Palm Beach Florida Weekly

PUTTING THE BREAKS ON SPEEDERS

Slowing folks who drive too fast keeps state, local authorities busy.



 

IN THE AGE OF HORSES AND horse travel, speeding was never a big problem. Horses get tired, and the fastest horse who ever lived, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, topped out at 43.97 mph. Once, for a short distance.

That Thoroughbred was not called Ford or Chevrolet, or Porsche, Audi or Toyota. His name was Winning Brew.

But internal-combustion or battery-powered electric motor vehicles on the nation’s roads neither get slower, get tired or find themselves limited to mere equine speeds, which means speeding has been something of a problem on American roads for almost 120 years — a problem that shows no sign of abating before smarter cars become road standards, perhaps.

In 1925, the average car was lucky to hit 60 mph.

In late 1940, the year after Gov. Fred Cone established the Florida Highway Patrol and cars of average price could reach 80 mph or more on a good road, 59 graduates of the training academy in Bradenton found themselves patrolling 1,938,564 miles of only sometimes good road in a state with a population of less than 2 million residents. That year, they investigated 1,000 accidents, says Lt. Greg Bueno, a spokesman for the FHP — which means somebody somewhere was driving too fast.

COURTESY PHOTO

COURTESY PHOTO

Last year, Lt. Bueno noted, “we patrolled 49.5 million miles and investigated 153,353 crashes.” The state’s population had risen by 2020 to roughly 21.5 million, but people were still driving too fast.

Given the reach in road miles and the size in population, the FHP still seems significantly understaffed to many, an outfit authorized for 1,982 sworn positions, Lt. Bueno says.

One thing is for sure: They aren’t lazy.

The National Motorists Association has consistently ranked Florida at or near the top of those where drivers are most likely to get speeding tickets, and the state’s Annual Unified Traffic Citation Report shows state troopers issued tickets or “performed other law enforcement duties” on more than half a million occasions last year: 504,782 times, to be exact.

COMBS

COMBS

On the county level in Sheriff’s offices alone, laziness is not a problem either, it seems.

Last year, the Lee County Sheriff’s Office issued more than 2,600 traffic tickets. Roughly 5,000 were issued in Palm Beach County, 600 in Charlotte County, and 1,100 in Collier County — and those don’t include tickets listed as careless driving.

“If technology comes to the point where we can design the automobile to be safer — and they’re doing it now with autonomous vehicles— it will get better,” said Deputy First Class Leamon Combs, who has spent 27 years in the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office making the roads safer by enforcing traffic laws and cleaning up after accidents.

“It’s going to take technology to remind or encourage or force operators to drive more safely,” he has concluded. “We aren’t going to do it ourselves. We’re in a rush, we’re single-mindedly thinking about what we need to do.”

PETRACCA

PETRACCA

Traffic enforcers are realists, it seems, when it comes to assessing human nature.

“I hate to I put it this way,” DFC Combs says: “I think the majority of people will exceed posted speed limits, either through ignorance or through blatant disregard.”

If they exceed the limits by less than 5 mph, the practice of police has been either to issue a warning or ignore them — unless they’re in school or construction zones. So, many speed — at least a little.

85th-percentile rule

That’s no surprise to any driver in a state where standard Florida speed limit laws are 30 mph in urban districts or streets; 55 mph on all roads or highways unless otherwise posted; 60 mph on two-lane sections of highways and freeways; and 70 mph on freeways, interstate highways, and other roads, if posted.

Variations of those standards — typically the 35, 40, 45, 50 and 65 mph roads — are usually based on the 85th-percentile rule. Traffic engineers determine how fast 85% of drivers go in normal conditions, take into account any other factors such as exits or entrances, driveways, intersections, and the like, and determine a speed limit then signed into law by elected officials. But local governments can vary it on some roads.

 

Floridians and probably most Americans seem to accept the consequences of excess speeding behavior without much resistance, authorities suggest.

