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NTSB Calls For Expanded Use Of Speed Cameras

WASHINGTON (CBSNewYork) -- New research shows speeding is nearly as dangerous as driving drunk.

As CBS News' Kris Van Cleave reported, federal regulators said speed played a factor in about a third of deadly crashes from 2005 to 2014. Now, a government group is calling for more speed cameras -- but less than a third of states allow them.

Fairfax County, Virginia police Capt. Michael Grinnan has spent 24 years on patrol. Speeders are a daily part of life.

As to trying to stop speeders, Grinnan said the greatest challenge is: "There are so many of them. It's a matter of where do I go?"

The National Transportation Safety Board identified more than 100,000 deaths due to speeding between 2005 and 2014 – nearly as many as were killed in alcohol-related crashes.

"Every mile an hour that you increase by, you're increasing your likelihood of a crash," said NTSB Acting Chairman Robert Sumwalt. "This study showed that we can improve the way that we set speed limits and enforce speed limits."

The safety board is calling for expanding the use of speed cameras. Only 14 states and Washington, D.C. currently use them, and only rarely on freeways where drivers go the fastest.

Another recommendation encourages installing point-to-point enforcement as used in Australia and the U.K., where a driver can be ticketed for getting from point A to point B faster than the time it would take by following the speed limit,.

Traffic deaths have surged an estimated 14 percent over the last two years to around 40,000 people killed.

The NTSB said an unintended consequence of states raising the speed limit has been additional deaths.

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