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For most law enforcement agencies, preventing speeding is a major traffic management challenge. Agencies deploy a wide range of tools to nab offenders and ensure roadway safety. When speeding spirals into serious injury accidents or fatalities, technology again offers quick scene investigations and cleanup, ensuring officers and drivers are safe throughout. Today’s technological tools are timely, given diminishing resources and budgets at police departments. They require fewer personnel to operate compared with prior manual methods and yield potent, measurable results.
Two main approaches are used to enforce speed limits. One approach involves tracking and measuring vehicle speeds and includes various devices, such as lidar, radar and video. A second approach is speed cameras, whereby radar signals can be used to trigger cameras that photograph speeding vehicles as they pass a specified point (usually a red light at an intersection).
Lidar and radar speed enforcement systems are actively used on high-speed roads. Radar is made in stationary and moving models, whereas lidar is stationary. Each of these two types of speed detection has its own legitimate applications. With radar, an officer can pick up a vehicle well over a mile away. Radar puts a wide path of detection (a 12–14-degree width) down the road. Lidar’s advantage over radar is that it uses a very narrow width (3 feet wide at 1,000 feet). Lidar is also target-specific.
Watching Your Back
When you couple speed with a short distance between cars, disaster isn’t far behind. To help police agencies combat tailgating, Laser Technology Inc. (LTI) developed its product “Distance Between Cars” (DBC). According to LTI, DBC is the only firmware of its kind that calculates accurate measurements between vehicles, both in distance and time. It measures the separation between two moving vehicles.
The Golden (Colo.) Police Department recently acquired an LTI UltraLyte 100 LR laser equipped with DBC capability.
“We’ve been observing a lot of rear-end collisions at four-lane highways with traffic lights in Golden and the surrounding area,” says Officer Jeff Kreutzer, “because people aren’t paying attention to whether or not they’re too close to the front car.”
Kreutzer notes that the rear-end collisions have tripled roughly over the last four years. Therefore, his traffic unit is targeting the jurisdiction’s accident-prone areas more heavily with DBC. Kreutzer said he looks for a consistent distance (of following too closely), from a quarter to a half a mile. “I’m able to take two readings within that interval. The first reading measures the speed of the first vehicle, and the second reading measures the speed of the second vehicle and displays the time between the vehicles.”
The user then can toggle to display the distance between vehicles. Kreutzer adds that the DBC makes him more keenly aware of specific distances. “Within a half day of working with it (DBC), I got to the point where I could visually estimate the time interval between cars and be extremely accurate. It’s a confirmation of what we’ve known all these years (about tailgating), but now we have a way to validate it.”
In particular, LTI and Kustom Signals have pioneered speed enforcement with broad offerings of portable, handheld laser and laser/photo evidence systems.
Officer safety is the primary benefit of the Stalker Radar dash-mounted radar, the Directional Sensing Radar (DSR 2X). It can simultaneously measure four target zones in stationary mode and two target zones in moving mode (conventional radar can only monitor traffic in one target zone). Particularly helpful with the DSR 2X is that it can alert the patrol officer of rear approaching traffic as he or she pulls out into the stream. “Just in case officers are not aware of their rear traffic, if there’s a vehicle closing really fast and the officer needs to know about it in order to take action, this is what the rear traffic alert is designed for,” explains Jim Shaw, marketing manager for Stalker Radar.
Video Assists, Radar & Lidar
Police departments are also embracing speed enforcement systems that incorporate video. These include lidar systems incorporating digital video, and in-car video systems that interface with radar and lidar devices by giving vehicle speed readings on the screens of the in-car video systems. Manufacturers like Digital Ally are major suppliers of the in-car video systems, along with Kustom Signals, and Decatur Electronics, a maker of products integrating both traffic radar and police in-car video systems in one unit.
One of the most effective ways to address speed enforcement is by looking at data tied to serious injury crashes and fatalities and where they occur most. That’s the opinion of Lowell Porter, director of the Washington Traffic Safety Commission and a board member of the Governors Highway Safety Association. Porter argues that law enforcement agencies should concentrate efforts on stretches of roadway where the data says more people are dying or being severely injured as a result of speeding.
“We build our educational component off of this,” Porter explains. “We try to convey that speed enforcement effort is not about writing tickets, but about trying to get people to slow down because the risk they face on particular stretches of roadway is X-percent higher than other places.”
