In a recent letter to the editor titled “Speed Kills,” Rebecca Lansdown admonished me that “Driving is a privilege, and speeding kills.” I couldn’t agree with her more. In fact I am one of those insufferable drivers who obeys the speed limits, frequently to the chagrin of my fellow drivers.

On a recent journey west, which entailed six days of highway travel, to my knowledge I only exceeded the speed limit one time and that resulted in a $100 speeding ticket. I didn’t contest the ticket since I admitted I was following another car and was paying no attention to how fast I was going.

The issue in my letter to her local paper wasn’t the speed I was traveling or an attempt to get the trooper in trouble. The facts as I saw and related them in my letter were:

It was after 10 o’clock on a Friday night. There was no traffic to speak of on the highway. We were outside the city limits by the time we were stopped. We were two out-of-state cars driven by senior citizens, obviously not dragsters or joy riders.

The trooper was probably correct in his determination of our speed but just as incorrect in his levying of punishment. Had he given us a warning he would have made friends for the Oklahoma State Patrol As it is, having added $200 in fines to the $100-plus we had just left with the business community, we hardly had a pleasant taste in our ouths.”

Less than a quarter mile from where we were clocked the speed limit increased to 65 mph. This may not have been a speed trap for out-ofstate cars, but as they say “If it looks like a duck and it walks like a duck ...

Kenneth Burditt