Audio clip
Bob Dallas
As of Wednesday, Georgia drivers who've lost their licenses for certain offenses must pay higher penalties or new fees to get them back.
The fees are part of a speeding law aimed to reduce crashes and fund the state trauma care system.
The "super speeder" bill passed the Legislature in May after about three years of work by the Georgia Governor's Office of Highway Safety and Rep. Jay Neal, R-LaFayette.
"The governor is looking at making Georgia a safer place to drive," Rep. Neal said, "and to do so with a bill which is deterrent and provide some additional funds for trauma care."
The changes will add higher fees for subsequent license reinstatements on 16-year-old drivers convicted of DUI or drug offenses, add a new reinstatement fee for license restriction violations and increase fees for failure to appear in a license suspension hearing.
The new law also increases reinstatement fees for second or subsequent serious juvenile suspension, habitual violator revocations and suspensions from driving without insurance. It also establishes a fee structure of controlled substance suspensions, mandatory offenses suspensions and driving with a suspended license convictions.
The Georgia Department of Driver Services reinstated more than 250,000 licenses last year for a variety of infractions, said Susan Sports, department spokeswoman. Data wasn't available to show what charges caused the license to be suspended in the first place, she said.
Staff have re-worked computer programs since the law's passage to meet the changes taking effect today, she said.
The second part of the law takes effect in January 2010 and will tack on an extra $200 fine for driving more than 75 mph on any two-lane road and more than 85 mph on any multilane roadway in Georgia.
Bob Dallas, director of the Georgia Governor's Office of Highway Safety, said the fines and funding serve two purposes.
The fines are to reduce excessive speeding, which is a factor in one-quarter of all vehicle crash deaths, Mr. Dallas said.
State officials estimate that fines should generate nearly $30 million annually for the trauma care system, based on a 60 percent collection rate.
Sixty percent of patients taken to trauma centers were involved in an auto accident, he said.
"Nobody gets in their car in the morning thinking they're going to be in an accident today," Mr. Dallas said. But success combating lax seat belt use and impaired drivers with heavier fines and public education provide a model for reducing speeding, he said.
Speeding often results in a direct correlation to crashes, which cause congestion, increase trauma visits, deaths and even air pollution, he said, and the fines are one way to help try and reduce all of those factors.
The speeding portion of the law was built to be easily understandable and target "the worst of the worst" in speeding violations, he said.
The reason for staggering the start-up dates for different parts of the law was to give time to educate the public about changes in speeding fines before they take effect.
Todd South covers courts and the military for the Times Free Press. He has worked at the paper for three years and previously covered crime and safety in Southeast Tennessee and North Georgia. Todd’s hometown is Dodge City, Kan. He served five years in the U.S. Marine Corps and deployed to Iraq before returning to school for his journalism degree from the University of Georgia. Todd previously worked at the Anniston (Ala.) Star. Contact Todd ...
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