“I investigate crashes,” says DFC Combs, “and if speed is an issue, it greatly increases damages and cost. From an enforcement standpoint, in recent years we are getting more and more violations at 30 miles beyond the speed limit. That is something where you have to have a mandatory appearance in front of a judge, and the fine is usually in the $1,000 range or up.”

He echoes the opinions of law enforcement officers at every level of traffic enforcement, from the Florida Highway Patrol to other county sheriff’s offices and city police departments — people who view their jobs as enviable, not undesirable, because they can do some good in their communities.

 

But it requires them to take risks. Troopers, deputies and officers display mostly unheralded courage merely in stopping and then approaching vehicles, about whose passengers they know nothing and sometimes cannot see.

Cause and effect

In the meantime, speed is too often a factor — sometimes solely the cause and sometimes one of several factors — in the devastating accidents that kill more than 32,000 people and injure roughly two million in the United States each year, officials say.

In Florida alone in 2019, 3,273 individuals were killed in motor vehicle accidents, a total of 14.7 per 100,000 citizens, state numbers show. That included 31 deaths in Charlotte, 53 deaths in Collier, 110 deaths in Lee, and 197 deaths in Palm Beach County — the highest number in the four counties but the lowest percentage, at 12.7 deaths per 100,000.

 

“The old adage that ‘speed kills’ — that’s true, it’s still true,” notes Lt. Dave Bruening, head of the Collier County Sheriff’s traffic enforcement division, with 12 deputies assigned exclusively to enforce traffic laws — though any radar-qualified deputy can ticket speeding drivers.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not downplaying speed, but I would say a bigger challenge now is distracted driving. I don’t see either problem going away until autonomous cars are the norm because people can’t seem to put their phones down. Or slow down. But it’s so much easier for us to enforce speeding laws. With distracted driving you have to look in the car, hopefully they don’t have tint, and there are hurdles to cross to give them a ticket.”

Post-pandemic driving

In the last year or two, things have gotten worse, in the judgments of some law enforcement personnel.

“From my perch, I’m definitely seeing an increase in both aggressive driving and speeding on our roadways. Many motorists are driving with minimal due care or patience,” observes Capt. Rob Sandt, who commands District 4, one of 20 districts in Palm Beach County, where the 1.5 million county residents number more than the populations of 11 states.

“This issue has and I suspect always will be a focus of attention for law enforcement. However, from my perspective it has been extremely enhanced since the reopening from the pandemic,” he says.

Deputies have increased their responses to speeders in unincorporated Delray Beach by nearly 40% in the year to date, Capt. Sandt notes — part of the effort to slow down drivers and protect them.

But the challenges deputies or police face are both many and similar from one county to another, or in the case of Palm Beach, from one district to another.

“It should go without saying that speeding can lead to serious issues such as higher crash rates with serious injuries,” says Capt. Rolando Silva, Palm Beach’s District 8 commander, based in Wellington. “Also speeding, while not always alone, can be an indicator of impaired driving which also has serious traffic-related implications.”

Simply issuing tickets, however, is not always effective.

“A big challenge is when the speeding tickets go to court, rarely are points assessed (and) fines are almost always reduced,” explains Capt. David Moss, District 7 commander in Palm Beach County, based in Boca Raton.

For Capt. Pete Palenzuela, District 3 commander in the northern stretch of the county, the biggest challenge is the “sheer volume of traffic offenses in a big urban county.

The problem, he says, is coupled by “limited resources, such as personnel for enforcement, unmarked vehicles, and specialized equipment.”

He also points to a need for “greater accountability in traffic court for traffic offenders and aggressive drivers.”

The quota question

None of the efforts of state troopers, sheriff’s deputies or city police officers come with, or are inspired by quotas for speeding tickets, they say.

Capt. Sandt uses the term “self-initiative” to describe the increased focus of deputies on issuing speeding tickets. Quotas for any law enforcement agencies are illegal.

Two senior Florida Highway Patrol officers, including the state’s second in command, were forced to resign in 2017 after e-mails they wrote encouraged — although they didn’t order — troopers to start issuing two tickets per hour.

Nevertheless, enforcement of speed limits is seen by some as mere revenue-boosting for local or state governments.

