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Driver Services has issued $25M in super speeder tickets
Drivers still owe more than $10M in fines
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Officer Dallas Bright, with the Gainesville Police Department traffic enforcement division, uses radar to clock traffic Sunday on Queen City Parkway. - photo by SARA GUEVARA

More than $25 million in citations have been issued since Georgia's super speeder law went into effect in July 2009.

No one, however, is exactly sure how many of those were caught in Hall County.

"We don't collect the super speeder fine," said Jan Boswell, office manager for the Hall County clerk of court's office. "We just report the citations to the Department of Driver Services. At that time, they would see if the speed warranted you to be a super speeder. That's when the fee is assessed by them."

A super speeder is any driver convicted of speeding at 75 mph or more on a two-lane road or at 85 mph or above on any road or highway in the state, according to the Department of Driver Services.

Out-of-state drivers can also be caught for super speeding, with the same penalties. Officials are unsure of how many super speeders aren't Georgia drivers, however.

"We don't track them demographically, we just have the monthly totals statewide," said Susan Sports, public information officer for the department. "We're not required to sort it like that."

And though there were 116,000 super speeding citations issued since January 2010, more than $10 million in fines hasn't been collected, according to data from the department.

"There's a lag time when Department of Driver Services gets the citations from the courts and we identify that the driver does owe the $200 super speeder fee. We send the individual a letter letting them know they owe that in addition to what they owe the jurisdiction," Sports said.

The letter allows drivers 90 days to pay the fee.

After 90 days, they receive a second letter reminding them to pay. Their licenses are suspended and they're given an additional 30 days to send the money in, Sports said. Drivers whose licenses are suspended must also pay a $50 reinstatement fee.


"Some of the citations that were issued in a particular month wouldn't be due until three or four months after that," she said.

Though law enforcement officials said they don't set up "speed traps," necessarily, there are places police try to target to catch speeders.

"We work on a lot of complaint areas," said Kiley Sargent, public information officer for the Hall County Sheriff's Office. "We work a lot of areas with accidents involving speeders. We usually try to follow the trends on accidents."

Though Hall County doesn't keep a record of roads police have to patrol for speeding, city police have a "Top 10" list of dangerous roads to work from, including Dawsonville Highway and Jesse Jewell Parkway, said Kevin Holbrook, public information officer for the Gainesville Police Department.

"Our traffic unit primarily works off of data received from traffic accidents, as well as the number of injuries and fatalities," Holbrook said. "Traffic units focus a large amount of time on those roadways in an effort to reduce traffic collisions through enforcement."