10 ms·

How true is 'Speed Enforced by Aircraft' Sign? (2016)

57 points by redtriumph 4y ago

meerita 4y ago
The solution to speed problems is to increase the speed limits on roads. Cars today are way better than 20 years ago and can handle 80mph with easy.
- para_parolu 4y ago
  Yet people are still the same. Increasing speed on some road may make sense. But it’s not a solution to all speed problems.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - akira2501 4y ago
    Speed is rarely the only factor in a fatal crash. Alcohol and drugs are the more pertinent issues. Aside from that, pedestrians are 1/6 of all fatalities, as are motorcycles. Most remaining fatalities are single vehicle accidents. Hard collisions with solid objects, ejections from vehicles and bodies of water are fairly common modes. The rear seat in vehicles is noticeably less safe than the front seats. The time of day in some states shows massive swings in the rate of fatalities, and not always correlated with rush hour traffic patterns. The state you are in also seems to be a large factor, and again, not correlated with overall population density. There's a huge number of data points, and speed does seem like a relatively unimportant one. If you do want to have an impact there, then I suspect that simply redesigning your roads with good considerations for pedestrians would be a better use of your budget.
    - dazc 4y ago
      Everyday you can see the affect that speed has where cars are driving far too close together at speeds where a collision will occur before the driver has mentally registered a need to apply the breaks.
      - akira2501 4y ago
        Everyday you see the effects of many different factors. The point is, you should probably rank them before you decide what you're going to spend millions of dollars on addressing first.
      - meerita 4y ago
        Check Germany, has autobahns
- dazc 4y ago
  The cars are better but not so the drivers of these cars. The laws of physics, meanwhile, stay the same. In my part of the UK there is a growing trend of cars 'flipping over' all by themselves despite the considerable 'skill' of the driver and the 'quality' of the car. Something doesn't add up?
- Mikeb85 4y ago
  The biggest danger isn't keeping the car on the road, it's people's inability to avoid hitting other objects (cars, people, animals, etc...).
- lm28469 4y ago
  With our current pollution and energy issues you probably don't want that https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/autodrag-graph-recreationB-1-themed.png https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/autodrag-gra...
irrational 4y ago
In 1995 we got a ticket on the highway in nowhere eastern Washington. The officer said we had been clocked from an airplane. So… at least back then it was a real thing.
- bombolo 4y ago
  Maybe they lied.
jrboyens 4y ago
I earned myself a ticket years ago, driving along the interstate. Dumb kid driving way too fast. Had a radar detector too, so the "confirmation" from the hidden cop under an overpass didn't match the plane's reading. They "split the difference" and still gave me a nice sized ticket that was tough to pay for. My grandfather summed it up pretty solidly: "No matter how fast you go, you can't outrun radio".
- function_seven 4y ago
  That last phrase I remember as, “You might outrun the motor cop, but you ain’t outrunnin’ the Motorola!”
  - spiritplumber 4y ago
    Which is why the last bank robbery I know of in my city involved an old Iveco truck carrying a radio jammer (the local paper said it was some crazy EMP thing at first). I'll see if I can find the article.
netrus 4y ago
At the beginning of the article, I thought the process were ridiculously inefficient. But it turns out they are quite aware of the economics. The approach reminded me of the Panopticon: If you do not have the resources to observe everyone, you make everyone know you could be observing them, right now. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
mschuster91 4y ago
Quite dystopian if you ask me. Is it not enough that there are police officers and speed traps on the ground, now you have to fear to be watched from the skies all day as well?
- DJBunnies 4y ago
  They can already get probable cause from a helicopter pass.
- jrockway 4y ago
  Dystopian is the day that Apple sells your location information to the local police force and you just get a speeding ticket in the mail every time you drive 1mph over the speed limit. (Is there a statute of limitations on speeding tickets? They can get you for your entire driving career with a mere SQL query!) Speaking of dystopias, I'm surprised that they don't issue speeding tickets based on the time that EZ-PASS sees your transponder in various locations. They must imagine too much backlash, or tacitly endorse some speeding already. (I've never seen someone get a ticket for going 60 in a 55, though I'm sure it must happen.)
  - uni_rule 4y ago
    Considering the defacto speed of 80 on a road that is limited to 65 dominates the whole of New Jersey I think there would be so many people caught in that net they wouldn't be able to properly prosecute it.
  - NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago
    Backlash indeed. Americans would flip their shit. No more EZ-PASS!
