Ninth Judicial Circuit State Attorney Monique Worrell is serious about cracking down on excessive speeding on the roads in Orange and Osceola counties under new, stricter state rules recently passed into law.
A new law went into effect July 1 penalizing “super speeder” drivers. Called the ‘Dangerous Excessive Speeding Act,’ it will make it so offenders who are driving 50 miles over the posted speed limit, or driving 100 miles per hour or more “in a manner that threatens the safety of other persons or property or interferes with the operation of any vehicle,” face first-degree misdemeanor charges.
First offenders could face either 30 days in jail or a $500 fine or both. Second offenders could face a 90-day jail term or a $1,000 fine, or both. If a subsequent offense occurs within five years of the first, the offender could lose their license for up to a year.
Worrell told the News-Gazette that her office intended to crack down on, “People who put our community in danger by reckless driving.”
“I think [speeders] are not thinking,” she said. “I think they’re being reckless for the thrill of driving fast. The downside to that is, we have a lot of traffic fatalities, so this is intended to protect those of us who are trying to get to work and get our kids to school.”
Worrell said recent cases of street racing at high speeds in Osceola and Orange counties were among the reasons she wants to prioritize enforcing the law.
Osceola County Sheriff ’s Office spokesperson Capt. Kim Montes said the new law is necessary to try and warn people against going too fast on Florida’s roads.
“Obviously we know the effect of speeding,” she said. “The more serious the crashes, the more serious the injuries.”
Montes cited nearby Georgia as another state that had set up a similar “super speeder” law, and said “It’s known that you don’t speed in Georgia.” There, a super speeder is defined as someone going 75 miles per hour or more on a two-lane road or 85 miles per hour or more on other roads or highways.
Montes spent nearly three decades with the Florida Highway Patrol, and said in that time she’d seen people going up to 120 or 130 miles per hour, which she called “absurd.”
“If a car changes lanes, a bike pulls out in front of you, or if the road is wet, [speeding] could be disastrous,” Montes said. “I know you may think you’re the best driver in the world, and people think they’re in control of the car, but with those speeds, there’s no time to react.”
She said she hoped the Dangerous Excessive Speeding Act would act as a deterrent to the most egregious speeders on the road to change their behavior before something bad happened.
Worrell said there were no statistics yet on arrests or convictions where the new law applies, but there likely would be in around a month. She said law enforcement had been patrolling actively for speeders since the law went into effect.
In her career as an attorney, Worrell said she’d learned to see why people commit some crimes, but excessive speeding has absolutely no justification, she thinks.
“With a lot of offenses, you can see they are defensible, that they’re crimes of socioeconomic status or mental illness,” she said. “[Speeding] is just choosing to be reckless. To me, it’s really indefensible.”
One anecdotal example made Worrell think things could improve now that the law is in effect.
“I had a conversation with an individual at an event in Miami,” she said. “They said because of the super speeder law, they were very conscious of their speed driving down to Miami. They said they had a proclivity to speed, and were being more careful to monitor their speed all the way down.”
