The too-fast lane

State Police Trooper Doug Loring said he once pulled his motorcycle up behind a car doing 100 miles per hour in the passing lane on Route 24 in Brockton, noticed a young man behind the wheel with four older passengers, and thought perhaps the driver was rushing a family member to the hospital. Loring pulled him over.

"The kid said he was going fast because he was in the high-speed lane, and you can drive fast there," said Loring, a 20-year veteran of the force. "I looked at the other people in the car and asked if that's what they thought. Right down to the grandparents, they believed it."

Let the record show: The left lane of any highway is the passing lane, not the high-speed lane. A hefty fine later, the driver had learned a tough lesson.

"It was a $350 education," Loring said of the ticket.

If it seems to you as if all lanes are high-speed lanes these days, as cars fly by while you drive at normal speeds, you're not alone. Officers who patrol the roads feel the same way, and they have stories to prove it.

"Without question, people are going faster, but not just that, they're driving worse," said Trooper David P. McQuade, another 20-year veteran. He estimates that 30 percent of the motorists he sees on patrol are "problem drivers."

Statistics seem to support the troopers.

Last year, state and local police handed out 268,358 speeding citations, according to the Registry of Motor Vehicles. That was 8.1 percent more than in 2005 and about even with the number from 2004. State Police said a number of enforcement initiatives aimed at the worst drivers during the past year may have led to the increase in citations.

The Registry provided The Boston Globe with a breakdown of speeding citations from year to year, up to 2004, showing how fast drivers were allegedly going.

Most drivers cited for speeding were traveling less than 20 miles per hour over the limit. But a Globe analysis of the data from 2000 to 2004 shows that the percentage of drivers cited for speeds that were 20 miles per hour or more over the limit rose steadily during that period.

By 2004, nearly four of 10 of drivers who had been cited were tracked in the 20-plus category. Fifteen percent were clocked at more than 25 miles per hour over the limit, 5.8 percent at 30-plus, and 2.4 percent at 35-plus.

Last month, troopers on patrol between exits 2 and 3 on Interstate 495 in Middleborough found plenty of speeders. On July 19, they aimed high-tech laser radar guns at cars on the highway and in 40 minutes pulled over 16 -- not one for going less than 81 miles per hour, the fastest going 86, on a road with a limit of 65.

Following the flow of traffic is one of the biggest excuses speeders give, police said, and on this day that excuse flowed freely. At least one driver was issued a warning because she had not been stopped for speeding in decades, but others faced stiff fines.

Speeding tickets aren't cheap. The minimum fine is $100, with $10 added for every mile per hour over the limit. Tack on insurance surcharges, and driving too fast can cost you a bundle -- if you get nailed.

"Most expensive ticket I ever wrote was $1,180 for a young driver," said Trooper Ed Lavoie, a 15-year veteran. "He was going 99 in a construction zone" -- where fines double -- "on Route 140 in New Bedford. And he went right by two cruisers parked at the site."

The driver wasn't drinking, but a buddy was -- an automatic $500 open-container fine for the driver.

"He was a nice enough kid," Lavoie said. "I felt badly about writing him up, but I had to."

Patricia Leavy, incoming chairwoman of the sociology and criminology department at Stonehill College in Easton, sees speeding as a manifestation of a person's need to "push on the border of normal" and a reflection of the harried times in which we live.

"Once they get used to driving at 70, that's the norm for them; they fail to see it as speeding. Then the speeding norm increases," she said.

"People are overextended and stressed, in a constant and unnecessary state of emergency. Getting somewhere really important and just going to the store take on the same urgency."

And drivers stuck in traffic seem angst-ridden, Leavy said.

"They have a massive look of stress," she said. "If you're late for a meeting or to pick up your child at school, that's one thing. But just about anyone stopped in traffic looks like they're in a panic, and though not all are going to life-shattering events, they're less able to discern the difference."

State Police see it firsthand. "Remember the campaign years ago about defensive driving?" McQuade said. "Now it's get-out-of-my-way driving. People don't take time to get where they're going."

Speeding is one of the biggest factors in traffic crashes, according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration.

The agency's figures show that in 2005, the latest year for which a breakdown of figures is available, speed contributed to 13,113 deaths nationwide -- 30 percent of all fatalities that year.

Massachusetts was 32d in the nation in fatal crashes in 2005, with 442. Last year, 430 people died in traffic crashes.

But the danger doesn't seem to keep speeds down, State Police say.

One reason is that driving faster is easier with modern vehicles, Lavoie said.

"When I was growing up, you got a beater car that was lucky to go 60," he said.

"Today," Loring added, "kids in their daddy's Mercedes are doing 100."

According to troopers, the worst examples of dangerous driving in recent years are young men on motorcycles pulling stunts on busy highways, including wheelies at deadly speeds.

"We see a lot of that," Trooper Paul Sullo said. "High-speed rider, they call themselves. They even have names. There's the Operating to Endanger group and the South Shore Stunters." Some even have their friends videotape the action. "It's nuts, but we get five or six calls about that every weekend," he said.

Not long ago, Lavoie said, he pulled over a young man who was riding his motorcycle at 100 miles per hour.

The mangled remains of a motorcycle involved in a fatal crash only a few days earlier -- a crash that killed a man going 128 miles per hour -- were back at the barracks. Lavoie seized the opportunity for an object lesson.

"I brought that kid to the barracks and showed him what was left of that bike," Lavoie said. "He was moved to tears, he was so shook up. My message got through -- along with a $450 ticket."

But would the message stick?

"Who knows?' Lavoie said with a shrug. "I can only hope so."

Matt Carroll of the Globe staff contributed to this report.