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    As usual, it's all about money. If they used Ez-Pass data (remember, Ez-Pass is a private company) to issue speeding tickets, then no one would get an Ez-Pass and they'd have to go back to toll booths. The system only works because drivers believe that Ez-Pass data is only used for toll collection and nothing more. If they used it to hand out 3mph-over tickets, everyone would stop using it.
throwawaylinux 4y ago
> Andrews starts his stopwatch when he flies over one [marker] and stops it when he hits the next. He knows the helicopter's ground speed. And, since he's flying the same speed or slower than the car below, he can tell if the car is speeding. Seems odd to do that and not just time the car passing the markers.
- travisjungroth 4y ago
  Timing a car between markers isn't admissible evidence of speeding under California law. https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/defense/vehicle-code/40801/ https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/defense/vehicle-code/40801/
  - throwawaylinux 4y ago
    That explains it, thank you. I guess the reason for not using GPS or other instruments for ground speed is also legislation?
    - travisjungroth 4y ago
      That one doesn't make any sense to me. The helicopter would certainly have ground speed via GPS. I don't get how you couldn't use that. A car can use its speedometer. I remember seeing a laser pod on the wing of a CHP airplane and talking to them about it, but it was a long time ago and I couldn't confirm it more than finding pictures that show the pod (but maybe it's a camera). Based on my experiences involving journalism and aviation, it is extremely possible that the author incorrectly described what the pilot was doing.
kmonsen 4y ago
In norway they have this system identifying cars several different points along major roads. The longest stretch is about 15 miles. Then they take the average speed you need and ticket based on that. https://www.vegvesen.no/fag/fokusomrader/trafikksikkerhet/automatisk-trafikkontroll/strekningsvis-atk/fylkesvis-oversikt/ https://www.vegvesen.no/fag/fokusomrader/trafikksikkerhet/au... (In Norwegian)
- fingerlocks 4y ago
  Average? Great great place to stop for gas so you can drive as you fast as you want
  - gggggg5 4y ago
    If you're going to go through that kind of trouble, you might as well just register your car in a different country and ignore the cameras.
    - aeno 4y ago
      At least if your car is registered in a European Union country, you will still get a ticket. It takes some days, but eventually it will appear in your mailbox at home. You could get away with simply not paying, as collection would be too much of a hassle. But they'll note your plates and the next time you're back into Norway and your plate gets scanned, they might visit you right on the spot to collect your debts.
      - gggggg5 4y ago
        The magic solution to this is to have the car owned by some legal entity which is not the driver. Fines might arrive, but you can wipe your ass with them. There might be fines associated with the plates, but fines are the responsibility of the driver and not the owner. Even if the cops were able to ID as you the driver in those previous incidents, they would not be able to seize the car (not that this would generally be possible without an extensive legal process anyway). And FWIW in the case of Norway, you will never get stopped for having unpaid fines.
perryizgr8 4y ago
Speed limits don't make sense tbh. They should notify drivers of the design speed for a section of the road, but it shouldn't be treated as a hard limit. Whether a driver is a danger to others or not is a subjective call, we should let police officers make that call, without defining strict criteria. Sometimes a car going at 110 in a 100 is perfectly safe, and another going 50 is extremely dangerous.
- SparkyMcUnicorn 4y ago
  For someone doing 50 in a 100mph zone in the US, you can get a ticket for that currently. In most states the minimum speed limit is usually between 10-15mph under, unless otherwise posted.
- atoav 4y ago
  I live in Germany and regularly travel to neighbouring countries by car. The lack of speed limits on some sections of the German Autobahn makes traveling through that country seriously exhausting. While you just keep on keeping on on non-German highways driving on a German Autobahn section without tempo limit can feel like entering a war. The typical makeup of a three-lane section of German Autobahn is: - Right: trucks, very slow vehicles - Middle: people who go at reasonable speeds (~130 to 160 km/h depending on the terrain) - Left: people who disregard the physics of air resistance and blast without limits This is the ideal, but not what you will encounter on the road. Whenever a truck overtakes another you have to beeak down or use the leftmost lane and make sure the cars that approach from behind with a potential delta of 100+ km/h don't crush you to death. Generally this leads to many stressful and dangerous situations. Speed limits make sense because they make driving safer by deceeasing the possible speed delta between vehicles who share a road.
  - gggggg5 4y ago
    >Left: people who disregard the physics of air resistance and blast without limits Left: some guy in a X5 driving steady 150km/h, not reacting to getting flashed and immediately accelerating if you try to pass on the right. Somehow, as soon as you get out of Germany this stops happening. In France and Benelux you get to comfortably cruise at 250km/h and everyone just moves out of the way. German autobahns are not exhausting because of the lack of speed limits, they're exhausting because of the Germans.
everly 4y ago
One time (early 2000s) my dad was driving across a remote and desolate stretch of Utah, on a motorcycle, doing speeds well into the 3 digit miles per hour. Approaching civilization, he had slowed to a reasonable speed of his own accord and was surprised to be pulled over by a highway patrolman, who proceeded to greet him by name and revealed that a helicopter had been trailing him and retrieved his registration detail from above. The officer was relatively friendly about the whole thing but he received a costly ticket.
