Conventional speed enforcement has its limitations. You can only pull over one vehicle at a time. This method is unproductive, slow and expensive from the government’s point of view.
Now with technology growing at a rapid pace, new and alternative methods have been created.
The old system of traffic enforcement simply wasn’t doing the job of making the kinds of money our government wants to make.
There are just too many factors: First, they have to hire the cop to pull you over. This also means the use of a police vehicle which also costs money. Next, the traffic stop itself is a dangerous situation for the officer and potentially other drivers or pedestrians. Third, after it’s all said and done, the driver may still end up driving away without a ticket (if the officer decides to just give a warning).
And last, in the time it took the officer to pull you over and write a ticket, many more people go speeding by, so there was money lost from not pulling them over!
So the photo radar was introduced to take handing out tickets to a whole new level. They can do the job of many officers.
There’s no longer the need to actually pull people over anymore. With traffic cameras, speeding tickets are mailed directly to the home of the offender. Talk about service!
Photo radar has been effective for municipalities. It has saved tremendous amounts of time and resources of police departments. It maximizes resources available for other enforcement, conviction rates went up, and also your insurance premiums.
The age of photo radar is still in its infancy. To date, there are only 20 or so states that employ this method of speed detection – California, Colorado, Arizona, Ohio and Washington to name a few.
The photo radar is growing in popularity simply because of the points stated previously.
More and more cities across the nation are beginning to catch on to the money making potential that photo radar has. Its relative simplicity and monetary benefits makes photo radar a good choice for many cities.
Cash strapped cities are finding out that when they install photo radar it gives them immediate money generation.
Just think about it, within a short time a photo radar can take pictures of many speeding motorists, what it would take many officers to accomplish traditionally.
How does it work? Photo radar, as the name suggests, is a combination of a camera coupled with a radar gun. The two work together. The radar gun is preprogrammed to function at a particular speed.
Say the speeding limit is 55 mph on a stretch of road but it detects a car cruising at 60 mph it will take a picture.
When this happens, the radar gun will instantly trigger the camera to take a picture of the entire vehicle (sometimes it’s just the back, other times its the back and front of the vehicle) to get the license plate information. The picture is electronically filed away and the process is carried on throughout the day and night. Hundreds of individuals will have their picture taken – courtesy of Big Brother.
On the following day the photo radar pictures will be accessed and gone through by several people.
The clarity of the license plate will be examined to see if it is readable. If it cant be it will be discarded.
Once the legible pictures from the photo radar have been determined and the license plate numbers ran through the bureau of motor vehicles database, if the car is registered to say, a female, and there is a female driving the vehicle, BINGO, a speeding ticket will be on its way to the registered owners address.
This process is repeated until all the pictures from the photo radar have been gone through, until the next batch arrives. Please let this article be a warning for you to look out for photo radar enforcement!
Learn more about beating speeding tickets. Stop by Steven Swihart’s site where you can find out all about traffic violations and the best advice to getting them dismissed.
Tags: affordable car insurance, automobile insurance, driving, family, law, law enforcement, speeding tickets