Word: speeding
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...racing motorcycle and gets on Interstate 95 from Hollywood Boulevard, south of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., at 2 a.m. A mere six seconds later, he's already doing 95 m.p.h., headed for Miami. About 10 seconds after that he's at video-game velocity - 175 m.p.h., almost triple the speed limit - and the highway's dashed lane markers are blurred solid. He slows down occasionally to pop wheelies before resuming his screaming pace...
...rules-averse Florida didn't already have some of the nation's most dangerous drivers - more pedestrians are killed there each year than in any other state - now it's dealing with the rising popularity of Mad Max-like high-speed motorcycles. The rogue bikes are a particular bane in South Florida, where the weather is warm year-round and many of the roads are so flat and straightaway that they can easily be turned into a racetrack. Florida motorcycle crashes have been up in recent years - from 8,990 in 2006 to 9,618 in 2008, when state legislators...
...trend is also fueled - as the video confiscated by the highway patrol suggests - by an apparent competition among riders to post the wildest speed and stunt videos on YouTube. And if it involves successfully eluding the police, all the better. "The more cops that are on you, the better rider you have to be to get away," Segui says. "If you get caught, you're not a great rider." In the case of the arrest that Segui made, even getting thrown in jail didn't seem to matter to the 19-year-old rider, who did not have a driver...
Beyond the risk to the bikers, drivers sharing the road with the daredevils are also in peril, law-enforcement officials say. Drivers can change lanes having no idea that a racing bike is about to appear - and tragedy can easily strike. At first, the buzzing of an approaching high-speed motorcycle sounds like a gnat near your ear, then it suddenly becomes loud and threatening. Segui remembers a woman who heard that noise and jerked her steering wheel in the opposite direction, jumping a curb and crashing...
...years ago the Florida legislature imposed a $1,000 fine for anyone caught driving 50 m.p.h. or more above the speed limit. The second violation results in a $2,500 penalty, with the driver's or rider's license revoked for a year; a third means $5,000 and loss of the license for 10 years. State representative Carlos Lopez-Cantera, a Miami Republican who sponsored the bill, can't say yet whether the measure has worked. But he concedes that for many crotch-rocket riders, "there's no law that's going to stop them from lavishly exceeding speed...