Speed limits: Tried and true, or invalid?

Follow the speed limit.

It's a simple task most drivers do successfully every day. But there's still a small part of the driving population that travels above or below it. We might think these drivers are just not abiding by a law that's been set for a reason, but what if instead of the driver, the speed limit is incorrect?

In St. Clair County, it's possible, because some speed limits were set in the 1940s and haven't changed since. The most recent speed limit set on a county road was St. John Drive in 2005 in Clay Township.

This was just before the passage of Public Act 85 of 2006, which mandates that cities, townships and villages complete speed studies or access-point counts to justify their speed limits.

"If something is no longer valid, I don't know how (municipalities) shouldn't be reviewing all of their speed limits to make sure they adhere to current law," said Lt. Gary Megge, who works in the Michigan State Police traffic services section.

A possible problem exists with outdated or invalid speed limits, and one recent court ruling could call speed limits across the state into question.

Grand Rapids defense attorney Ed Sternisha was formerly a police officer. When his client, who was pulled over for speeding and found intoxicated and in possession of a gun, received a speeding ticket in Saranac, a village in Ionia County, he didn't see a speed limit sign, so he challenged that the traffic stop was invalid.

Even if there had been a sign, the stop still would have been invalid, Sternisha argued, and the court ruled in his client's favor.

"The judge ultimately declared the speed limits were not properly set," he said. "This case may be the one that forces local governments to comply (with Public Act 85). If we're successful in the court of appeals, this will affect areas all over the state."

There was no record the speed limit was ever properly set; Saranac declared without reason that the speed limit was 25 mph, even though when a speed test was done on the road, it would have been 45.

"They have these secret speed limits nobody knows about," Sternisha said.

Engineering, not emotions

Municipalities cannot declare speed limits based on emotions.

For a speed limit to be established or changed, a test needs to be completed by the Michigan State Police and county road commission, or the city itself on its own roads. The results of the test determine what the speed should be, not individuals deciding it is too fast or slow.

"We get a lot of requests that say, 'The speed limit is 45, we want it 35,'" said Kirk Weston, managing director of the St. Clair County Road Commission. "There are times we will go out and look at that road. We'll go back to the person requesting it and ask if they really want us to do a full-blown study, because the actual speed limit might be higher."

When a traffic study is done, it's based on engineering standards, Weston said. With a study, usually the 85th percentile is taken to declare the speed limit. This is the speed at which 85 percent of drivers travel on a certain road; posting speed limits this way usually yields the smoothest and safest traffic possible. If a study isn't done, a municipality could be held liable for what happens there.

"Why would you set the speed limits in place if people are going to ignore it?" said Weston. "If you have it at too low of a speed and there's an accident, it could open the road commission to liability."

The municipality could also, as in Sternisha's case, be giving out unfair speeding tickets.

A possible problem

There's no real way to know which speed limits in St. Clair County aren't valid without studying every one of them.

This poses a problem because the limits could be outdated, failing to keep up with changing landscapes or traffic trends — or state law. Megge said just because there is a record of the speed limit being set properly doesn't mean that number should still stand today.

"Have studies been done in the past but there are some speed limits that are in dire need of a review? Absolutely," he said. "Just because a sign is up there and there's an order, there's potential that some of those haven't been reviewed in decades."

In many places in St. Clair County, it has been several decades since the original speed limit was set. Some local governments have not reassessed their speed limits to comply with state law changes in 2006 — and other towns are not even aware of the law.

Like in Algonac, where City Manager Doug Alexander says speed limits haven't been changed in at least 15 years. Alexander was unaware of Public Act 85.

"All speed limits in Algonac are set at 25," he said. "We don't have the situation where we would have (to reassess)."

But Algonac could be in that situation, based on state law.

Bill Hazelton, the county road commission's director of engineering, said no one goes around looking for issues with speed limits, but if someone inquires about a certain area, research will be done on that specific road. This happens a couple of times a year.

"I review the data for that street," he said. "If you ask me to do a speed study and it does turn out to be higher than what the speed limit is, I'll change it accordingly."

In some states, such as California, there are regulations on how often roads need to be studied. If it hasn't been looked at in more than 10 years, there's a risk it could become a speed trap.

"Michigan does not have a hard and fast rule on how often you have to check that the speed limits are correct," said Jim Walker, executive director of the National Motorists Association Foundation.

Walker belongs to a grassroots organization that helps protect motorist rights in court. An area of concern for Walker is speed traps, which are speed limits set wrong resulting in more tickets, thus bringing in more revenue.

"There's dozens and dozens of places like that around Michigan, where (speed limits) are old and don't fit anymore and need to be corrected," he said.

In the city of Port Huron, the most recent traffic control order was set in 1983. The city uses the 85th percentile to determine speed limits, like the county.

"We've adopted them in a way that they will hold up in court," said City Manager James Freed. "The old times with speed traps and what not, those have really gone by the wayside. Just because a speed limit was posted a long time ago doesn't mean it's wrong."

But it could be. Transportation engineering manager for the city Dave Smith said he wasn't aware of the law, and speed studies have not been done since before the law was passed.

"This is something we're going to have to look into obviously," he said. "The law was made 10 years ago, so it must not be that big of a problem. We'll have to look into it to make sure we're following the law."

If the court ruling in Ionia County makes a difference across the state, there might be issues prosecuting people for speeding tickets, because entire stops could be considered invalid if a speed limit is called into question.

"It's like the fruit of the poisonous tree," Sternisha said. "If the traffic stop is bad, anything they get from it can't be used."

Questioning the speed limit, however, isn't common for those who get speeding tickets, said Port Huron Traffic Safety Officer Tom Ruedisueli. Mostly drivers do not try to fight the ticket at all, he said.

Ruedisueli said the validity of a speed limit does not usually cross an officer's mind.

"The posted speed limit is what they're enforcing, as to whether it's in accordance with what the state law is or what a traffic control order says," he said. "(Speed limit validity) might not even enter into the equation because it's posted."

"There might be some cases where jurisdictions might make a decision to establish a speed limit without doing a study just because that's what they think it is, but if there's a traffic control order in place that makes the speed limit a legal speed limit."

Such is the case in Yale, where City Manager John Osborn said the city council, before he began working for the city 26 years ago, set the speed limit on Yale Road. As far as Osborn knows, it was not based on a study.

"(It was) based on what the council decided it would be," he said. "They simply would pass a traffic control order, which would direct what the speed limit is."

If speed limits are not set properly, this could pose safety issues for those drivers who are within the 85th percentile, Megge said.

"If we don't match normal and safe driving behavior, if we try to post a speed limit that doesn't match, we have a problem," he said. "We make a large portion of the driving public illegal. That's not the way we should be doing business."

Contact Sydney Smith at (810) 989-6259 or at ssmith10@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @SydneyS_mith.