On July 31, which is Speed Awareness Day, about 100 police departments, including the Wisconsin State Patrol, will increase checks across the Midwest.
State, county, and local police are all involved in the program, which runs 24 hours a day and is very visible. All of the Wisconsin State Patrol’s officers will be working across the state to catch drivers who are putting people in danger on the roads.
The point of Speed Awareness Day is to teach people about how dangerous it is to drive too fast and to save lives. Accidents that happen at high speeds are worse for everyone involved. Every 1.3 hours in 2023, someone was hurt or killed in a crash in Wisconsin that was caused by speed. Some 16,401 accidents happened because of speed, killing 176 people and hurting over 6,500 more.
Speeding is still a problem in Wisconsin and across the country. In the years before the pandemic, the number of tickets for going over 100 miles per hour went from 583 in 2019 to 1,403 in 2020. Over the last four years, these numbers have stayed high. In 2023, there were 1,266 mentions.
Going too fast is against the rules in more ways than one. The effects are the following:
More likely to lose control of the car
Less efficient use of seat belts
Added more space between stops
More likely to get seriously hurt
More fuel was used.
People think that speeding is a dangerous way to drive. In their July Law of the Month, the Wisconsin State Patrol talks about the problems caused by careless driving and the steps being taken to stop it.
