OT: I'm in the paper
11-24-2002, 02:38 PM
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OT: I'm in the paper
I put my part in bold:
[quote]Charlotte Observer
Posted on Sun, Nov. 24, 2002
Speeders push the limits
More drivers seen pushing way beyond limits despite traffic, heightened safety hazards
DIANNE WHITACRE and DAVID PERLMUTT
Staff Writers
If speed limits are the most broken law in the land, then drivers like Ron are the desperados who streak past us tamer scofflaws in a burst of horsepower.
"I'll do 95 if I can," Ron said. "But generally there's someone in my way -- one of those slowpokes. They aggravate the daylights out of me."
A 50ish professional who understandably won't give his last name, Ron drives 800 miles a week between his job in Charlotte and home in Tennessee.
In 38 years of driving, he's had only five speeding tickets.
"It's a game -- a challenge to see how long I can get away with it," he said.
Drivers like Ron are on every highway, every day. They're outnumbered, of course, by the mass of run-of-the-mill speeders who routinely edge past the interstate speed limit by 10 or 15 mph.
Together the fast and the hyper-fast have created a driving culture where speed limits aren't limits at all but a way to gauge how fast we can drive without getting a ticket.
One day last week N.C. state Trooper Mark Coyle stopped at three Charlotte freeway overpasses and turned on his speed detector.
It took only seconds.
At Interstate 77 and Tyvola Road, he clocked five cars at least 30 mph over the 55 mph speed limit. The last one, a gold Nissan Maxima with S.C. plates, streaked by doing 91 -- in dense lunchtime traffic.
It was no different at the Interstate 85 overpasses at Sugar Creek and Sam Wilson roads, where Coyle clocked cars as fast as 86 mph.
"You could literally throw a dart at a map, and go to that area and work it, and you're going to get the same results," he said.
One February midnight, he clocked a southbound Lexus on I-77 at Tyvola at 144 mph.
"Its lights looked like a shooting star," he said.
Coyle gunned his Ford Crown Victoria and soon he was up to 130 mph. But once he rounded a curve, he encountered traffic and three or four Lexuses of the same color and vintage.
"This guy had slowed down and I couldn't figure out which one it was," he said. "So I had to let him go."
More lanes, more speed
Speeding is getting worse, says John King, a Charlotte driver. "When I drive I-485, I set my cruise control and cars fly past me like they're at Talladega."Between 1980 and 1992, the percentage of interstate drivers nationwide exceeding 65 mph more than quadrupled, to nearly 23 percent from 4.9 percent, according to Federal Highway Administration data.
A statewide random study found the average speed in a 55-mph zone was 63. It averaged 72 mph in a 65 mph zone and 75 mph in a 70 mph zone.
As urban interstates widen to six lanes and even eight, the temptation to speed grows too.
Cpl. M.D. Johnson with the S.C. Highway Patrol said his experience shows that people tend to drive faster when there are more lanes.
When he drives to Spartanburg County on I-85, Johnson notices that drivers speed up when the lanes widen from four to six.
"If you've only got a two lane and there are four people there, it's holding some people back," he said. "When it goes to six lanes, they can stretch their legs out and move on down the road."
Meanwhile, cars are getting faster, quieter, easier to handle and smoother to operate.
Car ads laud horsepower, and the few seconds it takes to accelerate from 0 to 60.
No longer does the whine of an engine churning at a high rpm signal drivers that they're speeding.
A limited amount of time
It's not just the engine that tempts a driver to speed. There's the dashboard digital clock, reminding us we're 12 minutes late.
Those hired to enforce speed limits say they hear one excuse more than any other: I'm in a hurry.
"People's lives are so hectic now, with so much to do in such a limited amount of time. We live farther away from our work, so everybody is always late for something," said N.C. Highway Patrol 1st Sgt. Greg Christopher, who runs the agency's Charlotte office.
"I really believe that being late (contributes) to people speeding and getting into accidents."
Many drive fast because their cars can, and because they feel they can get away with it.
