Is the Time You Save From Speeding Worth Everything You Lose?

November 27, 2025

Speeding remains an ongoing problem in Indiana, contributing to nearly nine percent of motor vehicle accidents throughout the state in the most recent year for which figures were available. Moreover, the consequences of a high-speed crash can be dire in every sense, frequently leading to catastrophic injuries and property damage along with equally catastrophic blows to your finances, not to mention hefty fines and jail or prison sentences in extreme cases.

Yet despite the massive drawbacks of traveling too fast, you and many other drivers may still be inclined to speed in order to arrive at a destination sooner, but is the time you save from speeding worth everything you lose because of it? Join us as we examine why cautious driving may actually be the best way to get where you need to go.

Why Drivers Choose to Speed

Before we delve into the many pitfalls of speeding, it is important to understand why drivers choose to speed in the first place. Aside from believing that the advantages of speeding outweigh the drawbacks (a belief that we will show might not be based in fact), drivers have a distressing capacity to rationalize this “wrongful” behavior as not really wrong, in part by convincing themselves that they’re not really speeding.

In an appearance on National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation, Leon James, a psychology professor and the co-author of Road Rage and Aggressive Driving, argued that much of the public views “speeding” as a relative concept rather than an objective transgression.

Essentially, while “as far as…law enforcement is concerned” driving a single mile per hour over the speed limit would constitute speeding, “usually [what] people mean [by speeding is] just going over the speed limit by 20, 25 miles per hour.” Anything that doesn’t reach that threshold might be excused as “harmless” or “going with the flow,” which might itself be excused as the “safer” thing to do.

As the host of the broadcast put it, “there’s also the feeling that if you get on the highway and everybody is driving at 70 miles an hour, well, you probably should too.” Or as so many speeding drivers put it to themselves in this fast-paced era: “If everyone else is speeding, it’s probably no big deal.”

Speeding Can Be as Dangerous as Drunk Driving

But if you think that speeding is “no big deal,” you’re dead wrong. Drivers who speed have less time to react to sudden developments ahead of them yet demand more time to stop, and that stopping time will only grow if adverse weather or surface conditions seriously hinder their traction.

This is a disastrous combination that could make a car accident much more likely to occur and much more destructive when it does. The greater momentum produced by speeding exponentially heightens the force of impact, with one study estimating that the odds of dying in an auto accident double with every 10 miles per hour of increased velocity.

Those odds were borne out by data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that linked speeding to 11,775 fatalities in the United States in 2023, breaking down to more than 32 deaths per day or 29 percent of that year’s automotive casualties. That basically makes speeding as dangerous as drunk driving, which accounted for 30 percent of domestic vehicular deaths during the same period, claiming 12,429 lives in total or about 34 per day.

As these horrific numbers clearly indicate, a supposedly “harmless” activity like speeding and a universally condemned activity like driving under the influence are at a virtual tie with regard to how much havoc they can wreak on unsuspecting motorists and pedestrians. Fortunately, this problem has not gone unnoticed by lawmakers both across the country and in Indiana, who have begun to treat this sort of misconduct as the menace to the common good that it is.

A Wide Range of Penalties for Speeding in the Hoosier State

Indeed, speeding could cost you dearly in the Hoosier State, up to and including your liberty. Though there are no state laws specifically governing felony speeding, Indiana has enacted strict regulations pertaining to so-called “reckless driving.”

Under Section 9-21-8-52 of the Indiana Code, a reckless driver is defined as “a person who operates a vehicle and who drives at such an unreasonably high rate of speed or at such an unreasonably low rate of speed under the circumstances as to:

• endanger the safety or the property of others; or
• block the proper flow of traffic.”

A speeding driver who is deemed to be reckless may be subjected to a wide range of legal and fiscal penalties depending upon the situation. On the low end, the speeder could be cited with a Class C misdemeanor that comes with as much as $500.00 in fines and as many as 60 days in jail, but the citation could be elevated to a Class B misdemeanor if there’s property damage, with fines up to $1,000.00 and up to 180 days in jail.

In the event of an injury, speeding could result in a Class A misdemeanor (with a ceiling of $5,000.00 in fines and one year in jail), and a reckless speeder’s driving privileges could be taken away temporarily or permanently in response to more grievous or recurring offenses.

