More letters about speeding

As an attorney practicing criminal law in Guilford County, I read with interest your May 15 article discussing speeders getting their tickets reduced.

You criticized Judge Linda Falls of Guilford County for giving a speeder who was going 100 mph in a 60 mph zone a Prayer for Judgment Continued, thereby allowing that person to keep his license and have no insurance increase.

There is no evidence that traffic was heavy or any other driver was put in danger. In fact, the driver said he was scared because someone was following him. To be sure, the driver shouldn’t have been going that fast. But the driver didn’t get the break for nothing. He paid an enormous price. Falls forced him to work at a nursing home for 40 hours and to complete an eight-hour safe driving course to learn the hazards of driving too fast. Imagine spending six full days working in a nursing home and in education to pay for a speeding ticket.

Falls taught the driver a valuable lesson. The driver paid an enormous price in volunteer work and in learning to be a safe driver. Had this judgment not been imposed, the driver would have lost his license and therefore his job. Do you think it would have been better to take the person’s license and his job and reward only the insurance company? Don’t big insurance companies take enough of our money?

Robert O’Hale

Greensboro

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I am encouraged to see your coverage of deaths on our highways caused by speeding. Education is part of the solution, but in citing the low conviction rates and how speeders are ignored and then not convicted, you fall into the trap of treating the effect, and not the cause.

The cause lies in the lack of education and training. This state, and all others, simply needs to improve driver education and training.

As a retired military and airline pilot, I have hundreds of hours in modern simulators, where pilots train for situations they might encounter during actual flying. Different emergencies train us on how to react in emergency situations. Certainly every potential emergency cannot be anticipated, but the mere fact that you are learning the airplane’s limitations, and, more importantly, your own limitations, means that: a) You learn to avoid those dangerous circumstances whenever you can, and b) Once you find yourself in a bad situation, you learn how to best extract yourself from it.

The technology for this driver training is available. Just look in any mall today where the games are located. I would envision numerous scenarios for the instructor to use as individuals qualify for their license: following too close and a panic stop; driving too fast and hydroplaning and losing control on wet pavement; driving off the shoulder on a two-lane road, yanking the wheel to the left in a panic and thus zooming across the road to the other lane, instead of riding it out and easing back onto your lane. I am sure there are many more.

Who would pay for this increased training? Well, the person getting the license for starters, for driving in this state should be a privilege and not an automatic right. For those economically stressed who would have trouble paying for this training and thus getting their license, part of the cost could be made up by their lower insurance rates -- both auto and health, as highway collisions, injuries, and deaths would surely decrease, and thus so would insurance rates. Then re-direct all the state resources that are used every year to fix our highways and guard rails from the effect of our crashes, and I would be that a goodly part of the cost would be thus covered.