Porter observes that speed enforcement is a struggle for the law enforcement community because although speeds can be reduced, there’s a heavy maintenance component. “If you perform good education, public awareness and back it up with enforcement,” he adds, “speeding generally stays in check. If you don’t include a maintenance component with all of this, the behavior changes back to what it was before fairly quickly.”
Nick Ackerson, LTI’s director of marketing, emphasizes that the only way to truly deter habitual speeders and aggressive drivers is “to ensure you have solid proof no matter what.” He adds, “Adding a lidar speed enforcement program, and one that is particularly focused on tailgating, can make a difference in slowing people down, and reducing crashes, injuries and deaths.”
Stand Up in Court
Officer Robert Barrett of the Columbus (Ohio) Division of Police agrees. In fact, he arranged for LTI’s TruCAM, a laser system that uses a built-in capability for catching speeders on video, to be independently tested and evaluated. Officer Barrett supplied his findings to the Franklin County (Ohio) Municipal Court. As a result, the court ruled the TruCAM is scientifically reliable and accurate. It can be used by LEOs to measure vehicle speed within Franklin County. The ruling is the first of its kind in the nation for TruCAM.
Digital video evidence of speeding infractions isn’t just a matter of recording the speeding, but also the conditions where the car was speeding, such as a school zone, says Officer Barrett. He stresses that officer testimony is, as always, key to proving cases of speed infractions.
“The TruCAM shows people what the officer sees,” says Barrett. “It bolsters the officer’s testimony. It should petrify the speeding public.”
Although lidar, radar and video speed enforcement are effective technologies, Porter, of the Governors Highway Safety Association, feels automated speed enforcement, such as red-light cameras at intersections, is proving to be a good complement, especially for prompting changes in driving behavior.
Red-Light Cameras Can Lower Violations
Charles Territo, vice president of communications for American Traffic Solutions, says his firm’s product, the Axsis RLC-300 Intersection Safety Camera, is effective in recording red-light violators 24/7. The high-resolution camera views all lanes simultaneously to ensure violators are detected. It extracts license plate images and records on video any violating vehicle.
“Not only does it reduce collisions and crashes at intersections, but we also see a significant reduction in violations over time,” says Territo.
Chief Robert Musco of the Green Cove Springs (Fla.) Police Department, which has installed the Axsis RLC-300 cameras at three intersections, says his data shows that there are nearly 15 red-light runners per day per intersection per direction.
“The videos are unbelievable,” Chief Musco said, noting that some show 18-wheelers running red lights at 71 mph through a 30-mph zone. “We look at those videos that show drivers completely running the red light,” says Chief Musco. “Those are the offenders that will hurt somebody and that citizens want addressed. These offenders are issued violations with photos and video.”
Cameras Self-Funded
Chief Musco plans to conduct a study to see how many of his city’s residents are red-light violators compared to non-city resident violators. “The educational factor of this study will come when I can compare this data,” Chief Musco said. Meanwhile, the ATS red-light cameras are working so well that their success has prompted law enforcement officials from neighboring cities, including Jacksonville, to visit Green Cove Springs and observe the cameras in action. Those cities are now preparing to have red-light camera systems of their own installed.
“Government itself is in financial straits right now,” explains Chief Musco. “We need to embrace technology, like the red-light cameras, that will save taxpayers’ dollars and prevent officers’ lives from being at risk at traffic stops.”
What’s more, the ATS red-light cameras are self-funded. A city that buys the cameras is charged a monthly fee by ATS for usage. If the revenues generated from violations don’t cover the total monthly fee, ATS absorbs the cost difference.
Although red-light cameras have faced their critics, they’re good at preventing certain types of auto accidents, specifically right-angle crashes, which are particularly dangerous. Effectiveness varies, depending on attributes of the intersection and the installation, so it’s important to work with vendors to set up cameras where they’ll work best.
Also, the public, for the most part, doesn’t like red-light cameras. Department leadership should be aware of this and get out in front of the issue. Emphasize that improved public safety is a major reason for the install.
Conclusion
Despite an ailing economy, speeders remain a menace on our roads that law enforcement must handle. By holding them accountable, you will reduce speeds and, in turn, reduce traffic injuries and fatalities. Your department may have fewer resources at its disposal to do so. This makes it doubly important to invest in technologies that will make officers more effective, efficient and safe in their role as traffic managers.
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