Fairfax County’s Sully District sits at the western edge of the county, a place where drivers finally find roads less congested — where their need for speed can be realized after miles and miles of brake lights. No one can blame them, then, for pushing 50 in a 40, or maybe even 60 in a 45. No one, that is, but the Sully police. And last month they went after speeders with a vengeance.
Sully police charged a “record-breaking” 1,476 motorists during their Let’s Eliminate Agressive Driving initiative. About 1,300 of those tickets were for speeding, while the rest were for “failure to pay full time and attention to the roadway” — aka texting your friends that you’re finally out of traffic — and for driving with a suspended license.
No word on whether the fines collected covered the cost of employing “a full-time traffic enforcement team” to crack down on the most congested thoroughfares, such as the Fairfax County Parkway and Lee Highway.
One upside to the ticket-happy cops: Sully Station First Lieutenant John Trace also said there was a “drastic decrease” in the number of crashes at major intersections in the area.
