ATLANTA,None — Records show police around Georgia are writing plenty of tickets under the new super speeder law. It went into effect on January 1, and tacks on additional fines for anyone caught speeding more than 20 miles per hour on certain roads.
Kandice Standard got one of those tickets. An officer pulled her over on I-20 in February while she was on her way to work.
"He said, 'I caught you going 90 and it's a 65 zone.' He had me sign the ticket and told me that I needed to slow down," said Standard.
She said she quickly paid the $195 to Douglas County and thought that was the end of it. It wasn't.
LINK: www.SuperSpeedsGeorgia.org LINK: Governor's Office of Highway Safety PDF: Super Speeder Letter
"The beginning of April I get this letter in the mail saying, (I) owe another $200 because of the super speeder," said Standard.
The super speeder law adds an addition $200 fine for anyone caught going more than 85 miles per hour on a multi-lane road, or more than 75 miles per hour on a two-lane road. The bill is intended to generate $23 million a year to pay for care at trauma hospitals in Georgia.
Georgia Sen. Gloria Butler questions whether that will happen. She voted against the bill last year and said she has an issue with the way it's worded.
"I wanted the wording to say, the funds will be used for trauma care centers. Not that it has the intent to be used. That was too big of a gap for me," said Butler.
Channel 2 Action News reporter John Bachman went through the numbers and discovered the amount of super speeder tickets is on the rise. Police handed out only 142 tickets in the first month. The numbers then quickly climbed to 1,084 in February, 2,546 in March, and 3,659 in April. That's a steady climb, but still not close to the 9,000 tickets a month Channel 2 Action News calculated that officers would have to write a year to make $23 million.
"In the first four months it has only picked up $1.4 million," Butler said. "So I don't know how by the end of the year we will make it to that $23 million."
Bachman asked the state about it. "The $23 million also includes the increase in reinstatement fees," said director Bob Dallas of the Governor's Office of Highway Safety. "A lot of folks don't realize that the legislature increased from when your license is suspended by about $100 on average for every kind of reinstatement fee that exists."
Dallas said despite what critics say, the law isn't about generating revenue. He said it's about saving lives. Even if you don't speed, a speeder next to you could affect your commute.
"We know that about half of our congestion is due to crashes. So if we could just slow down a little bit, what we could find is that we could all get to work a little quicker," said Dallas.
Standard said she has no problem with the super speeder fine, she just wishes someone would've warned her. "No one let me know. The officer didn't let me know and the people at the ticket place didn't let me know," said Standard.
Dallas said an officer or court most likely will mention it to a violator, but they don't have to. He said the state will send out the super speeder fine about a month after the initial ticket is issued. Violators have 90 days to pay the fine, or they can have their license suspended.
Standard said she got the message, loud and clear, to slow down. "I definitely learned my lesson because I don't want another super speeder ticket."