Driver says he gets harassed for obeying speed limits (i-poll)

A Pinellas County driver says he is tired of being harassed for not breaking the law.

Aaron Gehrs said he drives the speed limit on the Belleair Beach Causeway, which seems to be a problem for other drivers.

"I was driving over the bridge, I was going down the other side and I had the speed limit sign saying 29 mph the whole way down," he said.  "I had the car next to me say he was going to run me off the road the next time he saw me on the road."

Something similar happened to Belleair Beach City Manager Nancy Gonzalez, but with a different outcome.

"Maybe six months ago, I was passed on the bridge," she said. "Fortunately a deputy was going across the bridge, saw it, did a U-turn on the bridge, came back, pulled into our parking lot and issued a citation."

Gehrs said that when the new bridge opened police patrolled it all the time, but now he sees them only once in a while.

Records bear out his observations. The cities on either side of the bridge hired more police in the first 30 days. Since then the number of citations has averaged about 50 each month.

But with only one police officer contracted by the county to the city, the city would rather have that officer patrolling their streets than parked on the causeway.

A radar device is in place to help drivers monitor their speed, but many of them blow through it anyway.

Resident Dale Stewart lives on the Bluffs side of the causeway. He said he wants the speed limit raised.

"If you look at any other causeways, it's 40 to 45, like Clearwater Causeway," he said.

But until the limit is raised, Gehrs and the city have a message for drivers on the causeway.

"The speed limit's 30 miles an hour," he said. "That means you can't go over 30 miles an hour."