Graduating from Misdemeanors to Felonies

The negative repercussions of speeding aren’t confined to misdemeanors either, since felony charges could be merited if a speeder’s actions are determined to have risen to the level of “aggressive driving.” According to Section 9-21-8-55 of the Indiana Code, any driver who is moving at an “unsafe speed” could be classified as “aggressive” if he or she commits two or more of the following infractions “during one continuous episode”:

• Driving behind a vehicle too closely, referred to as “tailgating”
• Operating a vehicle unsafely
• Veering onto the shoulder to overtake another vehicle on the right
• Decelerating a vehicle in an unsafe fashion
• Failing to yield
• Ignoring a traffic control device
• Flashing headlights repeatedly
• Honking a horn unnecessarily

Aggressive driving is a Class A misdemeanor in most cases. Nonetheless, it could be elevated to a Level 5 or Level 6 felony under Section 9-21-8-56 of the Indiana Code if the speeder recklessly operates the vehicle or disobeys a traffic control signal or flagman in the immediate vicinity of a highway worksite AND:

• Is violating the state’s drinking and driving laws;
• Inflicts bodily injury or death to a worker at the worksite; or
• Has a prior, unrelated conviction for a Section 9-21-8-56 violation within the previous five years.

If the above conditions for felony speeding are met, the driver might be imprisoned from six months to 2.5 years for a Level 6 felony or from one to six years for a Level 5 felony, with fines up to $10,000.00 for each conviction. The speeding driver’s license could be suspended or revoked too, and he or she may have to struggle with the immense challenges that felons often face.

Various Counties in Indiana Impose Stiff Fines

In addition to state misdemeanor and felony charges, various counties in Indiana currently impose stiff fines to discourage drivers from traveling too fast within their borders. To give one example, drivers in Harrison County could be fined to the tune of:

• $142.00 for exceeding the limit by one to 15 miles per hour;
• $167.00 for exceeding it by 16 to 25 miles per hour; and
• $192.00 for any speeds beyond that.

Other jurisdictions may saddle speeders with other fines for other excesses in speed, but collectively these penalties aim to make the cost of speeding in terms of time and treasure so significant that the ultimate cost can be avoided: the loss of human life.

Sadly, not enough drivers will heed this warning until it’s too late, since the promise of shaving minutes or hours off of their commutes is enticing enough for them to brave the fines and incarceration that they’re “absolutely sure” aren’t in the cards for them anyway.

Obviously, it’s true that trading the safety of others for personal convenience is shortsighted and selfish independent of the outcome, though it’s less obvious but perhaps no less true that the goal of driving for less time might be an illusion if the military’s conclusions on this matter hold water.

What Army Researchers Discovered

The U.S. Army conducted an experiment in which it outlined different scenarios for road trips of four different distances:

• 15 miles (the average one-way commute in America)
• 30 miles
• 50 miles
• 200 miles

Secondly, each of these trips was measured at three different speed limits:

• 35 miles per hour
• 50 miles per hour
• 65 miles per hour

Lastly, the researchers calculated how long each of these trips would take when driven at either 10 or 20 miles per hour above each designated speed limit, and what they discovered about the net benefits of speeding (or lack thereof) might shock you.

For instance, a 15-mile trip in an area with a speed limit of 35 miles per hour would generally take approximately 25.71 minutes to complete without adjusting for congestion or traffic signals. In contrast, completing that same trip at 45 miles per hour is expected to take about 20 minutes. This amounts to savings of less than six minutes of travel time in exchange for a bump of ten miles per hour, which, as we have pointed out above, could double a motorist’s odds of dying in a collision. So while there may be some time savings, you might question if they’re substantial enough in light of what might go awry – and the savings get even smaller the faster you drive.

Whereas the length of that same trip on a road where the speed limit is 50 miles per hour clocks in at 18 minutes, speeding by 10 miles per hour (or at a speed of 60 miles per hour) should get you to the finish line in around 15 minutes. This is a mere three minutes of time saved for, once again, twice the death rate associated with the posted speed limit (itself already much higher), and the savings dwindle down to 1.85 minutes if you travel 75 miles per hour in a zone with a speed limit of 65 miles per hour. These relative gains become positively miniscule when you speed by 20 miles per hour, especially when you remember that doing so will quadruple the fatality rate!

As you can see, the time you save from speeding may not justify the hazards you may have to endure because of it, particularly since speeding offers you such diminishing returns on an arithmetic level the more you press down on the gas pedal.

