The Iowa State Patrol says far too many motorists are putting the pedal too close to the metal, and excessive speeding remains a major concern on Iowa’s roads.
State Trooper Kevin Krull says the patrol has been pulling over drivers going well over the speed limit, even as fast as 150 miles an hour.
Krull says those speeds could easily be deadly to the person behind the wheel and to others on the road, and the number of people being stopped for speeding is still very high.
“You look back to 2020 when it went from 659 to almost 1,500 in one year,” Krull says. “That was back when COVID hit and literally the response people were giving us when we get them stopped was they didn’t think we were out there doing our job, and they were sadly mistaken.”
Krull says enforcing the speed limit is always a high priority for the state patrol and the number of citations being issued is still far beyond what it was just a few years ago.
“It still hasn’t really come down — up until last year. We finally got just under 1,000, but we’re still running too many speeds too high, too many times,” he says, “and even a lot of these speeds are probably on four-lane roads, but it’s still too fast for that.”
Speed limits have increased in recent months on many Iowa highways from 55 to 60 miles an hour, and Krull says it’s unfortunate more people are still exceeding those higher speed limits — as they’re the law.
