How we reported this story

Separately, reporters obtained a database containing nearly 4 million records from the Florida Highway Patrol of citations issued on Florida interstates between 2014 and 2018. The Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles department initially resisted providing the database, forcing the newspaper to have a lawyer intervene, a process that took several months. In that database, locations on Interstate 95 were identified in a myriad of ways (such as SR 9 or I-95 or I 95 or I95 or State Road 9) and with thousands of nearby crossroads or mile markers, requiring converting the location field to one consistent identifier for tallying and analysis.