Trooper Amanda Brezniak confronts a motorist she has stopped for speeding along Route 146 northbound. Despite the posted 55 mph speed limit, driver routinely exceed that speed. Brezniak estimates is issues about 18 tickets a day.

The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

Some said they were late for work. One man noticed his tires were going flat. One woman said she didn’t realize how easy it was to drive fast in her husband’s SUV.

So, they were speeding past morning commuters on the highways, oblivious to the dark sports car cruising along behind them and motoring to catch up.

State Trooper Amanda Brezniak was working a shift going after speeders and aggressive drivers — those who menace the motorists around them by tailgating, cutting between cars without signaling, or using the breakdown lane like it’s their personal highway. She was blending in with traffic by driving the unmarked car, one of several that the state police use to catch aggressive drivers.

Finding speeders and bad drivers on Rhode Island roads is like fishing in a well-stocked pond. Brezniak estimates that she tickets about 16 people in an average shift. She’d probably get more, if checking the driver’s history and writing the summonses didn’t take a little time.

After stopping a Central Falls man who was driving up to 80 mph on Route 146, Brezniak left the radar on while she wrote out the ticket. The speed limit is 55. The radar screen glowed with the speed of cars and trucks passing her: 66, 67, 70.

People rail against drunken drivers and motorists who yap on the cell phones. However, speeding causes more than half of the deaths on Rhode Island’s roads — higher than the national average of 30 percent — and accounts for about the same percentage of fatalities as drunken driving. And, it’s as commonplace as any day’s commute.

“We’re at risk from the time we put that car in gear. We’re at risk from ourselves. We’re at the risk of others,” says Robert Murray, the senior vice president for corporate affairs for AAA Southern New England. “We made cars as safe as we can. The state has made our roads as safe as they can be. … But how do you change the behaviors of drivers who don’t want to change?”

Eight Rhode Islanders have died in speed-related crashes in just three weeks. They’ve died on highways in Warwick and Attleboro, and on back roads in Barrington and Lincoln, and along the border with Connecticut. The dead have ranged from teenagers to men in their 30s.

The state police have been cracking down harder on speeders and aggressive motorists since the spate of fatal accidents, but they’ve found little change in attitudes.

“I think our culture has everyone in a rush,” said Maj. Steven O’Donnell. “I think we get desensitized to it. It happens, and then [speeders] are back at it real quick. But not if it affects your family. One major fatality affects hundreds of people, and it’s something that’s preventable.”

There were 81 fatal crashes in Rhode Island last year, and 42 involved speed, according to the state Department of Transportation. Out of 87 fatalities in 2005, 40 involved speed. Providence County has the highest percentage of speed-related fatal crashes, at 52 percent, followed by Kent and Washington counties at 20 percent each.

Law enforcement is considered one of the best deterrents against speeding. Nearly a quarter of drivers in speed-related fatal crashes from 2001 to ’05 had previous speeding convictions.

Last year, the state police wrote 40,350 speeding tickets and they’ve issued 32,013 tickets so far this year, according to the state police traffic planning unit. The police gained another tool in 2000, when the General Assembly approved a bill that targets aggressive drivers with fines ranging from $260 to $500 and the threat of a minimum 30-day license suspension. Last year, the state police issued 134 aggressive driving charges, and 129 charges so far this year.

One was a Providence man, late for work, whom Brezniak saw driving 75 mph on Route 95 in Warwick last week. The state police write the most traffic violations in this area, with Providence a close second.

SOME OF the excuses that speeders tell the state police are rather pedestrian.

“I’m late.”

“I have to use the bathroom.”

“I’m going to the hospital to visit someone.”

Brezniak says she checks with the hospitals — one man told the truth when he said his wife was in labor — and tells the drivers that speeding will put them in the hospital.

Some argue: “Whadda ’bout the guy who passed me? My speedometer said I was going the speed limit.”

There are the “Don’t you know who I am?” drivers, who hand the troopers their business cards, their military IDs, their “I support the police” stickers.

“I tell them, ‘I asked you for your driver’s license,’ ” Brezniak says.

And, there are the “I know somebody” drivers, who toss around the names of troopers with the hopes of avoiding a ticket.

“My buddy stopped a speeder on the highway, and the guy said, ‘Would it help if I said I know a trooper?’ ” said Sgt. Ernie Quarry. The motorist named the trooper. Unluckily for him, it turned out to be the name of the trooper who had pulled him over.

During last week’s shift, Brezniak heard a new excuse. A Pawtucket man said he was speeding because he had a flat tire — all of the tires looked low. “Are you serious?” Brezniak said, before handing him a ticket. The man tossed it into the back seat and sped back onto Route 95, his bumper sticker, “R.I. troopers — Always there when you need them,” winking in the sunlight.

People don’t realize that speeding gives them less time to react, and also means they’re less likely to survive a crash, said Murray, of AAA.

A car traveling at 55 mph will cover 216 feet in the time it takes a sober and alert driver to react and hit the brakes to stop. At 70 mph, the distance increases to 371 feet. At 90, a car will cover 524 feet before it stops — nearly the length of two football fields. And that’s when the roads are dry and clear.

Today’s vehicles are lighter and faster and loaded with safety features that will protect drivers in normal situations. But at 90 or 100 mph, a car disintegrates, Murray said.

“We’re going at high speeds into fixed objects, where people are being crushed to death,” he said. “People are taking risks that they can’t come back from.”

IT HAS BEEN a week since the burial of a West Warwick man and a Cumberland woman killed in a two-car collision on Route 95 Attleboro.

He’d just gotten a lung transplant, giving him a chance to survive cystic fibrosis. She was a nanny to children with autism. But the promise of their lives ended Halloween morning, when both were seen driving at excessively high speeds and weaving in and out of traffic. Their cars collided, catapulted into a bridge abutment, and exploded.

Yesterday, cars and trucks sped past the scene where the two died. It was as if nothing had happened there.

amilkovi@projo.com