risk too.
The best way to picture this is a U-shaped curve. Imagine a graph where the lowest point is in the center. That’s where you’re driving close to the average speed of the traffic around you. According to multiple studies, that’s where crash involvement is lowest. But as your speed moves lower or higher than the flow of traffic, the curve rises upward, meaning your crash risk starts increasing in either direction.
That might seem counterintuitive. Most of us assume slow equals safer. But when a driver is significantly slower than surrounding vehicles, it forces others to brake, switch lanes, or make passing maneuvers—all things that raise the chances of a crash. Meanwhile, a driver who is significantly faster than everyone else reduces their time to react, closes gaps more quickly, and increases the energy involved in a collision. Both ends of the speed spectrum create more conflict points.
So the safest place to be isn’t “as slow as possible” or “just under the speed limit”—it’s closer to the average speed of the traffic stream. Of course, this doesn’t mean that extremely high speeds are somehow safe. Higher speeds have their own serious risks, especially when it comes to crash severity and injury outcomes. But this older line of research reminds us that speed differences matter too, not just high speed by itself.
Don’t get me wrong—speed is still the number one culprit
Even though those older studies showed that being slower or faster than average can raise crash risk, modern research is very clear about one thing: higher speeds make crashes far more deadly. When a crash happens at a higher speed, the forces involved rise dramatically, which means the human body is exposed to greater impact, more severe injuries, and a much higher chance of death. That’s why speeding is consistently listed as a major factor in traffic fatalities. It reduces reaction time, increases stopping distance, and turns what might have been a minor crash into a life-changing one.
When average driving speed increases, crashes increase by more than the amount of speed increase, and the effect grows much faster for severe and fatal crashes. For example, with a 10% increase in average speed, slight-injury crashes go up only around 10% or so, but fatal crashes go up by about 50% or more. That happens because the relationship follows a power function, which means the most severe outcomes rise the fastest. These exponent estimates come from Elvik (2009).
| Crash Type | If average speed goes up +5% | If average speed goes up +10% | If average speed goes up +20% | If average speed goes up +30% |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fatal accidents | +22% more fatal crashes | +48% more fatal crashes | +115% more fatal crashes | +191% more fatal crashes |
| Fatalities | +27% more deaths | +56% more deaths | +136% more deaths | +231% more deaths |
| Serious-injury accidents | +13% more serious-injury crashes | +28% more serious-injury crashes | +67% more serious-injury crashes | +108% more serious-injury crashes |
| Seriously injured road users | +18% more seriously injured people | +39% more seriously injured people | +92% more seriously injured people | +149% more seriously injured people |
| Slight-injury accidents | +6% more slight-injury crashes | +11% more slight-injury crashes | +25% more slight-injury crashes | +40% more slight-injury crashes |
| Slightly injured road users | +7% more slightly-injured people | +15% more slightly-injured people | +35% more slightly-injured people | +56% more slightly-injured people |
| Injury accidents—all | +8% more injury crashes | +17% more injury crashes | +40% more injury crashes | +64% more injury crashes |
| Injured road users—all | +11% more injured people | +24% more injured people | +56% more injured people | +90% more injured people |
| Property damage only | +7% more damage-only crashes | +16% more damage-only crashes | +37% more damage-only crashes | +58% more damage-only crashes |
Do higher speed limits help?
It’s easy to assume that raising the speed limit makes roads “smoother” because everyone goes a little faster and traffic supposedly flows better. But that misses the real point. The goal isn’t to make higher speeds—it’s to reduce the speed differences between vehicles. That’s exactly what policies like Connecticut’s left-lane camping law are trying to address. When slower drivers stay out of the passing lane, traffic settles into a more consistent pace, which helps cut down the speed variance that raises crash risk in the first place.
And here’s something important: when posted limits were raised in real-world studies, drivers didn’t actually increase their speed by the full amount. When the limit jumped by 10 mph, average speeds only went up by about 3 mph—but crashes still increased. According to Kockelman et al. (2006), raising limits from 55 to 65 mph produced about 3.3% more crashes, while going from 65 to 75 mph still added about 0.6%. Even that small bump in actual vehicle speed meant more crashes overall. So the objective isn’t to invite everyone to drive faster—it’s about managing how differently people are driving from each other.
| Speed limit change | Average driving speed actually went up by… | This resulted in about this much MORE total crashes |
|---|---|---|
| 55 mph → 65 mph | +3 mph | about +3.3% more total crashes |
| 65 mph → 75 mph | +3 mph | about +0.64% more total crashes |
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