most of the newsgroups removed except for misc.legal, added rec.autos.driving and misc.transport.road and cc'd mail reply to poster
begin quotation posted at 2005-10-18T17:40
My reply deals with the legal issues, so I've cut out most of the other groups.
They have insane asylums in Georgia, right? This kid is absolutely crazy. I normally never say this, but I hope for his sake and ours, he never gets a license.
Big buttumptions here. I'm going to be realistic and buttume he has a serious wreck.
Air surveillance will get the speed, but you still have to pull over the offending vehicle somehow. The trooper has to be far up the road enough to get up to somewhere close to 180.
Has he been to jail before? It's easy to say that if he hasn't.
I don't know Georgia law that well. According to confirmed by reading the code for yourself. speeding is a misdemeanor, but does not give a maximum fine for 35 or more over; 17-10-3 (replace the numbers in that last URL) says the maximum fine is $1,000 and maximum jail term is 12 months, a far cry from the few days he is expecting to serve (unless his definition of "few" goes up to a hundred). Now, I'm not sure whether or not that's day-for-day, but it's entirely possible and I wouldn't want to find out the hard way.
Quite possibly, he loses one, he loses both. Florida might want him to turn in his Georgia license just to get a license in Florida to begin with. Telling Florida you don't have a license in another state is not advisable if you pull up to take the test in a car with Georgia plates.
Even if he doesn't, I know Texas has a law against possessing more than one currently valid driver's license, and I would suspect at least one of Florida or Georgia does. If both Florida and Georgia take thumbprints, he'll likely get caught when they compare them (Texas does this).
It's very likely this is a moot point given the probabililty of an accident, but the odds are high he would only be able to drive as self-insured (if Georgia lets you do this; Texas does) if he still has a license, as no sane insurance company would insure him once getting wind of this. If I ran an insurance company out of my own pocket, I'd sooner bet the limit of the liability policy on roulette in Las Vegas than insure him after a 180 in a 65 speeding ticket. Being self-insured is not easy to do either, you basically have to show you have enough buttets to eat a loss up to the limits of liability insurance.
Given the very real possibility he causes an accident or does something else to the car, yes. At the least, they can sue for any damages to the car, even those that would otherwise be buttumed to have happened from previous renters.
Already answered, as I'm buttuming he will. See Georgia code 40-6-393 for "kill": 3 to 15. I'm buttuming the answer for "maim".
-- * * Shawn K. Quinn ----* Houston, TX, USA