Michael Stephenson owns a Porsche 944S2. He likes to drive it fast, especially around corners.
Normally, though, he saves his fastest speeds for the track -- a 2.25-mile course in Kershaw, S.C., with 14 corners -- with a Porsche instructor along to coach him on the proper techniques to handle a car capable of climbing to 149 mph with a goose of the accelerator.
The track, he said, gives him his speed fix, and he has slowed down on the road.
There is always the urge to kick up the rpms on the highway, but Stephenson says he regulates his speed according to traffic flow.
"If the traffic is moving 70 mph, I may go 80," he said. "I've learned how to drive fast, that the faster you go the more your awareness of what's around you increases.
"I feel alive when I take a curve fast. When I'm in my wife's minivan, and I'm not driving aggressively, my attention wanders and I don't think about driving."
Probability of death grows
But speed does kill.The probability of death and serious injury grows with higher speeds -- doubling for every 10 mph over 50 mph that a vehicle travels, safety research shows.
In North Carolina last year, 497 deaths were speed violations (32 percent of the total), compared with 380 that were drug or alcohol related (25 percent).
Enforcement levels change, based on manpower available and shifting priorities. After three years of declining speeding tickets written by the N.C. Highway Patrol, the number rose last year by 27,000 citations, to a total of 253,000.
In 1994, 46 percent of the citations written by the patrol were for speeding. In 2001, that had dropped to 39 percent. The numbers are far higher in Mecklenburg, where 55 percent of the tickets written so far this year were for speeding.
License in jeopardy
Speed also has legal consequences, but they're not as serious as critics would like.
The state can suspend the license of a driver speeding over 75 mph. But that penalty is rarely meted out. Last year, 3,482 Mecklenburg residents were ticketed by the N.C. Highway Patrol for driving more than 75 mph. Yet only 67 lost their license.
In the legal world, speed is relative. Some officers will knock a few miles off the ticket they write and it often happens again when drivers show up in court.
On a typical day last week, 800 citations -- most of them traffic tickets -- were on the docket in Mecklenburg's traffic court. A third of those people didn't show. For many others, lawyers asked for postponement, and in still others, prosecutors offered to reduce the speeds on the tickets, in exchange for a guilty plea.
District Attorney Peter Gilchrist said reducing the speeds on the tickets is necessary to process the tens of thousands of traffic cases heard each year -- up 38,000 in the last two years. Cases have gone up 26 percent in the last year thanks to stepped up enforcement by state and city officers.
A glance through previous court dockets shows the practice is widespread. On one day this summer, an assistant district attorney penciled down a ticket for driving 60 mph in a 45 mph zone to 54 mph. A 70 in a 45 -- as the traffic court shorthand goes -- ended up a 55. An 89 in a 65 was cut 14 mph to a 74.
It's a good deal for some drivers because their insurance rates won't go up.
"You have to make choices. We've got every courtroom filled," Gilchrist said. "It's been way beyond crisis for years." The strategy allows his office more time for cases like drunken driving and domestic violence
Still, keeping roads safe is a priority. "We're killing as many people from auto crashes as homicides," Gilchrist said.
Gilchrist and Charlotte-Mecklenburg officials have twice asked the N.C. legislature to pass a bill to use radar cameras for speed enforcement. Vehicle owners would get tickets, similar to those that monitor red-light running at several Charlotte intersections.
The idea has gone nowhere. Many legislators cite privacy issues.
Who are the speeders? National safety studies show most are males younger than 30. Drivers 16 to 19 are three times more likely to get speeding tickets as those 30 years and older. That includes drivers like Ben, a 16-year-old from Iredell County.
"I've got a little sports car and I like to see what it will do," said Ben, who says he's taken it up to 140 mph on Interstate 40.
Ben has had one ticket, for doing 69 in a 55. "Just before that, I was cruising at 95 to 100," he said. One more ticket and his parents will take away his car, so two weeks ago he decided to slow down. His faith made him do it.
