Cops’ answer to road hogs messy, mostly

By Abigail Goldman

Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Prepare yourself for some Las Vegas logic: Here, in a city certain its motorists are the worst, getting a ticket for aggressive driving is almost impossible. Not because it doesn’t happen, but because it’s hard to fit the bill. It’s hard, basically, to be bad enough, aggressive enough, given the constraints of the law.

So, surprise, surprise, 10 years after Nevada became the second state in the nation to enact an aggressive-driving law, police say they really don’t use it all that much. Sure, it’s nice to have another law to lob at someone, but frankly, law enforcement officers say the ticket isn’t worth the risk to the public.

Here’s why: You have to break a lot of road rules in a short period to meet the parameters for aggressive driving in Nevada. First, you must be speeding. No problem. But then you have to commit at least two additional driving infractions — tailgating, say, while whipping across lanes without turning on your blinker, or running a red light and then running off the road. Again, not difficult for your hostile Hummer owner. The hard part, however, is doing it all within the space of one mile.

Before she can write a ticket for aggressive driving, a police officer has to be certain the infractions happened within 5,280 feet. One inch over, and the whole thing is blown. Of the 13 states that have aggressive-driving laws, Nevada is the only one that insists the offenses happen within a specific distance. And that distance is part of the reason why Nevada Highway Patrol troopers don’t write many tickets for aggressive driving, agency spokesman Kevin Honea explained.

Try to see it from behind the wheel of a black and white Crown Vic: A bright yellow Mustang blows by at 40 mph over the speed limit. Are you going to follow the driver for a mile in the hope of catching him make two more mistakes? Are you going to let your eyes bounce between your odometer and the road and the yellow Mustang and the cars it is almost clipping to make sure it’s all happening within a mile? Are you just going to hold your breath and let it happen?

“As a rule of thumb,” Honea said, “we like to get that vehicle stopped as soon as we can.”

The Nevada Highway Patrol doesn’t keep statistics on how often its officers write aggressive-driving tickets, but Honea says it’s not all that often. The North Las Vegas Police Department doesn’t keep those kinds of statistics either, but Officer Tim Milligan says he hasn’t written one in at least four months. In the same period, however, he has written many tickets for aggressive driving’s cousin: reckless driving. This is because reckless driving is easier to catch — it’s basically wild speeding. That’s it.

Metro traffic police do keep track: From Jan. 1, 2007, through Sunday, officers wrote 382 aggressive-driving citations. In that same time frame, they wrote 835 reckless-driving tickets — more than double the number of aggressive tickets.

Fines for reckless and aggressive driving are identical — anywhere from $250 for the first offense to $2,000 for the third. It’s the penalties that accompany the fees that differ. First-time aggressive drivers must pay for traffic school and can have their licenses revoked for up to a month. Second-time aggressive drivers will have their licenses revoked for a year. Reckless drivers, racers in particular, can be given up to 99 hours of community service and up to six months in jail for the first offense. For each subsequent reckless racing offense, the community service and time in jail get longer.

So why did Nevada lawmakers write in the one-mile rule? Well, a careful combing of meeting minutes from 1999’s 70th session of the Legislature, when Assemblyman David Parks, D-Las Vegas, proposed the bill, reveals this much: “There had been some confusion on how long a single continuous period of driving was.”

Nine years later, Parks recalls there were concerns that law enforcement could exploit the law — could follow someone for 15 miles, waiting to pounce on the slightest problem. It was “intended to be a limitation placed on any abusive use of the law,” Parks said.

Instead, best-laid plans backfired. Law enforcement can’t abuse the law, but it can’t really use it either.

In Arizona, the first state to enact aggressive-driving laws, law enforcement officers can follow drivers for as long as they want. That’s to catch them making mistakes, but also to see whether they’re going to correct themselves with a little scrutiny, Department of Public Safety spokesman Harold Sanders said. Incidentally, Arizona Highway Patrol troopers regularly write tickets for aggressive driving — the citation accounts for 10 percent to 15 percent of all moving violations, Sanders says.

When Sanders heard about Nevada’s one-mile rule, by the way, he was perplexed.

“If we had anything close to that, that would hinder us,” he said. “That would really be a nightmare to fit that criterion.”

Parks now wonders whether it’s time to craft an amendment to his original law, which might be a smart move for a guy running to take over Dina Titus’ Senate seat. Getting tough on Nevada’s aggressive drivers isn’t the sort of thing that turns off voters.

Last year, lawmakers actually did look at the aggressive-driving law. Tucked inside a bill sponsored by Sen. Dennis Nolan, R-Las Vegas, was a proposed amendment to the law setting fixed minimum penalties for breaking it. The proposal passed. In other words, lawmakers succeeded in making the law harsher.

Now if someone would just make it easier to use.