Michael Dresser at the Baltimore Sun thinks that people who speed are as bad as sex offenders.
That is certainly bad enough, but he also believes that Maryland should adopt Virginia’s extremely tough reckless driving laws, and charge anyone speeding 20mph over the limit as a criminal. Currently, reckless driving here in Maryland is typically a civil charge, though it can lead to a suspended license.
The fact is, tougher reckless driving laws do little to prevent so called “dangerous driving”. The primary goal of most aggressive/reckless driving crackdown laws is revenue for the state. These laws are extremely profitable, and cost drivers thousands of dollars in fees, fines, lost work time due to court dates, increased insurance costs.
And there is absolutely no evidence that they make the roads safer.
Virginia tried to push the envelope even further when then enacted “abusive driver fees”, a shameless effort that state officials admitted was merely to extract even more revenue from hapless citizens. That law was repealed after less than a year due to citizen outcry. And rightly so.
Maryland doesn’t need to follow this same path in severely punishing relatively minor driving offenses.
For advice on a driving citation, traffic ticket or other criminal charge in Maryland, please contact us.
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