"I don't think Christ would speed," the teenager said. "I believe God would go the speed limit, so that is what I do now."
A trooper's advisory
Trooper Coyle loves his job, but too often because of someone speeding he must carry out one of its most difficult responsibilities:"I've seen all the wrong things that come with speed," he said. "Children killed, families destroyed. The hardest thing about this job is having to knock on the door and tell someone that his or her loved one is no longer on this Earth."
He has a simple piece of advice most of us don't want to hear:
"Leave home a few minutes earlier."
<hr></blockquote>
[quote]Charlotte Observer
Posted on Sun, Nov. 24, 2002
Speeders push the limits
More drivers seen pushing way beyond limits despite traffic, heightened safety hazards
DIANNE WHITACRE and DAVID PERLMUTT
Staff Writers
If speed limits are the most broken law in the land, then drivers like Ron are the desperados who streak past us tamer scofflaws in a burst of horsepower.
"I'll do 95 if I can," Ron said. "But generally there's someone in my way -- one of those slowpokes. They aggravate the daylights out of me."
A 50ish professional who understandably won't give his last name, Ron drives 800 miles a week between his job in Charlotte and home in Tennessee.
In 38 years of driving, he's had only five speeding tickets.
"It's a game -- a challenge to see how long I can get away with it," he said.
Drivers like Ron are on every highway, every day. They're outnumbered, of course, by the mass of run-of-the-mill speeders who routinely edge past the interstate speed limit by 10 or 15 mph.
Together the fast and the hyper-fast have created a driving culture where speed limits aren't limits at all but a way to gauge how fast we can drive without getting a ticket.
One day last week N.C. state Trooper Mark Coyle stopped at three Charlotte freeway overpasses and turned on his speed detector.
It took only seconds.
At Interstate 77 and Tyvola Road, he clocked five cars at least 30 mph over the 55 mph speed limit. The last one, a gold Nissan Maxima with S.C. plates, streaked by doing 91 -- in dense lunchtime traffic.
It was no different at the Interstate 85 overpasses at Sugar Creek and Sam Wilson roads, where Coyle clocked cars as fast as 86 mph.
"You could literally throw a dart at a map, and go to that area and work it, and you're going to get the same results," he said.
One February midnight, he clocked a southbound Lexus on I-77 at Tyvola at 144 mph.
"Its lights looked like a shooting star," he said.
Coyle gunned his Ford Crown Victoria and soon he was up to 130 mph. But once he rounded a curve, he encountered traffic and three or four Lexuses of the same color and vintage.
"This guy had slowed down and I couldn't figure out which one it was," he said. "So I had to let him go."
More lanes, more speed
Speeding is getting worse, says John King, a Charlotte driver. "When I drive I-485, I set my cruise control and cars fly past me like they're at Talladega."Between 1980 and 1992, the percentage of interstate drivers nationwide exceeding 65 mph more than quadrupled, to nearly 23 percent from 4.9 percent, according to Federal Highway Administration data.
A statewide random study found the average speed in a 55-mph zone was 63. It averaged 72 mph in a 65 mph zone and 75 mph in a 70 mph zone.
As urban interstates widen to six lanes and even eight, the temptation to speed grows too.
Cpl. M.D. Johnson with the S.C. Highway Patrol said his experience shows that people tend to drive faster when there are more lanes.
When he drives to Spartanburg County on I-85, Johnson notices that drivers speed up when the lanes widen from four to six.
"If you've only got a two lane and there are four people there, it's holding some people back," he said. "When it goes to six lanes, they can stretch their legs out and move on down the road."
Meanwhile, cars are getting faster, quieter, easier to handle and smoother to operate.
Car ads laud horsepower, and the few seconds it takes to accelerate from 0 to 60.
No longer does the whine of an engine churning at a high rpm signal drivers that they're speeding.
A limited amount of time
It's not just the engine that tempts a driver to speed. There's the dashboard digital clock, reminding us we're 12 minutes late.
Those hired to enforce speed limits say they hear one excuse more than any other: I'm in a hurry.
