Virginia has a new tool to stop speeders. Here’s how it works.

This news article was originally published by The Virginian Pilot.

Most days on the highway, it often seems Virginia is for speeders.

Faced with the reality that fines, driver’s license suspensions or even the threat of jail time didn’t seem to make a dent in Virginia’s speeding problem, state lawmakers recently adopted a new strategy.

Under new legislation effective July 1, a judge must order a person convicted of reckless driving over 100 mph — a so-called “super speeder” — to install an intelligent speed assistance device in their vehicle. Judges have the option to mandate the use of the device for reckless driving convictions on a restricted license instead of fully suspending a person’s driver’s license. The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles will also offer use of the device in lieu of license suspension for drivers who have racked up too many demerit points.

“I think every person can come up with a reason why he or she speeds on any one given day,” said Holly Dalby, a spokesperson for AAA Tidewater. “There’s always an excuse.”

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But 342 people were killed in Virginia in speed-related crashes last year, which she said shows why slowing down and driving responsibly is so important.

The DMV reported 22,529 speed-related crashes in 2025. From January through June, preliminary data shows 9,480 speed-related crashes and 137 fatalities, a department spokesperson said.

Michael Travars is president of LifeSafer, one of the companies that makes intelligent speed assistance devices. He said they use existing GPS technology previously employed in fleet vehicles. The devices track the posted speed limit based on the car’s GPS location and physically prevent the vehicle from speeding, behaving in a sense like a cruise control with a hard stop that the driver can’t override.

AAA officials and Travars hosted a demonstration of the technology for local media on Monday in Virginia Beach. He lauded Virginia’s lawmakers for their receptiveness to the idea.

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“When the technology was explained to them, they didn’t say ‘No one’s done that before, come back later.’ They said, ‘We would save lives with that technology’ and they pushed it out there,” Travars said. “We did demos with the legislators and they said, ‘Yeah, this works. We’re going to do this.’” Del. Patrick Hope, D-Arlington, sponsored the bill.

While the device does not automatically apply the brakes or cut off the engine, it can detect tampering or removal attempts. Installation costs up to $100, monthly leasing is $130 and the monitoring fee is $50 per month, according to the Virginia Alcohol Safety Action Program, the agency overseeing the intelligent speed device initiative.

“The most important thing for my client is that they’re still able to go to work,” said Kimberly Schreiber, a defense attorney who attended this week’s demonstration.

Some people keep driving with a suspended license because they feel they have no other option for transportation. But Schreiber acknowledged that doing so usually just gets people into more legal trouble.

Nine people have been referred to the speed monitoring program as of July 14, according to the safety action agency. One person prequalified and eight were through court orders. Those referrals include a person convicted of reckless driving for going 100 mph in a 65 mph zone in Newport News. Another of the referrals involved a person convicted of going 49 mph in a 25 mph school zone in Lynchburg.

Under Virginia law, reckless driving by speed is defined as going 20 mph or more over the posted limit or over 85 mph regardless of the applicable speed limit.

Schreiber said the speed monitoring device is also an option parents can use for new teen drivers to help reinforce safe behaviors behind the wheel.

“We’ve had parents say that they put it in for their kid,” she said, “but then when they drove the same car, they didn’t realize how much they were speeding, and they said, ‘You know what? This was good for me to at least experience it and see that it’s probably my behavior that needs support too.’”

A driver demonstrates how LifeSafer Intelligent Speed Assistance prevents the car from operating above the speed limit Monday, July 20, 2026. (Stephen M. Katz / The Virginian-Pilot)

146 mph ticket in Hampton

State police data backs the assertion that speeding is an endemic issue on Virginia’s highways.

In the last 12 months, state police cited a driver for going 146 mph in a 60 mph zone in Hampton. Troopers stopped a driver for going 148 mph in a 55 mph zone in Fairfax County in March. And in May 2025, troopers cited a person for going 151 mph, also in Fairfax County, according to the available data.

Overall, state police reported law enforcement agencies across Virginia made 71,115 reckless driving stops for speeding statewide from July 2025 through June. During that time, data also shows law enforcement agencies stopped 18,447 people for reckless driving by speed in the agency’s Division Five, which includes all of Hampton Roads’ cities and many surrounding counties. That’s the highest number of citations out of the state police’s seven divisions. Virginia Beach had 3,843 stops reported, followed by Northampton County on the Eastern Shore with 3,231.

However, Matt Demlein, a state police spokesperson, said there’s a caveat with the speeding data: not all divisions used the state’s electronic summons system for the entirety of the last 12 months, and not every citation issued is entered into the electronic system. That means it’s possible a higher speed may have been missed, Demlein said in an email.