UPDATED: Tuesday, June 2, 2009 --- 6:38 p.m.

A rash of high speed crashes and tickets have Dane County Deputies worried for your life.

A select few are making the roads unsafe for others and sadly, there are deaths to prove it.

As a driver it's all too easy laugh at or shrug off warnings from law enforcement about speeding but what we've seen in the last few weeks is anything but funny.

A YouTube video, in a nutshell, illustrates a deathly serious problem on our roads. It was taken by a passenger as a 17 year old driver flys past other vehicles on highway 151 near Verona, approaching 160 miles per hour before the joyride ends.

Amazingly no one was injured in the crash but others haven't been so lucky.

Elise Schaffer with the Dane County Sheriff's Office says, "In some of these cases it's young people that think they're invincible and as we've seen in this recent fatality crashes that's just not the case."

A few weeks ago on highway 51 a crash left one young lady dead and another with life threatening injuries and an 18 year old man died Saturday morning after he lost control of his car on highway 69 in the Town of Montrose.

Schaffer says, "We've certainly seen some instances in the past few weeks that certainly make us realize that it is a problem and something that we want to bring to people's attention."

Like the driver in the YouTube video, others have narrowly escaped serious injury or death. Deputies stopped a man going 120 mph in 65 zone last week with a passenger in the car and days before stopped someone going 115 in a 55.

Schaffer says, "What we've seen in the last couple weeks is it can be deadly."

The scary part here is that these drivers aren't only a serious risk to themselves but their passengers and maybe even more frightening, the helpless other drivers on the road.

According to the department of transportation last year speed related crashes led to 187 deaths and more than 11-thousand injuries.

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Posted Tuesday, June 2, 2009---10:15 a.m.

Press Release from DCSO:

Madison, WI. June 2, 2009 – With recent fatal traffic crashes on US Highway 51, State Highway 69, and other potentially deadly incidents encountered by Dane County Sheriff’s Deputies, the Sheriff’s Office wants to remind motorist that operating a vehicle at a high rate of speed can have deadly consequences.

Just last week, a Dane County traffic team deputy stopped an 18-year-old male from Stoughton traveling at 120 mph in a 65 mph zone. The stop occurred on HWY 14 near Byrne in Fitchburg. He had a young female passenger, much like the fatal crash that had occurred just days before on US Highway 51 in the town of Dunn. Both occupants were wearing seatbelts, but deputies warn that at such a high rate of speed, if a crash had occurred, seatbelts may not have saved them.

In another recent incident, a deputy stopped a driver in the town of Sun Prairie traveling 115 MPH in a 55 mph zone. These extreme speeds put not only the occupants of those vehicles at high risk, but anyone who may encounter them on the roadway is a potential target.

According to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, in 2008 there were 27,311 speed related crashes on our state’s highways. Those crashes resulted in 187 deaths and 11,223 injuries. This is why the Dane County Sheriff’s Office continues to make traffic education and enforcement a high priority…it saves lives.