Olympic gold medalist Sha’Carri Richardson has been charged with driving 104 miles per hour in a 65 miles per hour zone on State Road 429. 

That is almost beyond belief.  

Not that an elite athlete might feel above the law or might make such a desperately bad decision or even that some motorist we’ve never heard of might do so. What’s hard to believe is that anybody noticed.   

Weaving in and out of traffic at high speed and performing the ultimate discourtesy of endangering the lives of people around you is pretty much business as usual on major highways.  

I have to drive my wife’s car to the airport because mine won’t maintain 85 mph well enough to keep me from ending up as a hood ornament. We’ll detour across entire states, stopping at hundreds of traffic lights and adding days to a trip to avoid I-95 – which I am pretty sure got its name from the average speed that people try to go.  

I-75, by the way, is a reference to the upper IQs of most of those on it.  

Alternate roads are a big topic at Hampton Inns among older people who have been chased off the interstate or deprived of the pleasure they used to get out of car travel. 

And we’re not the ones doing anything wrong. Even at 74, I can do 75. But if I do, I’m liable to abuse, rude gestures and some distracted driver trying to park a GMC Yukon in my back seat. 

This is not just a traffic thing any more, it’s assault. There are so many victims in the same demographic that this is practically ahate crime – motorized elderly abuse. It’s also intimidation, defined federally as “actions designed to induce fear, coerce behavior, or prevent someone from exercising their legal rights.” 

I haven’t read the Constitution closely, but surely we’ve got the right to drive legally and to use some portion of the roads we paid for. Not to mention the cruel irony that my Social Security “benefit” is taxed and part of it goes for buying speed-limit signs. 

What is it about this country making laws and not enforcing them? Do we just not want the billion dollars a day we could be collecting in speeding fines on I-95 alone? 

If it is too much for the Highway Patrol, give the job to AT&T and Verizon. Your phone knows everything about you, including where you are at any given time. If your phone is 100 miles further down a road than it was an hour ago, you’re busted.  

Better yet, some vigilante justice could do the trick and would be more satisfying for us victims. Put an identification code and a scanner on all vehicles and let motorists vote on who’s driving like a jerk. If a car tailgates, zips through traffic carelessly, cuts you off, or is generally reckless and annoying, you push a button on your steering wheel to report it.  

After a certain number of reports, a fine would be issued electronically, charged to the phone bill. Enough additional jerk votes and the vehicle is shut down, just like they do with golf carts that get too close to the greens or go out of bounds.  

That would leave a lot of pedestrians on the road in harm’s way, but just think of the exercise benefits. If enough people have to walk back to New Jersey from Central Florida, we’d have a surplus of highly developed athletes, maybe even Olympic class. 

That might come in handy in case we have to replace a few who are in jail.