Chronic Excessive Speeding

Gus Philpott
Woodstock Advocate
November 11, 2007

How concerned are you about chronic excessive speeding? Do you worry about when it will impact (no pun intended) you? Or someone in your family? Or a neighbor or co-worker or friend?

Chronic excessive speeding is the focus of an Illinois organization established by two families after they lost family members to speeders. In one case, the speeder had 62 traffic violations and still had an Illinois license at the time he hit and killed a young woman and her child.

The organization is Families Against Chronic Excessive Speeding, and its website is www.faces4.us

Every day you can witness chronic excessive speeding, and you don’t even have to go south to the Tollway to find it. Or, should I say, have it find you. Because, if you are “poking along” at the speed limit on U.S. 14 or U.S. 31 or Ill. Rte. 47, it won’t take this problem long to find you.

Just watch the car behind you coming up fast. Ask yourself: will that driver slow down before hitting me? Are you ready to punch the accelerator and hope to speed up enough before he hits you? Will you head for the shoulder before he hits you?

Now, I’m not picking on the male drivers in McHenry County, although they seem to be the majority of this type of violator. The bigger the pick-up truck or the shinier the new Lexus or GMC SUV, the more testosterone the driver seems to have. But women in their SUVs are just as much a problem. Just check your mirror. You’ll see what I mean.

Or maybe it’s just my small red car that, some days, I think has a bulls-eye painted on the back of it. Years ago a friend in Denver told me that red cars were dangerous because red causes anger. Well, I can believe that. Why didn’t I think of that before I bought this car?

An acquaintance in South Carolina sent me some bumper stickers that read, “BACK OFF! I drive the speed limit.” I’ve been tempted to paste one on my car and to get a bunch of them made, as she did after being harassed on South Carolina highways. Around here, though, I’m afraid such a sticker on the bumper of a small vehicle traveling at the speed limit in the right-hand lane would merely incite aggressive drivers to attack.

Should law-abiding drivers have to worry about being rear-ended or run off the road by an aggressive driver? A cell phone is not enough defense.

Both the Woodstock Police Department and the McHenry County Sheriff’s Dept., along with many other departments, are listed on www.faces4.us Contact your own department and ask how they are associated with this organization. The Schaumburg Police Dept. distributes a flier of FACES4 with speeding tickets. Let’s hope the speeder reads it and takes the message to heart.