"People's lives are so hectic now, with so much to do in such a limited amount of time. We live farther away from our work, so everybody is always late for something," said N.C. Highway Patrol 1st Sgt. Greg Christopher, who runs the agency's Charlotte office.
"I really believe that being late (contributes) to people speeding and getting into accidents."
Many drive fast because their cars can, and because they feel they can get away with it.
Michael Stephenson owns a Porsche 944S2. He likes to drive it fast, especially around corners.
Normally, though, he saves his fastest speeds for the track -- a 2.25-mile course in Kershaw, S.C., with 14 corners -- with a Porsche instructor along to coach him on the proper techniques to handle a car capable of climbing to 149 mph with a goose of the accelerator.
The track, he said, gives him his speed fix, and he has slowed down on the road.
There is always the urge to kick up the rpms on the highway, but Stephenson says he regulates his speed according to traffic flow.
"If the traffic is moving 70 mph, I may go 80," he said. "I've learned how to drive fast, that the faster you go the more your awareness of what's around you increases.
"I feel alive when I take a curve fast. When I'm in my wife's minivan, and I'm not driving aggressively, my attention wanders and I don't think about driving."
Probability of death grows
But speed does kill.The probability of death and serious injury grows with higher speeds -- doubling for every 10 mph over 50 mph that a vehicle travels, safety research shows.
In North Carolina last year, 497 deaths were speed violations (32 percent of the total), compared with 380 that were drug or alcohol related (25 percent).
Enforcement levels change, based on manpower available and shifting priorities. After three years of declining speeding tickets written by the N.C. Highway Patrol, the number rose last year by 27,000 citations, to a total of 253,000.
In 1994, 46 percent of the citations written by the patrol were for speeding. In 2001, that had dropped to 39 percent. The numbers are far higher in Mecklenburg, where 55 percent of the tickets written so far this year were for speeding.
License in jeopardy
Speed also has legal consequences, but they're not as serious as critics would like.
The state can suspend the license of a driver speeding over 75 mph. But that penalty is rarely meted out. Last year, 3,482 Mecklenburg residents were ticketed by the N.C. Highway Patrol for driving more than 75 mph. Yet only 67 lost their license.
In the legal world, speed is relative. Some officers will knock a few miles off the ticket they write and it often happens again when drivers show up in court.
On a typical day last week, 800 citations -- most of them traffic tickets -- were on the docket in Mecklenburg's traffic court. A third of those people didn't show. For many others, lawyers asked for postponement, and in still others, prosecutors offered to reduce the speeds on the tickets, in exchange for a guilty plea.
District Attorney Peter Gilchrist said reducing the speeds on the tickets is necessary to process the tens of thousands of traffic cases heard each year -- up 38,000 in the last two years. Cases have gone up 26 percent in the last year thanks to stepped up enforcement by state and city officers.
A glance through previous court dockets shows the practice is widespread. On one day this summer, an assistant district attorney penciled down a ticket for driving 60 mph in a 45 mph zone to 54 mph. A 70 in a 45 -- as the traffic court shorthand goes -- ended up a 55. An 89 in a 65 was cut 14 mph to a 74.
It's a good deal for some drivers because their insurance rates won't go up.
"You have to make choices. We've got every courtroom filled," Gilchrist said. "It's been way beyond crisis for years." The strategy allows his office more time for cases like drunken driving and domestic violence
Still, keeping roads safe is a priority. "We're killing as many people from auto crashes as homicides," Gilchrist said.
Gilchrist and Charlotte-Mecklenburg officials have twice asked the N.C. legislature to pass a bill to use radar cameras for speed enforcement. Vehicle owners would get tickets, similar to those that monitor red-light running at several Charlotte intersections.
The idea has gone nowhere. Many legislators cite privacy issues.
Who are the speeders? National safety studies show most are males younger than 30. Drivers 16 to 19 are three times more likely to get speeding tickets as those 30 years and older. That includes drivers like Ben, a 16-year-old from Iredell County.