- 4gotunameagain 4y ago
  The ticket didn't even pay for the helicopter fuel and the cost of manpower, while zero people were non consensually endangered. How could we rephrase speeding laws so they make sense, instead of this black and white stupidity ?
  - bell-cot 4y ago
    In a country where the first responders, hospitals, etc. are obligated to provide expensive services and care for victims of motor vehicle accidents - regardless of their ability to pay - there is the moral and public policy issue of "My high-speed fun, somebody else's high taxes and medical bills".
    - tristor 4y ago
      Yet, all the research seems to indicate that speeding reduces the occurrence of accidents, it just increases their severity when they do occur (more fatalities). The primary cause of accidents is inattentiveness (usually someone on their phone) and after that alcohol-related accidents. Speeding is not a primary cause, only a proximate cause of the accident, something else caused the accident, speed is only blamed because it exacerbates the result.
      - bell-cot 4y ago
        I'd guess that the research you mention was focused on fairly narrow ranges of speed, road conditions, speeds of the other motorists, etc. Vs. user everly related that his father was doing well over 100MPH. Even ignoring all other factors, the duration of inattentiveness needed to cause an accident, at extreme speeds, is far lower than at legal speeds.
uni_rule 4y ago
Allegedly due to the cost of it and the fact that it is now a bit of an archaic practice relative to radar guns the planes are kept in flight the bare minimum amount of time needed to legally keep the signs up because the idea is still pretty damn intimidating.
- MengerSponge 4y ago
  Ever since I was a kid I've imagined the "enforcement" is done with a strafing pass. Kind of like Judge Dredd piloting an A-10.
travisjungroth 4y ago
I flew out of Sonoma Skypark, near Napa County Airport mentioned in the article. A few times the CHP Cessna 206s landed there. Here's an article on them: https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/article/chips-in-the-sky/ https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/article/chips-in-the-sky/
throwawaysalome 4y ago
[flagged]
bourbonjuggler 4y ago
Virginia still has all of their highway signs to let you know that it's enforced by aircraft. A report came out in 2018 that stated they were no longer using that method of enforcement primarily due to the cost of the program.
- alexjplant 4y ago
  Wasn't it Virginia that was also hauling people off to jail for doing anything in excess of 20 mph over the limit?
  - mikestew 4y ago
    Just about any state in the U. S. could haul you off for 20mph over the limit. I'm not going to look up every state, but I'm aware of several where 20 over is "reckless driving", which can put you in the back of the patrol car while your vehicle gets towed away.
    - alexjplant 4y ago
      According to a journalist [1] > Reckless driving is not a traffic citation, it’s a criminal charge, and a Class One misdemeanor at that. That means it’s the highest level of misdemeanor you can be charged with in Virginia, right below a felony. The maximum penalty for a reckless driving conviction is a $2,500 fine, a six month driver’s license suspension, and up to a year in jail. > See what I mean when I told you it’s serious? They hand it out like it’s Halloween candy, too. You drive 20 mph over the limit, it’s reckless driving. They even charge you with it for failing to properly signal, or when you’re found to be at fault in a car wreck. I’ve heard of some cases where people get 30 days in jail if they speed over 100 mph. > Other Class One misdemeanors in Virginia include animal cruelty, sexual battery, and aiming a firearm at someone. Ordinarily I'd editorialize but in this case I don't see the need. [1] https://jalopnik.com/never-speed-in-virginia-lessons-from-my-three-days-in-1613604053 https://jalopnik.com/never-speed-in-virginia-lessons-from-my...
      - mikestew 4y ago
throw1234651234 4y ago
It's interesting that no one on a tech board mentioned that a drone can now do this 24 hours a day, for basically free, and it would take a very short time to write an AI that watches an object crossing two markers on the road and puts time stamps on them. I am actually glad this isn't there, even though I don't speed, but it's ironic to see people talking about cost. Example articles below. There are at least 10s of systems that can do this from different cheap airborne carriers and watch a huge swath of land (36 square miles from one host), track movement, and record it all at high resolution 24/7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS
- bradknowles 4y ago
  Many years ago, there was a court case here in the US over a fine for excessive average speed over a distance. In the end, the case was decided on behalf of the driver, because the police couldn't prove that the car had not been picked up by a helicopter and moved at high speed through the air, and then put back down on the ground near the other end. I think some laws are going to have to be passed here in the US to make it feasible to use average speed systems. Which I think is actually a good thing. IMO, the police, or whatever system is issuing tickets, should have a minimum necessary amount of information they can prove in court, before they can issue those kinds of tickets.
idkyall 4y ago
>Drones capable of monitoring traffic would be even less cost-effective than helicopters, he said, and a drone wouldn't be able to med-evac anyone. Certainly the med-evac point is valid, but I bet you could come up with a basic traffic monitoring system using an off the shelf Drone today for a fraction of the cost of a helicopter, fuel, and pilot.
