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Published on Friday, February 27, 2004
in the Jacksonville Florida Times-Union
The open road is the bait: An interstate straightaway where self-restraint is the only apparent limit on speed or maneuver.
The trap is a Jacksonville overpass that feeds the interstate. Hour after hour, Florida Highway Patrol cars returned to the top, paused for the call, and fired down the ramp in hot pursuit.
"White Honda van following too close," said the voice on the radio, a sergeant spotting violators.
"Center lane, center lane, 79 in a 65 ... Improper lane change, green car in the center lane ... Black pickup right behind the blue car.... Right lane now, too fast and too close."
Too fast and too close.
Thursday was the first day of a statewide campaign against aggressive driving, a two-day effort that will put a record number of Highway Patrol cars on Florida highways.
An aggressive driving citation requires two moving violations in the presence of a trooper, but the Highway Patrol was finding no shortage of eligible drivers on the Southside.
"It's never quiet in Jacksonville," said trooper David Bazinet, one of a half-dozen officers operating a trap at the intersection of Southside Boulevard and Interstate 95. "We could tell people where we're going to be each day and we'd still be writing the same amount of tickets."
The goal of the campaign is to impress on drivers the importance of separation between vehicles, safe lane changes, obeying the speed limit and generally driving in the way you'd like everyone else to drive. It's an effort to clean up a driving culture that seems more founded on the principle that everyone else is doing it, too.
"I thought there was a lot more people doing worse things," said Stephanie Dennison, an Orange Park resident pulled over for traveling too fast, following too close, and weaving between lanes. "There was a blue car right on my butt."
Dennison was one of eight people Bazinet pulled over Thursday and like the rest, she had a story to tell: Seven months pregnant and late for a doctor's appointment. She also was pleasant and if she could not remember doing anything wrong, she was apologetic even so.
Bazinet gave her an $81 ticket for tailgating and a brief lecture on proper driving technique.
Other drivers fared similarly.
Adam Thomas Ryan, a student pulled over for speeding and tailgating, pleaded poverty and the fact he'd received a ticket only a few months before.
"We give breaks to people who obey the law," a bemused Bazinet said as he read Ryan's history on the computer in his patrol car. Ryan, he said, picks up a speeding ticket just about once a year. But Ryan, too, drove away with just an $81 citation and a lecture on driving.
"He's not getting away easy but he's not getting a full deal," Bazinet said. The point, he added, was deterrence and education, not punishment.
Of course the most effective deterrent, as every driver knows, is the sight of a patrol car. "Wherever this car goes, people modify themselves," Bazinet said.
No one drives ahead of a patrol car, a phenomenon Bazinet says makes him feel like the pied piper leading mice to water. Hardly anyone passes a patrol car, either. And when Bazinet is driving beside, most drivers are on their best behavior.
Thus it was a befuddled moment for a Lake City driver when Bazinet pulled him over after they both passed a crash scene at modest speed. Florida law requires drivers to move over one lane when passing an emergency vehicle at the side of the road.
"I didn't know you were supposed to do that," the man said.
"Now you know," said Bazinet, handing over a brochure on the subject and a written warning.
For the most part, it was not so easy to pull drivers over. Because the trap was sprung from an overpass, the patrol cars launched into traffic from a righthand merge lane in pursuit of drivers disproportionately fond of the left lane and already moving at full speed through midday traffic.
When his turn came, Bazinet roared onto the road in his patrol cruiser -- sleek on the outside, impossibly cluttered on the inside -- moving across lanes of traffic at high speeds in the manner of, well, an aggressive driver.
"Nothing, I guess," Bazinet said with a smile when asked what might differentiate him from the cars he was pulling over. "I mean, I have to go over the speed limit, I probably have to break some traffic laws, but I'm the exception in the performance of my duties."
One of some 1,800 exceptions on the road yesterday, all trying to enforce the rules of the road as Florida heads into the spring travel season.