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.
So now technology has developed to the point where different ways have been cleverly created to give out tickets quicker and less expensively.
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 maybe the final factor was that in the time it took for said police officer to pull you over and write the ticket dozens more drivers go speeding by! Money lost down the drain.
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!
Since it was deployed photo radar has increased revenue for municipalities that employ it, maximized enforcement resources for other duties, and increased conviction rates in traffic court. Also drivers insurance rates went up.
Currently only 20 states or so use the photo radar for speeding detection, but it is on the rise.
The photo radar is growing in popularity simply because of the points stated previously.
Many cities are beginning to join the growing ranks of municipalities using photo radar because of the automaticity of its revenue generation.
Photo radar can give a financially troubled city an almost immediate injection of revenue.
Looking at it from the municipalities’ point of view it makes perfect sense. One photo radar can do the work of what would normally take a small army of real officers.
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.
For instance say the speed limit of a particular road is set at 45 mph, the photo radar can be set to activate if it detects a speed over 50 mph.
When a car passes the photo radar unit and is traveling faster than the predetermined cut off point it will snap a photo of your license plate. And so it goes 24/7, courtesy of big brother hundreds of people can be cited this way.
The following day, a few people will gather all of the pictures that were taken and begin to examine them.
What the examiners are looking for is the clarity of the picture and if the plate number can be read.
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