- greedo 4y ago
  A helicopter operated by law enforcement will not be staffed or equipped for providing medical services or evac. Life-Flight helicopters are equipped with a huge amount of medical gear and staffed by medical personnel.
  - mikestew 4y ago
    You might want to...reread TFA. Perhaps you missed the last few paragraphs the first time around.
    - Pigalowda 4y ago
      “The chairs and equipment are quickly pulled out and rearranged, and a boy -- conscious and without any obvious major injuries -- is strapped to a stretcher across the floor of the helicopter. I wedge myself back behind the pilot's seat and within 25 minutes from when the call came in, we've delivered him to the roof of the John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek.” An absolutely outrageous misuse of resources for a patient who did not need air evac. These flights aren’t cheap and the patient and family are billed. This isn’t one of those ignore and it will go away kind of medical bills either - it will be a charge from the city for $10,000+ and will absolutely go to collections. There isn’t a trained air medic on board nor is there appropriate medical equipment to handle a patient who needs emergency life saving care and rapid delivery to a trauma 1 hospital. In other words, a patient who qualifies for emergency air evacuation. Strapping a stable and visibly uninjured patient to a gurney and flying to the hospital isn’t helpful, it’s idiotic. We already have enough bullshit trauma 1 activations. There’s no need for more, much less ones delivered by bored traffic pilots.
dver 4y ago
I received an airplane ticket in California back in early 90's. It was the case then, I don't know now, that if there were multiple officers involved in the citation that they both had to show up in court, or the ticket was dismissed. I had heard through a family member that the pilots never showed in court. So I did and it was quickly dismissed.
- sprite 4y ago
  I wish I would have thought of this when I got one in Florida 10 years or so ago.
- brewdad 4y ago
  My buddy got a ticket like this in PA in the 90s. Speed calculated by an airplane with a stopwatch and markings on the road. Came around a curve and a state trooper was in the right lane pointing out which cars needed to pull over. About 8 motorcycle cops were ready with their ticket books. We lived 400 miles away and were definitely going above 90mph, so he ended up paying the ticket rather than traveling back to fight it.
GrumpyNl 4y ago
I did get a ticket like that in the eighties, i still have it. It was with a rented corvette at 9 o clock in the morning. I had to go straight to court to pay the fine. I was on my way back from San Jose to Los Angeles. One of the weirdest experiences in my life.
glangdale 4y ago
I always thought it was an odd turn of phrase; at most, you might have your speed detected by aircraft. "Enforced" always conjured up a picture of speed demons being strafed from above until they slowed down; maybe it's just me?
- philwelch 4y ago
  Yeah, there’s a very old meme that’s a photo of one of those signs with an attack helicopter lurking behind it.
bitwize 4y ago
Speeding on the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the longest contiguous bridge in the world, can have dire consequences for you and other motorists, especially in bad weather. So yes, they have Speed Enforced by Aircraft signs up, and sometimes you can see the police planes as you cross.
chaboud 4y ago
This is a classic application of the mean value theorem. Because your position is a differentiable function, you must, at some point, have been going your average speed over a window of time, and you can be ticketed accordingly. It's interesting to me that Fastrak transponders (electronic toll tags in the Bay Area) in express lanes aren't used to automatically generate tickets given the same understanding.
- zwkrt 4y ago
  If tickets were regularly given out in this way I think it would lead to even worse driving behavior. Sometimes I find myself going 10mph over the speed limit because that is the rate that traffic is going. If I knew that there was some MVT ticketing checkpoint coming up, I might be inclined to suddenly slow way down, stop, pull over, or otherwise freak out.
