A team of cops wearing hard hats and orange safety vests of work-zone crews delivered 88 speeding tickets in less than four hours along a stretch of Florida interstate highway as they initiated "Operation Hard Hat."
The sting operation was organized in an attempt to get the attention of drivers who blast through highway work zones--a practice that has contributed to 134 deaths and more than 12,000 injuries since 1997. Troopers in work-zone gear clocked the passing speeders in the zones and radioed ahead to motorcycle patrol officers, who stopped and ticketed the speeders with double fines and assessment of up to four points against drivers' licenses.
The trap, set up along I-95 in Nassau and St. Johns counties in late July, were similar to a Jacksonville Sheriff's Office operation in 1999 in which officers posed as homeless people, stranded motorists and construction workers to catch speeders and red-light runners. That operation, titled "Operation You Never Know," generated 111 tickets in four hours.