"I've got a little sports car and I like to see what it will do," said Ben, who says he's taken it up to 140 mph on Interstate 40.
Ben has had one ticket, for doing 69 in a 55. "Just before that, I was cruising at 95 to 100," he said. One more ticket and his parents will take away his car, so two weeks ago he decided to slow down. His faith made him do it.
"I don't think Christ would speed," the teenager said. "I believe God would go the speed limit, so that is what I do now."
A trooper's advisory
Trooper Coyle loves his job, but too often because of someone speeding he must carry out one of its most difficult responsibilities:"I've seen all the wrong things that come with speed," he said. "Children killed, families destroyed. The hardest thing about this job is having to knock on the door and tell someone that his or her loved one is no longer on this Earth."
He has a simple piece of advice most of us don't want to hear:
"Leave home a few minutes earlier."
<hr></blockquote>
11-24-2002, 03:01 PM
#2
Three Wheelin'
If I believe god would drive 40mph over the speed limit... does that make it ok? 
That's a pretty cool article you've got. I doubt many of the readers are going to understand the joy that can be had while taking a corner properly
Congrats!
That's a pretty cool article you've got. I doubt many of the readers are going to understand the joy that can be had while taking a corner properly
Congrats!
11-24-2002, 04:17 PM
#4
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[quote]Originally posted by Rich Sandor:
<strong>Inexperience and Inattentiveness cause death on our highways. Nothing more, nothing less.</strong><hr></blockquote>
AMEN!!!! tell it brother!
<strong>Inexperience and Inattentiveness cause death on our highways. Nothing more, nothing less.</strong><hr></blockquote>
AMEN!!!! tell it brother!
11-24-2002, 04:39 PM
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LOL, I like the stats on how younger drivers get more tickets.. it's cause they haven't learned how to watch out for the cops yet.. 
I've certainly had more than my share of speeding tickets over the years (started 3 months after getting my license at 15 with an 87 in a 55 and have had several in the triple digits). I still drive the same, but (knock on wood) it's been 4.5 years since the last one.
Getting on the racetrack certainly changed when and how I speed. It's not about straight-line speeds anymore (that's simply a function of how ballsy you want to be), but the thrill of pushing the vehicles, and my, limits on corners. Of course, with that 30th birthday of mine only 2 years away, maybe I'm getting a hint of belief in mortality that seems to totally absent in younger folks.
It's sad that just yesterday I was going with the flow of traffic.... and the speedo sat right on 100mph for 20+ miles. If something happened in front of me - I could have stopped, but probably would have been plowed over by the 2.5 ton SUV that was only a few car lenghts back. But then again, when it's our time, it's time and there's nothing you can do about that. Might as well live life.. (every person must die, but not everyone truely lives).
Enough of my rambling....
I've certainly had more than my share of speeding tickets over the years (started 3 months after getting my license at 15 with an 87 in a 55 and have had several in the triple digits). I still drive the same, but (knock on wood) it's been 4.5 years since the last one. Getting on the racetrack certainly changed when and how I speed. It's not about straight-line speeds anymore (that's simply a function of how ballsy you want to be), but the thrill of pushing the vehicles, and my, limits on corners. Of course, with that 30th birthday of mine only 2 years away, maybe I'm getting a hint of belief in mortality that seems to totally absent in younger folks.
It's sad that just yesterday I was going with the flow of traffic.... and the speedo sat right on 100mph for 20+ miles. If something happened in front of me - I could have stopped, but probably would have been plowed over by the 2.5 ton SUV that was only a few car lenghts back. But then again, when it's our time, it's time and there's nothing you can do about that. Might as well live life.. (every person must die, but not everyone truely lives).
Enough of my rambling....
11-24-2002, 07:03 PM
#7
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The numbers show that after they raised the national speed limit the amount of highway deaths actually fell (except for 3 or 4 local areas).
