Your Need For Speed

[Lee Borgersen]

  .... How fast do you have to go to get a ticket on MN highways?

Aug 12, 2017 at 7:40 a.m. 


 
  ......
ST. PAUL — A rule of thumb for many drivers is that's it's safe — at least for speeding tickets — to go 5 mph over the limit, and often safe to go as much as 10 mph over.





  .....
At least on Minnesota highways, that's almost entirely true. Out of more than 230,000 tickets the State Patrol has written since 2013, only 37 were for less than 5 mph over the limit. Tickets for speeders going between 5 and 10 mph over were more common, but still rare: nearly 97 percent of all ticketed drivers were going faster than 10 mph.



 
"It's so unfortunately abundantly easy to find drivers that are traveling 15, 20, 25 miles over the speed limit, (troopers) are not running out of work finding those egregious violations," said Col. Matt Langer, chief of the State Patrol.


Trooper Jack Tiegs said he often sets his threshold for speeders at 15 mph over. He's less generous on rural interstates where the limit hits 70 mph. "I go to 10 miles an hour (there), because 80 miles an hour is very fast," Tiegs said.

   ....
The median speeding ticket in the last three years is for 16 mph over. But the most common ticket was 12 mph over — around 25 percent of all the tickets written in the past three years. Langer said he doesn't know why that's so common.

These statistics reflect what speed drivers were cited for driving — which is sometimes lower than how fast they actually were going. Troopers have discretion to cut drivers a break, writing them a warning or citing them for a slower speed than they were actually going.


Tiegs did just that earlier this month, when he clocked a St. Paul driver going 77 mph in a 60 mph zone on Interstate 35E north of downtown. The man received a ticket for going 9 mph over the limit.

"If I stop you and you've got no violations and this is the first time you've been stopped for speeding — part of our job is education. So should I give you a ticket the first time out?" Tiegs said. "Attitude and demeanor is a factor. The speed you're driving is a factor."

[Steve-o]

[Lee Borgersen]

                 A few Facts Here:


analyzed 224,915 speeding tickets issued by the Minnesota State Patrol over the past three-and-a-half years. See what else we learned.


  ......
A rule of thumb for many drivers is that’s it’s safe — at least for speeding tickets — to go 5 mph over the limit, and often safe to go as much as 10 mph over.

At least on Minnesota highways, that’s almost entirely true. Out of more than 220,000 tickets the State Patrol has written since 2013, only 37 were for less than 5 mph over the limit. Tickets for speeders going between 5 and 10 mph over were more common, but still rare: nearly 97 percent of all ticketed drivers were going faster than 10 mph.


  more.....

                       People are getting more speeding tickets in Minnesota a lot more.
 

State troopers wrote 44,772 tickets in 2014, or one for every 122 residents of the state. Just two years later, the number of State Patrol tickets had increased by more than 80 percent to 81,476. That’s one ticket for every 68 Minnesota residents.

speeding-overall

Col. Matt Langer, the chief of the State Patrol, says the increase in tickets is no accident. In early 2015, the Patrol made a conscious decision to focus more on speeding, along with distracted, impaired and drivers not belted in.

“As an organization that stands for traffic safety, we need to be making a difference in those four areas,” Langer said. (The data the Pioneer Press obtained from the State Patrol includes only speeding violations.)

The patrol doesn’t have quotas, so it hasn’t ordered troopers to write more tickets. But it has made speed enforcement a bigger priority. So troopers out on patrol might focus on speeders instead of other potential violations.

Trooper Jack Tiegs, a 10-year veteran of the State Patrol, doesn’t have any sense that he and his colleagues are writing dramatically more tickets — but said it’s possible that small changes have added up.

“Maybe I’m doing a little bit more, maybe my partners are doing a little bit more,” Tiegs said. “You multiply that number over 500 troopers, the number starts to snowball.”

Aside from the year-over-year increase, tickets follow seasonal patterns. They peak every summer and hit a low every winter.




Langer said more people tend to speed in the summer, “a function, I think, of Minnesota climate.” The highway patrol also often gets federal grants to fund speeding enforcement in peak summer months such as July.

Winter, meanwhile, sees fewer tickets for two reasons. One is that icy roads often lead drivers to slow down of their own volition. Additionally, troopers are busier responding to snow-related crashes and so aren’t as available to work the speed gun.

[glenn57]

  not this feller.........straight as an arrow and more honest then ABE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Rebel SS]

not this feller.........straight as an arrow and more honest then ABE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

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[LPS]

The exception to the rule is LOW County.  There is a trooper here that must have personal issues and has to take it out on drivers.  There is a history of people getting tickets for small infractions.  This week in the paper there were even a few tickets given that were for 4 or 5 miles over the limit.  There has even been a group of people who have gone to the state in person and complained that said officer is overzealous and scaring people away from the area.  Actually said trooper is the laughing stock of the area and people here let each other know that said trooper is in the area.  Word gets around fast....   I have never had the honor of meeting this    person.  The rest of them are very good and honorable people....  Kudos to all of you.  This one is like the poacher that gives all hunters a bad name...

[Rebel SS]

That makes me sick.  The main objective is to educate people, and if you can do it in a reasonable way, if the person was not out of line, and wasn't doing whatever intentionally, is always the way I preferred to do it.

[delcecchi]

[Jerkbiat]

LPS. A lot of people thought after the judge ruled her giglio impaired that she would be done up here. She was caught making up shtuff to pull people over and got caught. Surprised they even have her still patrolling. I myself have not had the pleasure of meeting her either. Hoping it stays that way. I know a lot of people that have.

[Gunner55]

Not sure I've ever seen anyone pulled over for speeding here in Itasca Co.

[glenn57]

Not sure I've ever seen anyone pulled over for speeding here in Itasca Co.

oh i've seen people pulled over up there.................and one was for speeding.......cause he flew by me a bit earlier!!!!!!!!!

[cookie]

oh yes I have heard of here pulled over a farmer for driving to slow? while hauling equipment

[glenn57]

LPS. A lot of people thought after the judge ruled her giglio impaired that she would be done up here. She was caught making up shtuff to pull people over and got caught. Surprised they even have her still patrolling. I myself have not had the pleasure of meeting her either. Hoping it stays that way. I know a lot of people that have.

WOW she must be a real gem.............you guys can keep her up by da border!!!!!!!!

but as LPS would always ask....................is she hot!!!!!!