ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, August 4, 1996 TAG: 9608050099
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: FAIRFAX
SOURCE: Associated Press
Police wrote 1,076 tickets in a crackdown on aggressive drivers in Northern Virginia.
About half of the citations issued by Virginia State Police and Fairfax County officers in a recent safety campaign were for speeding, tailgating and improper lane changes.
The primary offenders, they said, were not highway daredevils, but relatively ordinary drivers harried by overbooked schedules.
``There was no one real incident that stood out, but the overall attitude and temperament of drivers was really aggressive,'' said Michael D. White, one of 10 state troopers assigned full time to issue safety-related tickets July 15-26 on Northern Virginia interstate highways.
The local citations were issued as part of a statewide traffic safety campaign funded in part by the federal Transportation Department's ``Safe and Sober'' campaign, said Lucy Caldwell, state police spokeswoman.
During periods in April and July, police stepped up safety enforcement along the Capitol Beltway and Interstates 66 and 95, Caldwell said. The ultimate goal, she said, was to increase driver awareness and police visibility.
``We wish we had enough people to do it all the time,'' Caldwell said. ``We hope we can do it again in the future.''
The campaign came on the heels of a grisly April crash on the George Washington Memorial Parkway in which police said a feud between two drivers caused both to lose control and collide head-on with two other cars. Three people died, including one of the belligerent drivers, Billy M. Canipe Jr., 26, of Sterling.
The other driver, Narkey K. Terry of southern Fairfax, was charged in federal court in Alexandria with manslaughter and reckless driving. He pleaded innocent and faces trial Sept.16.
Police said Terry and Canipe cut each other off repeatedly while driving through Arlington and McLean; but those who study traffic said most roadway rudeness is the result of haste, not hostility.
``Aggressive driving has become more of a social problem than anything else,'' said Norman E. Grimm Jr., traffic safety manager for the Potomac chapter of the American Automobile Association. ``In the hustle-bustle schedules people live by, everybody is running late. If there's a 10 o'clock appointment, nobody wants to show up even a second early.''
Caldwell said the focus on rude driving was just one part of state and local efforts to improve traffic safety. Fairfax officers checked child-restraint seats, finding that 139 of 145 seats inspected had been fastened improperly.
LENGTH: Medium: 55 linesby CNB