Driving in I-15’s fast lane

Wednesday, July 19, 2006 | 7:37 a.m.

Sgt. Dan Solow doesn't like speeders. They're selfish, they're a danger to themselves and others, and sometimes they even cry at him, as if that'll do any good.

Unfortunately for speeders, Solow is the Nevada Highway Patrol trooper responsible for Interstate 15 between the California border and the outskirts of Las Vegas - a long straight strip of flat hot pavement dropped in the desert, an open invitation to press the pedal, whip the ponies, nudge the needle and speed, speed, speed.

And get caught, caught, caught.

Per mile, Solow and his five troopers write almost twice as many tickets as the California Highway Patrol does between Barstow and the state line.

Bear in mind that the NHP and the CHP are dealing with the same drivers and that the road in California is almost as much of an invitation to play lead footsie with the law. The 138-mile stretch of I-15 between Barstow and St. Rose Parkway is the perfect stretch of road on which to compare two highway patrols. It's a closed system: No major highway intersects it, and very few people are on it to visit Barstow or Primm.

Roughly 14.5 million cars and trucks drove over this stretch of road in 2005, by the Nevada Department of Transportation's count. Because both highway patrols are dealing with the same motorists, you might expect that per mile, the two forces would catch them speeding at the same rate because each department has, proportionately, roughly the same level of staffing. And they did catch speeders at about the same rate in 2004: 115 tickets per mile (Nevada) and 117 tickets per mile (California). But then in 2005, the NHP wrote more than twice as many tickets.

That's about when Sgt. Solow took over.

Solow is a 35-year-old, neat and compact man with a few wisps of gray in his cropped brown hair, an ex-Coast Guardsman who joined the NHP in 1995. He says despite the low pay, he prefers enforcement work over criminal investigations because traffic affects people's everyday lives.

When he took over the Primm command, he brought in new troopers, men he had worked with before and respects. He told them to get out there and write tickets. And of course, he stalks speeders himself.

"I'll just park on the center median, not hiding from anyone," Solow says, "just in plain view, doing what I'm trained to do." Going by the book, troopers are supposed to visually estimate a car's speed before pointing a radar gun at them. So Solow sits there, watching how quickly cars whiz between road markers and how fast they pass each other.

"It may sound like guessing," Solow says, "but you can tell."

Then: Pull out, speed up, radar, pacing, lights, maybe siren. Then they come out with it. Explanations. Arguments. Pleadings. Tears. Sighs.

Here, just like you've always been told, attitude counts. The fine for going one to 10 miles over the speed limit is a steep $190, but if you get ticketed for going 11 miles over the limit, it's $300. Solow says he likes to cut people some slack, ticket them at a lower speed and make it cheaper. He might even decide to let you off.

If he likes you. If he believes you. "I've had people going over 100 who I've let off. And I've had people going only five over who I've ticketed," he says. "When you do the job right, you get to read people. "

So there's hope if you're distraught (over something besides a little old ticket). If you're not, be contrite. Be polite. But whatever you do, don't be blase. Blase really burns Solow's toast.

Being blase means "their driving shows no regard for other people or their attitude shows no regard for other people," Solow says. "If you pull them over and they act like it's no big deal, then maybe they need a ticket to wake them up."

He says he may catch a few more speeders going south than north - perhaps because northbound is two lanes wide, while southbound is three lanes wide. More lanes, less congestion, more speed.

There's no typical speeder, Solow says. They're young, they're old, they're single, they're with their families, they're in a Porsche or they're in a car that, really, officer, can't go that fast. And on the straightaway of the 15, it's not uncommon for them to be doing a buck and change.

It's unsafe, Solow says. It's selfish. It's just - wrong.

"Around your home, you might know your neighbors and take it a little easier," Solow says. "But out here, they don't know each other, and they don't care about each other."

And the faster they're going, the less time they have to react, the more likely it is that they'll hurt somebody.

"Writing tickets saves lives. Every ticket written is a potential accident avoided."

He may be right. The number of accidents in 2005 dropped from 329 to 269, and the number of fatal accidents dropped from 17 to six.