Need for speed widespread in U.S.

By Rick Hampson and Paul Overberg
USA Today

LANCASTER, Pa. — Barry Landis was doing 109 mph when the radar detector on the dash of his 1997 Dodge Avenger started to beep and blink. That's when he saw the police cruiser.

Why was he driving so fast? Because he was in such a good mood.

Why was he in such a good mood? Because he was driving so fast.

"It's a cyclical kind of thing," he says.

To Landis, who once pushed his little Dodge to 130 mph, it boils down to this: "I like to go fast on a snowboard. I like to go fast on a bike.

"I just like to go fast."

So do many other drivers — so many that the Pennsylvania state police have started releasing to the news media names of speeders ticketed at 90 mph or more. The idea: Shame them into slowing down.

At another time in another land, it might work. But not today. Not in Lead Foot Nation, where drivers hit speeds that once seemed out of reach to everyone but race-car drivers and stuntmen. Here, many drivers regard the posted limit as a minimum, not a maximum.

USA Today analyzed 1.2 million speeding tickets issued in 2002 on interstate highways in 18 states — or about 40 percent of the interstate system. When compared with similar tickets from 1991 and 1996, they confirm what many suspect:

We're speeding faster than ever — in some cases, much faster.

Hawai'i was not included in the analysis, but speeding is a serious problem here. Major O'ahu thoroughfares were closed for hours at different locations Saturday because of three accidents, three people were killed Feb. 16 in a head-on collision on the Big Island, and four were killed Feb. 13 in a collision on H-1 Freeway — all in a span of 10 days.

Even though highway speed limits have been raised by as much as a third during the past decade, we speed further above these new limits than we did above the old ones.

Despite official promises that higher limits would be more strictly enforced, we're getting more leeway from the police, who all but ignore speeders 10 to 15 mph over the limit.

Most striking is the rise in extreme speeding — driving over 90 mph, or 15 mph above any speed limit. In 1991, just 2 percent of ticketed drivers topped 90 mph; in 2002, 10 percent did.

Even what police call "The Century Club" — those driving 100 mph or faster — is getting much less exclusive. In 1991, just one driver in 300 was ticketed at or above 100; in 2002, the ratio was down to one in 100.

In an attempt to slow traffic, judges in Sutter County, Calif., have tripled the fine for driving 100 mph to almost $1,000.

So many Sutter commuters use triple-digit speeds to shorten their morning drives to Sacramento or the San Francisco Bay Area that the state police have added a 5 a.m. patrol.

It's the great paradox of the American road. Traffic is getting heavier, there's less open road and gasoline costs more. That should slow us down.

But we want to drive faster, and we do it every chance we get.

So why do we speed?

Because we have a full bladder or an empty cooler. Because the cake is in the oven. Because class starts in five minutes. Because the daycare center is closing, and it's a dollar a minute after 6 p.m.

We speed because we want to get away or because we want to win a race. Because we think we're James Dean or James Bond.

We speed because our engines are bigger, our tires better, our suspensions firmer, our cabins quieter, our roads smoother.

We speed because we don't realize how fast we're going — at least, that's what we tell the trooper.

Here in Lancaster County, where the Amish still travel by horse and buggy, the state police say they get so many complaints about speeding that they've borrowed an old vice squad tactic: Fight prostitution by embarrassing the johns.

But the strategy assumes people are ashamed to speed.

When friends of Landis found his name in the local paper, they cut out the story, presented it to him for his scrapbook with their congratulations and offered their own stories of high-speed brushes with the law.

"It sorta made me a celebrity," Landis, 26, says sheepishly.

The trooper who stopped him, Phillip Matson, acknowledges the limits of publicity: "People's feelings aren't hurt by it. Some of 'em take pride in it."

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Source: USA Today analysis by Paul Overberg and Emma Schwartz

USA Today