Not that faster speeds are safer, but the 55mph limit was nothing but a joke. New cars can go 65 to 85 safely (as well as our old cars), deaths on our highways are only exacerbated by speed. Innatention causes more accidents than anything. and tangling with a semi at 55 is going to make you just as dead as at 70.
True incident to me. Was driving a Jaguar about 80 passing a semi doing about 70. He decided to change lanes into mine, and me with a gaurdrail to my left. Luckily speed got me OUT of an accident. However had he crushed me, certainly the cops would have said "That young feller was driving to much car for hiself, driving fast is what got him killed"
Not that faster speeds are safer, but the 55mph limit was nothing but a joke. New cars can go 65 to 85 safely (as well as our old cars), deaths on our highways are only exacerbated by speed. Innatention causes more accidents than anything. and tangling with a semi at 55 is going to make you just as dead as at 70.
True incident to me. Was driving a Jaguar about 80 passing a semi doing about 70. He decided to change lanes into mine, and me with a gaurdrail to my left. Luckily speed got me OUT of an accident. However had he crushed me, certainly the cops would have said "That young feller was driving to much car for hiself, driving fast is what got him killed"
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11-25-2002, 12:26 AM
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[quote]Originally posted by Brian McCoy:
<strong>LOL, I like the stats on how younger drivers get more tickets.. it's cause they haven't learned how to watch out for the cops yet.. </strong><hr></blockquote>LOL, so true... I'm nineteen but have enough sense to save my heavy right foot for the track when I'm older and w/ a racing license (unlike most of my friends... 
)
<strong>LOL, I like the stats on how younger drivers get more tickets.. it's cause they haven't learned how to watch out for the cops yet..
</strong><hr></blockquote>LOL, so true... I'm nineteen but have enough sense to save my heavy right foot for the track when I'm older and w/ a racing license (unlike most of my friends... )
11-25-2002, 08:40 AM
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i havent been to an urban area yet lately that if your not doing 80 your not going w/ the flow of traffic (on a highway). i talked to a state cop one day and he said in a 55 zone he sets his radar gun to 72...if not the thing wouldnt stop sounding. average highway speeds around here have definately increased im not sure of the accident/fatality rate has gone up w/ it.
11-25-2002, 03:59 PM
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Just last week I saw a program on Discovery about the autobahn. There is a fatality rate of .72 per million miles driven as opposed to the nearly .80 on our interstates. The biggest difference is LANE DISCIPLINE. People who are not actively passing go to the right lane, without having to be prompted, and when they are passing they expect the same courtesy. I despise the bastards who set themselves up as "hall monitor" on the highway, running 65 in the left lane and refusing to give it up because "I'm doing the speed limit". MOVE OVER A##HOLE!! If you're being passed on the right you're wrong. Also, this comment; [quote]"We're killing as many people from auto crashes as homicides," Gilchrist said.
<hr></blockquote> is as stupid an utterance as I've ever heard from a public official. Either you have a wonderfully low rate of death from auto crashes, or an abysmally high homicide rate. <img src="confused.gif" border="0">
<hr></blockquote> is as stupid an utterance as I've ever heard from a public official. Either you have a wonderfully low rate of death from auto crashes, or an abysmally high homicide rate. <img src="confused.gif" border="0">
11-25-2002, 04:36 PM
#11
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Why do people insist on doing everything but driving? It is scary what you see people doing behind the wheel, talking on the phone, eating reading, personal hygiene etc. It pisses me off. Although I figured out that cell phones render turn signals inoperative. HANG UP AND DRIVE (FAST).
11-25-2002, 07:36 PM
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I found a contradiction in the show on the Autobahn. They talked about the lane discipline and how you could be ticketed, but the Ruf they featured was a real left lane hog, with his blinker constantly on (of course he was doing around 200MPH!!)
11-25-2002, 07:49 PM
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A couple of years ago there was an article in the paper in SoCal where the CHP had decided to start patrolling one of the toll roads. They gave out a bunch of tickets where the AVERAGE SPEED on the tickets was 92!!! They caught one kid doing 116.