How to Prevent a Speeding Accident

Hopefully you can now see why it’s unwise to speed (for your own and for the sake of others), but you should be aware that you may have no control over anyone else’s decision to speed while sharing the road with you. With this in mind, here are some tips that could help you prevent a speeding accident with a driver who may not be as wise as you are:

• Create a buffer of space around you so that a speeding driver does not encroach into your territory and strike your vehicle.
• Change what you are doing so that you can evade contact, whether that means merging into another lane or speeding up briefly until the driver who is speeding is squarely inside of your rearview mirror.
• Move over when a speeding driver deploys reckless or aggressive maneuvers that may indicate a desire to pass you, such as tailgating.
• Dial 911 to notify the authorities if it seems like a driver is speeding in a deliberate attempt to harass you. A police officer may be able to neutralize a possible threat before a speeder delivers on that threat and puts you and your loved ones in jeopardy.

What Hensley Legal Group, PC Can Do for You

By implementing safeguards like these, you might manage to keep something terrible from happening, though sometimes a high-speed accident could be inevitable despite your efforts to the contrary, and it can turn your world upside down. Very quickly, you could find yourself buried beneath a mountain of debt and unable to earn the funds to dig yourself out, all of which could make it tough to simply make ends meet, much less meet the new strains on your bank account.

And while you may have grounds for a personal injury case if someone else is at fault for your speeding accident, success isn’t guaranteed thanks to the staunch opposition you might encounter from obstinate insurance companies. To overcome these obstacles, many badly hurt motorists seek out the seasoned speeding accident lawyers at Hensley Legal Group, PC, a dedicated Indiana personal injury law firm whose experienced attorneys have been fighting on behalf of the wrongfully injured since 1998. No feat is too daunting or adversary too intimidating to dissuade us from doing whatever it takes to get justice for our clients.

If you hire Hensley, your lawyer will begin by launching a thorough investigation to unearth the root causes of your speeding accident and the defendants who played a role in it, then establish valid claims against them within the time allotted by law. If warranted, a lawsuit may be filed as well in a court with the power to issue a binding judgment.

Next, your attorney will amass the evidentiary materials required to support any allegations that you make, such as:

• Police reports
• Citations and dispositions
• Eyewitness statements
• Crash site photos
• Dash cam, streetlight, and surveillance video footage
• Black box information
• Phone records
• Driving and maintenance logs
• Accident reconstruction and forensic analysis

Upon assembling an airtight case against each of the defendants, a tenacious Indiana car accident lawyer will enter into exhaustive negotiations with their insurance carriers for a compensation package that reflects the full spectrum of your damages, including your:

• Medical bills
• Lost income
• Pain and suffering
• Impaired mobility
• Scarring and disfigurement
• Mental and emotional trauma
• Reduced quality of living
• Loss of consortium (if applicable)

When confronted with irrefutable proof of the depth of the defendants’ liability and the extent of your losses, a sensible insurer may opt to tender a generous settlement instead of risking a worse verdict. This is a big part of why most Indiana car accident cases are resolved prior to trial and why injured victims with attorneys tend to receive 3.5 times more than injured victims without them.

However, a battle-tested lawyer will be indispensable if your case makes it to a courtroom, where 96 percent of plaintiffs who represent themselves lose but plaintiffs who secure professional representation are favored to prevail, thereby improving their chances of returning to normal.

You Won’t Owe Anything Unless Your Case Is Won

We imagine that you might be reluctant to commit to more expenditures when you may least be able to afford them, but you should know that the vast majority of personal injury firms, including Hensley Legal Group, work on a contingency basis.

This means that you won’t have to pay anything up front or owe anything later on unless your case is won, after which your Indiana car accident attorney may request reimbursement for any out-of-pocket expenses and a fee for the legal services rendered. This fee is typically taken as a percentage of a final verdict or settlement that is statistically likely to be much larger when you have a qualified legal practitioner in your corner.

A system like this can minimize many of the initial worries of pursuing an Indiana speeding accident claim while potentially maximizing the amount of money that goes into your pocket.

Get in Touch with Hensley’s Accomplished Indiana Car Accident Lawyers

Hensley Legal Group has been fiercely advocating for the men and women of Indiana for over a quarter century. If you are having trouble getting back on track after a high-speed collision in the State of Indiana, get in touch with Hensley’s accomplished Indiana car accident lawyers to learn more about your legal options.

You can schedule a free case review with a knowledgeable Indiana car accident attorney by calling our office at (317) 472-3333, chatting with us online, or filling out our contact form at your earliest convenience.