Driving northbound, pushing 80 miles per hour, interstate traffic either kept pace or passed me. Cars passed to the left and to the right.

Rarely did I pass a car, or even a truck. Though nearly 10 miles over the speed limit, I was moving slower than most other drivers. Drivers numbering in the hundreds, the thousands, in the northern part of the state.

On the road with 10,000 criminals.

All sorts of criminals.

These criminals were burly truck drivers, middle-aged moms, businessmen in suits, bikers wearing leather, little old ladies with white hair, teen-agers, cars filled with families, spring-breakers, car-poolers, acquaintances, white people, black people, all kinds of people, hairy people, bald people, affluent people in the latest Lexus, possibly less affluent people in a junker from 1993.

On the road with 10,000 criminals.

These criminals were from all over. License plates ranged from Georgia and Florida to New York, from California to Maine, from Texas to Wyoming, even folks from Canada.

On the road, you can meet criminals from everywhere.

This is no judgment. I was one of them. Had I slowed down to the speed limit or below, I would have been on the road with 9,999 criminals, but that’s not the name of this column. Nope. I was one of the 10,000, and we were all breaking the law. I was part of the pack.

I won’t admit the exact time, date or location, because this isn’t an admission of guilt as much as it is a confession that I was driving over the speed limit — about 9,999 other people and myself.

And it happens every day, on roads across the United States. Ten-thousand is a low-ball number. Criminals run in packs numbering in the millions on the nation’s highways.

Watching so many people break the laws of the land, a law posted on a sign every few miles, you can’t help wondering what other laws they might break if they felt they could get away with it. And, again, not people you’d stereotype as lawbreakers, but people who seem as all-American as apple pie or mom. All of them barreling up the road, breaking the law as easy as pressing an accelerator.

Sure, the sight of a police officer slows all of these vehicles down. But it’s not so much an act of contrition as it is the hope of not getting caught, of not being singled out as the one who must pay penance for the other 9,999 criminals who happened to slow down in time to avoid being ticketed.

Then 10,000 criminals cut their eyes to see the police car vanish in their rearview mirrors, growing smaller quicker and quicker, as each car increases its speed.

And I couldn’t help thinking, driving along, running with this bad company that I was keeping, if maybe so many people speed simply because we’re a nation of laws with too many laws.

Speed limits are essential. They save lives. But we’re a land where people are increasingly treated like criminals. Security checks at airports ensure we’re not terrorists. Identity checks to buy allergy medicines ensure we’re not meth heads. Drug tests at work ensure we’re not liabilities. Background checks to join various organizations ensure we’re not any number of things.

So, in a country where the law-abiding are treated like outlaws, perhaps, the only way a lot of folks feel they can find the land of the free is to see it blurring past their car windows at 10 to 20 to 30 miles past the posted speed limit.

All in the company of other Americans, on the road with 10,000 criminals.

Dean Poling is an editor with The Valdosta Daily Times.