"What," I asked, "constitutes a 'super' speeder?" She sent me the description of the new law.
I laughed, and told her "When we were kids, we just called that 'Friday night.'"
"Super Speeder"
I was talking with an old Georgia friend, and she was telling me a fun story about a teenager she knew who got arrested last weekend. He'd been pulled over running a red light, and when they ran his license they found he had an unpaid "super speeder" ticket -- so they took him to jail.
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6 comments:
I wonder what sort of workaround is necessary to call it a "fee" instead of a fine?
Are they avoiding some legal limitations of fines?
California has been doing additional penalties for repeat offenders for some time now, probably fifteen years. It's expensive to get a ticket now, even I feel like it's undue burden on poor people if they get one. I would have been bankrupted in my youth had these penalties been in force back then.
When I was a newly licensed teenager in a town in upstate Illinois (not Chicago or any affiliate thereof), I blew through a red light and was promptly stopped. Turned out I'd also forgotten my wallet and so my driver license.
"Go home and get it," the cop said. "And don't do this again." No ticket for either offense.
Then, here in Plano, I picked up a couple of speeding tickets during the Metroplex's zero tolerance period. A couple months ago, I got busted for speeding, again. "I'm giving giving you a warning. Don't do this again."
Maybe--likely--the pendulum will swing again in Georgia.
Eric Hines
The county in question has a vastly higher population than when we were kids, and also therefore a bigger tax base and -- therefore -- more police whose job is to write tickets. On the one hand, you can see the point because the roads are so much more crowded that higher speeds are much more likely to cause accidents now. On the other, it's a clear decline in quality of life brought on by the excess population and government.
The culture has changed, too. The Dukes of Hazzard was the most popular show on television when I was a boy, and Smokey and the Bandit was filmed in the Georgia of my youth. The idea of running from the cops in a fast car, and cleverly losing them on the backroads, was celebrated as a kind of natural birthright of young Southern men. So we did it -- and I, at least, always managed to outrun and dodge them successfully.
But in those days, there were only two deputies on duty in the whole county at night. These days, they'd call out on the radio and have 30 cruisers looking for you in seconds. It was a different world.
Friday night? Here in the Chicago area we call that "rush hour". Seriously, I'd be surprised during rush hour if I wasn't passed by someone doing 85+ during rush hour any day of the week.
OTOH, if you get picked up doing 20+ over the speed limit on any road at any time you don't just get a ticket, you get a ride to the station to post bond if the cop decides to stick you with it and not write it down to 15 or 18 over.
Don't ask me how I know.
I rode through Georgia down to Mobile in May for a Strongman competition. These laws are not evenly enforced, let us say. And in Alabama, they'll pass you on the right if you're going 100 in the left lane.
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