Shelia Dunn, communications director of the National Motorists Association, puts it this way:

“A lot of police departments in municipalities are asked to bring in revenue to help pay for police, and traffic court — that’s how cities and counties sometimes balance their budgets. Even if it goes back to the general fund it’s still money they do count as a revenue. The NMA is totally against ticket quotas.”

But officials insist there is no revenue-producing intent. Instead, their aim is safety.

Tickets can include speeding tickets or other that infractions also involve speeding. Authorities stop drivers for both criminal and non-criminal moving violations such DUIs, reckless driving, leaving the scene of an accident, fleeing, and racing on the highway, to name the more serious offenses; or careless driving, improper turns, failing to stop for school busses, improper lane changes, texting, driving without a seatbelt or child restraint, or running stop signs and red lights.

Speeding tickets are not the only seemingly lucrative enforcement.

Legislative challenges to red-light cameras aside, almost 60 red light camera programs operate in the state, down from 82 in 2014, a state tally shows. They not only put the damper on those who know the cameras exist and might otherwise speed through a red light, but they brought in $106 million to state and local coffers in 2020, reports show. Registered owners of vehicles photographed speeding through red-light intersections receive $158 citations.

But on any level — state, county or city — ticket quotas per se are illegal, so authorities typically “focus on high-volume corridors and roadways that have high crash rates,” explains Lt. Bueno.

The strategies

At the Florida Highway Patrol, “troopers conduct radar, laser, and aircraft speed enforcement efforts to slow traffic through presence and enforcement,” he notes. “In addition to daily patrols, they also combat speeding through various public safety campaigns each year — in schools and businesses, on social media and in news reports.”

Education is key on the county level, too, sheriff’s deputies say.

“One of our biggest parts of enforcement is education,” explains Lt. Dennis Petracca, a 24-year veteran of the Lee County Sheriff’s Office, where a traffic enforcement unit of 15 works full-time, and every radar trained deputy in the department helps. He notes that deputies trying to enforce speeding laws face major challenges on multi-lane roads, and roads with heavy traffic and limited turnaround opportunities.

“But not everybody speeds all the time. On occasion, maybe they’re late, so we might stop them and talk to them, bring in the reality of getting a citation besides just fines.”

There are sometimes significant points on a license for speeding, along with the life-altering potential for injuring or killing somebody.

“A lot of our crashes are either crashes from speed or distraction,” Lt. Petracca says. “The speed-related crashes often result in somebody getting permanently injured, or worse. This is something you can’t ever take back.”

So preventing that crossroads fate is something traffic enforcers describe not as work or a job, but as a “passion” — a word used by several deputies in this story.

In Collier County, “we have three different teams in traffic enforcement,” explains Lt. Breuning, describing a strategy that other counties employ in one form or another.

“The ‘motors’ are motorcycle guys, they generally ride in pairs, and work both stationary where they park a bike and run a laser, or with moving radar.

“Then we have an aggressive driving unit. They use unmarked cars and they’re out looking for all types of violations, whether it’s running red lights, speeding, not wearing seat belts, whatever.

“And to round out the team, we have a DUI team which works at night. Those guys are nighttime only.

Nighttime deputies are a little different — they’ll stop a speeder, but they’re looking for impaired driving.

“So the strategy is to have teams during the day work different areas,” and a team at night.

Complaints and observations pointing to bad driving from the public help, too, he adds.

“I get a lot of complaints about this road or that road. I have a software program, and all those complaints go in there. Individual deputies go work those areas, then they go back into the program and provide comments. After that, we decide whether to close or keep it as an ongoing area of concern.”

In the end, suggests Lee County’s Lt. Petracca, the technology of the future is probably not as important as encouraging or creating more smart drivers.

When a reporter asked if he thought smart cars could solve the ongoing tide of speeding-caused tragedies or expensive troubles, he didn’t even pause.

“Smart DRIVERS,” he said.

He might as well have quoted the old Doors traffic-safety rocker, “Roadhouse Blues”:

“Keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel…” ¦

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