A Minnesota trooper last year pulled over two brothers from St. Paul, each riding a brand-new motorcycle at 110 mph. They said they were late for a movie. Two other drivers were pulled over last month at 125 mph and 114 mph, one of them reportedly talking on a cell phone. Says the St. Paul Pioneer Press: “Rushed by modern life, stoked by high-tech horsepower, spread over an expanding metro area and increasingly unfettered by police, Minnesotans are driving faster than ever.” A Pioneer Press analysis of 3 million state tickets between 1990 and February 2004 showed that The number of drivers caught speeding more than 100 mph has quadrupled over the last decade to nearly 400 last year.
“The cars are quiet, the cars are powerful, and a lot of people don’t realize they’re going that fast,” said Al Kutz of the State Patrol District in St. Cloud. “It’s also a reflection of society –everybody’s moving so fast. Also, people are moving farther and farther out (from the Twin Cities) and they’re still rushing to work at their appointed times.” Unsafe or illegal speeding was cited in about one of every five fatal crashes in Minnesota last year, compared with fewer than one in six in 1994. The number of people killed in crashes rose 28 percent. Automobile safety equipment is almost meaningless in a crash at extremely high speeds. One Minnesota man was caught doing 100 mph on his way home from jail. Several super-speeders were riding the popular motorcycles police call “crotch rockets.” Riders say they can easily lose track of how fast they are traveling.
Link: http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/local/9694584.htm