Reckless (?) driving in Virginia

Parent Cafe
41

We live in Maryland, have a kid who went to UNC-CH and who is now a NC resident. As a family we drive through Virginia a lot, and have spent a lot of time on Virginia roads. Sometime around 2011 I remember reading a Washington Post article about speeding and fines in Virginia, and making a big deal about it to my kids.

I have been under the impression since reading that article that, regardless of the posted speed, any speeding ticket of 75 MPH or higher (in VA) is considered to be reckless driving. So on I-95 where the posted speed is 70, you may get a reckless driving citation if you are going 76.

That has been our assumption for years when driving in VA.

Edit: I just looked it up, and the law apparently is anything over 80 MPH or 20 MPH over the posted limit is considered reckless driving. I must have automatically subtracted 5 MPH from the law for the benefit of my kids. LOL Gotta have a cushion.

42

Maybe if we taught our children to suffer the consequences of disobeying rules and laws we wouldn’t have to keep hiring lawyers and bailing them out. A clean record that’s paid for by mom and dad is not really a clean record.

43

@3bm103, not sure who you’re thinking is paying for kid’s tickets. My kid paid his own ticket and attorney fees.
He’s been made very aware that it’s not only the ticket, but also I surance rates and insurability at play.

44

Yep, made my kids find their own attorneys and pay all the resulting fees and fines. Nothing came out of my wallet.

45

@1214mom I don’t think it’s you. It’s the ones that this happens to more than once. Not the ones who are made to suffer the consequences and don’t repeat the offenses. They know who they are and I expect to hear from them any minute now.

46

Yeah- I suspect 3bm103 is talking about me- about whom she knows nothing, I might add. As a lawyer, I can tell you that suffering the consequences doesn’t always mean that the offense does not get repeated. Yes, I find the lawyers because I have contacts and can prevent getting ripped off and wasting money.

47

One of my kids doesn’t drive; the other has never had an accident or speeding ticket. Alas, I am the resident leadfoot.

48

Some people always think it’s about them when it’s not

or maybe, unknown to me, it is?

49

yea… I-95 south of Richmond is all about the speeding tickets, unfortunately.

there is a bill going through in VA to move the reckless mph from 80 to 85 (or 20 over). It passed the state senate and is now in the house (I think).

50

I think there’s a difference between teaching kids the consequences of their actions and forcing them to go through what seems like complete overkill punishment.

10 over = reckless driving? Give me a break. (Here in Michigan, that would get honks in the slow lane.) It would be one thing if it was just a simple speeding ticket but this is clearly above that.

(And anyone who knows me/my posting history knows I am a big proponent of parents butting out whenever humanly possible but I don’t personally think this falls under that category.)

51

^^Huh? I thought it was the husband who got the speeding ticket. There are no parents involved.

I live in the mid-atlantic area and it’s pretty well known that the penalties for serious speeding in Virginia are severe.
I know it’s easy to drift maybe 10 mph over the speed limit when you aren’t paying attention but exceeding it by 20 mph or driving in excess of 80 mph really is reckless driving and IMO should carry serious penalties.

Do fines create revenue for the state? Sure. Are there such things as speed traps? Absolutely, but there is something really disingenuous about whining about having to pay speeding tickets when you are deliberately exceeding the speed limit. We do have the choice to stay out of the fast lane and keep our speed reasonably close to the limit.

OP, good luck to you and your husband. I absolutely agree that you should hire an attorney and I really hope that this experience encourages your husband to be a bit more responsible as a driver. It could save his life, yours and maybe someone else who may be on the road with him.

52

No one is whining about having to pay speeding tickets. I think we all get that if you are cited for speeding, there are consequences. It is very easy to exceed speed limits. However, it is sensible to get good representation and try to avoid more dire consequences such as points and increased insurance premiums.

53

This statement struck me as whining as do any of the complaints about speeding tickets being mostly or even exclusively about revenue. There are many drivers who feel that they should be free to set their own speed limits according to whim and complain loudly any time they are caught. I’ve personally been caught several times by local speed cameras (it’s always 41 mph in a zone that just dropped to 30) and while I admit it’s annoying to pay the fine, I don’t really mind the state/county making money that way. It’s certainly effective in making me slow down so the roads are in fact, safer as a result. I really have no sympathy for the complaints; we are all capable of obeying speed limits. When we don’t do so, we should be willing to pay the going rate.

