Highway Safety Initiative: Speeding Cops

The dashboard video1 of Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) Trooper Jane Watts’s pursuit on October 11, 2011, of uniformed, off-duty Miami, Florida, Police Officer Fausto Lopez, who was driving 120 miles per hour (mph) in a marked cruiser on the Florida Turnpike en route to off-duty employment, brought front and center the longstanding and pervasive issue of speeding cops. In the year prior to this traffic stop, Lopez averaged at least 90 mph on 237 days and 100 mph or higher on 114 days. Ironically, even on the days right after this stop, Lopez still drove in the 80-mph range and twice averaged 96 mph.2