DES MOINES, Iowa -- The Iowa State Patrol says there are lots of people on the state's highways who are still driving way too fast.
"People travelling at, or greater than 100 miles-an-hour--the amount of citations that troopers have been writing those people has increased 77 percent over the last four years average" says State Patrol Sgt. Alex Dinkla.
He says the patrol's especially concerned about the combination of fast drivers and increasing traffic as COVID-19 coronavirus restrictions are eased.
"As that traffic count starts to pick up, are people going to continue to drive these egregious speeds? And if they do, we're going to have a recipe for really bad, disastrous crashes" Dinkla says.
He says troopers are hearing a popular excuse from drivers pulled over for speeding...
"When they were getting pulled over, we'd ask why there were driving that fast. One of the number one excuses was 'we didn't think you were out there working--we thought you'd be working from home.' Our job doesn't allow us to work from home. We have to be out there" Dinkla says.
The other concern about speeding drivers--he also says, pandemic or not, there's lots of highway construction going on across the state.