Blitz against speeders succeeds

There are 169 lead-foot drivers among us who are presumably unhappy about last week's quickie crackdown on Interstate 40 speeding.

Just about everybody else, apparently, is glad to see our police get tough.

"I think a crackdown is long overdue," Bob Warner of Cary said by e-mail. "I'm tired of going the speed limit ... and being worried about being run down by speeders who seem to think I'm in the wrong."

In just two hours on I-40 last Wednesday, state and local officers nabbed 114 speeders in Wake County and 55 in Durham County. This spurt of force marked the start of a two-week statewide anti-speeding campaign.

Many drivers want to see this kind of thing more often. There is a common thread of complaint in comments about traffic enforcement: Namely that it is almost nonexistent.

"If North Carolina has no interest in enforcing the speed-limit laws ..., then why have the laws?" asked Donald F. Carter of Raleigh. "Why doesn't the federal [government] require North Carolina to enforce them?"

It was a rare sight around midday Wednesday when a few dozen state troopers,city police and county deputies staked out miles of I-40. Bobby Larson of Middlesex was alarmed when he saw a man on an overpass, aiming something at drivers below.

"He was holding it up like it was a gun and he was going to shoot somebody," Larson said. "You just don't know it's an officer until you get right on top of him."

That was a LIDAR (light detection and ranging) gun. It's like radar, but it clocks your speed with laser pulses instead of radio waves.

Christie Austin of Pittsboro was glad to see those blue lights flashing.

"Too bad they're not enforcing other elementary road rules, such as wipers on/lights on; lights on at dusk; red flags on things protruding out the back of pickup trucks; use of turn signals; all lights working," Austin said by e-mail.

Mary S. Edwards moved from Seattle to Raleigh two months ago. More speeding tickets are a good idea, she said.

"People are so warm, friendly and nice, but man-oh-man do they want to go fast in their cars!" Edwards said by e-mail. "I find myself often being tailgated. I have witnessed two car crashes right in front of me because of cars speeding through yellow lights."

For the record, troopers and police officers do write traffic tickets year- round.

"We do speed enforcement on a regular basis," said Jim Sughrue, spokesman for the 777-member Raleigh Police Department, whose officers wrote 55 of those 169 tickets last week. All of Raleigh's patrol officers write tickets for speeding and DWI, and traffic enforcement is a full-time specialty for a unit of eight officers and a sergeant.

Some readers suggested that regular flurries of speeding tickets would provide the bonus of much-needed revenue for local government.

"I doubt there is any town or county that couldn't use that type of extra funds," said Bill LaMonte of Warren County.

But, for better or worse, that's not how it works in North Carolina.

Whether it's a state trooper or a small-town police officer writing the ticket, the proceeds of all traffic fines are supposed to be funneled to the schools. It's the law.

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