December 27, 1999

Traffic experts say growing number of American drivers are pushing highway speeds to new heights each year; more drivers are treating speed limits as suggestions, steering bigger and more powerful cars and exploiting increasingly lax police enforcement; trend has drawn little public notice, overshadowed by more visible problems like drunken driving and supposed 'road rage' epidemic; is veiled also by fact that highway deaths have been falling for years; even though Americans are driving more than ever, fatality rate per highway mile has declined 11 percent since 1995, when federal government abandoned national speed limit of 55 miles per hour; photos (M)

Dictaphone Corp gains new focus under John H Duerden, chief executive for four years; still derives most of its sales from office dictating equipment, but its future lies with medical records-keeping, systems for logging, monitoring and tracing telephone calls to customer help desks, financial trading floors and 911 emergency lines; is developing an Internet-based system in which it will accept dictated files from doctors and return partly edited transcripts; product that converts a doctor's dictation to an e-mail voice attachment was introduced in 1997 and has already captured 55 percent of health care market; Stonington Partners plans public offering of Dictaphone stock sometime in 2000; photo; graph (M)

Zoo professionals and wildlife experts bringing cheetahs, koala bears and kangaroos into Manhattan for appearances on television have found two hotels, Mayflower and Le Parker Meridien, that accommodate wild guests, within reason; most other hotels have restrictions, limiting animals mostly to dogs and other 'normal' pets under certain weight limit; City Dept of Health does not explicitly ban wild animals in hotels, but hotels are wary of damage and disruption such animals could cause; photos (M)

Pipeline companies are seeking to build two major new lines to open New York-New Jersey market to vast reserves of natural gas from western Canada, but hoped-for completion dates of late next year seem too ambitious; Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which grants permits for new pipelines, imposed stiff environmental and marketing conditions on proposed Chicago-to-New Jersey line; opponents of line say new requirements could doom project; proposed line ending in Westchester County is not as far along in review process; regulatory commission has not issued its final environmental impact statement on that project or scheduled vote on construction permit for it; opposition is deep in New Jersey, but not in New York; unlike Gov Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, who opposes pipeline, Gov Goerge E Pataki has been silent on project; map (M)

New York Giants lose their final regular-season home game to Minnesota Vikings, 34-17; Giants can still make playoffs if they win next week in Dallas and if Green Bay loses to Arizona; photos (M)