54

What irks me is when you can’t figure out what the speed limit is. There’s a route I’ve been taking to a new client. I get off one highway onto another much smaller highway. It’s two lanes and limited access, but it also has a handful of stop lights. I know the speed limit is not 55, but you drive for a least a mile before you find out what it actually is (45) and if you go the speed of the rest of the traffic you’d probably be zooming along at 60.

55

This ^ I live in near a notorious speed trap on I95 in GA. The small town, Darien GA, expanded its boundaries to encompass a small part of 95. They randomly put up construction zone signs and a few orange barrels and pick people off left and right. Plus, GA has a super speeder law and if you are caught in the fake construction zone, the fees are astronomical. Do not go above the speed limit around exit 49 on 95 in Georgia.

https://www.google.com/search?q=darien+ga+95+exit&oq=darien+ga+95+exit&aqs=chrome…69i57.7301j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#safe=active&q=Darien+GA+speed+trap

56

You’re arguing off an assumption that speed limits are set with safety in mind. Studies have shown that speed limits actually have very little effect on drivers’ behavior. People drive at the speed at which they’re comfortable, which for the vast majority of drivers is a safe speed.

Effective and reasonable laws, like in CA, require a traffic survey and set the speed limit at the 80th percentile. That is, the speed limit is set at what 80% of drivers naturally drive. That allows enforcement to focus on the 20% that might be driving at unsafe speeds.

I agree with your basic premise that laws should be obeyed. Where I disagree is your assumption that all laws are reasonable. Mass disobedience of unreasonable laws only leads to distrust and fear of police (we’ve all seen people slamming on brakes when they spot a cop) and disrespect for the law. You only have to look at the very common widespread saying: “It’s safe to go up to 10mph over the speed limit.” If the speed limit were actually reasonable, you wouldn’t need or want to exceed it by up to 10mph.

57

It’s true. When driving through Texas where the speed limit was 80 I found myself driving the same mph as I do were the speed limit is 65. Which was about 72 if the road conditions were good.

58

@anomander:
Thank you, you made the same point I was going to, that speed limits are not always set based on safety, nor are the penalties. For example, as a safety factor, speeding as a cause of crashes is not high on the list, so Virginia arbitrarily making speeding reckless driving (with huge penalties) doesn’t match the data. For one thing, if someone is doing 80mph , it generally means the highway is wide open enough to be able to do that kind of driving, it means other traffic is moving and/or there is light traffic. Weaving in and out of traffic to do that is illegal.

Put it this way, when they bumped the speed limit up from the dreaded 55 (which states and towns loved, that generated a ton of revenue when they put that in), all the usual suspects were proclaiming it would cause a surge in horrible accidents, road deaths, etc, and the statistics don’t bear that out, in fact the opposite.

I am not saying there shouldn’t be penalties for speeding, I am saying that putting artificially high penalties on speeding is not about safety, it is about revenue, pure and simple. Reckless driving is when people are driving too fast for conditions (ie the idiots with AWD who go 70mph in a snowstorm cause they have AWD and ABS, and that, folks, has been born out by statistics, that people driving AWD vehicles have a larger tendency to go too fast for conditions), the morons you see weaving in and out of traffic, someone driving too fast in a safety zone (where there really is road construction, not like connecticut where every highway always seemed to be under construction), or my favorite, the person doddering along in the left lane at 45 MPH on a highway, and someone else driving next to them at the same speed. I could see even reckless being 20 mph over the limit, so 85 in a 65 would count, but the way some places have it? Pure revenue, when NJ raised the speed limit to 65, the Whitman administration insisted that they up the penalties for speeding in 65 zones, claiming “safety”, and it is a crock, they had studies that showed that the natural speed on those highways was already 70+, so they knew it would generate a huge amount of revenue…and the death rate on NJ highways, like the country, continued to drop after the 65 was put in place.

59

obviously it is not that effective at getting you to slow down if it has happened to you “several” times…

60

I’m a Virginian and somehow I haven’t had a problem with tickets. 80 mph is pretty fast. I have cruise control in my cars so it’s pretty easy not to get in trouble. I have noticed the real asshats on the interstate do seem to be from out of state.

I thought I’d warn everyone that it’s all over the news that NC has started an initiative that will really upset people. I drive to NC nearly every weekend and many NC residents drive about 10 miles over the speed limit. They are ticketing for 1 mph:

http://wtvr.com/2016/03/23/north-carolina-speeders/