  - this_steve_j 4y ago
    The data could be used to generate and mail warning tickets to the registered owner of the vehicle, in cases of egregious/reckless mean or a pattern of high speed trips. Whatever that magic “bad” number is could be derived from crunching one or more of their massive data sets on tolls, driver history, violations, traffic volume, crashes with injuries, etc. It could be combined with data from a radar camera at the toll reader to verify the license plate for the transponder account, and identify the owner who is nominally responsible. In some cases where a family/friend is using someone else’s car to drive at highly excessive speeds over multiple trips, the vehicle owner is not aware and may like very much to know! I don’t see how using transponder data in that way is any more or less Orwellian than speed cameras or redlight cameras. In my US city these levy actual, cumulative $100+ fines on the car’s owner. These are “non-moving” violations, so the only impact on driving privileges is from failure to pay the fine.
  - BoorishBears 4y ago
    That's exactly what this sort of enforcement avoids: You're averaging across multiple transponders, so unlike a cop with a LIDAR gun taking a single reading (where people do already suddenly slow down) you'd need to consistently not speed across every single one you pass. In some areas there are several transponders less than a mile apart, so unless you plan on slamming your brakes every few thousand feet you're better off just not speeding - I'm someone who chronically speeds, but I'm also for blanket highway speed enforcement. Right now speeding seems to be about what you can get away with in a really frustrating way: If can learn the right speed traps, or you can chat a cop the right way, or your car even looks a certain way, you can get away with some ridiculous things. Blanket enforcement wouldn't necessarily be regressive either: Regardless of how many tickets you can afford, eventually points stack up and you lose your license
hbarka 4y ago
It was probably truer many years ago, like getting pulled over for dark window tint was true then but largely ignored now. The laws haven’t changed. We just have a new cohort generation of law enforcement officers with different interests, like we have baby boomers, genZ, genX, millennial cops.
LinuxBender 4y ago
I've never received a ticket from an aircraft but we did have CHP in an airplane in the late 70's and early 80's in California. He had a CB radio and would respond to the truckers calling out looking for cops. Winnebago-Bob would reply they are clear. The truckers would speed and several highway patrol would pull all of them over. A bunch of us put a stop to it because his speed trap was on the bottom of a hill on 101 and was risking a jack-knife accident. We all complained to the California Highway Patrol Commissioner and it stopped.
guenthert 4y ago
First time travelling to California ages ago, I had to try how fast this rental car went on a Hwy in the desert (close to Death Valley) with not a soul around. Downhill it went quite well. Then towards me on the right just a few meters about ground an airplane was coming towards me. WTH? It took me a while to realize that this must have been law enforcement. I went mostly by the rules afterwards and didn't receive a ticket. Another time, many years later, I got carried away a bit on my m/c near Mojave. It didn't take long for a cruiser to follow me and flash his lights. After stopping the cop called in his mic ("I got him"), presumably to a helicopter in the air. Don't recall, whether I got a ticket then (over the years I got more stern warnings than tickets). Not long ago, going on Hwy 25 there's a long straight stretch between two hills where it's really tempting to go flat out as there is (or used to be) very little if any traffic. Shortly thereafter a single engine air plane was approaching me left of the road at very low altitude. I was actually wondering whether it would clear the trees in its path, until I realized that he meant for me to slow down ;-} Now I have a Prius and no such worries.
ShakataGaNai 4y ago
Well the CHP still has fixed wings registered to them. Ex N137HP https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberResult?nNumberTxt=137HP https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberResul... You can track them on ADSBExchange: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a095ef https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a095ef And they were in the air yesterday with flight paths along major freeways in the SF Bay Area: https://imgur.com/a/u5hbfAK https://imgur.com/a/u5hbfAK Does that mean conclusively they are doing speed checks? No, but they have the capability. Does the CHP have a lot of these planes? Not that I can find records of, probably few and far between for a state as populous as California... but the treat is real.
aae42 4y ago
My wife swears these are fake because she's never seen anyone pulled over by a plane I love her so much

57 points by redtriumph 4y ago

The solution to speed problems is to increase the speed limits on roads. Cars today are way better than 20 years ago and can handle 80mph with easy.

para_parolu 4y ago
Yet people are still the same. Increasing speed on some road may make sense. But it’s not a solution to all speed problems.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- akira2501 4y ago
  Speed is rarely the only factor in a fatal crash. Alcohol and drugs are the more pertinent issues. Aside from that, pedestrians are 1/6 of all fatalities, as are motorcycles. Most remaining fatalities are single vehicle accidents. Hard collisions with solid objects, ejections from vehicles and bodies of water are fairly common modes. The rear seat in vehicles is noticeably less safe than the front seats. The time of day in some states shows massive swings in the rate of fatalities, and not always correlated with rush hour traffic patterns. The state you are in also seems to be a large factor, and again, not correlated with overall population density. There's a huge number of data points, and speed does seem like a relatively unimportant one. If you do want to have an impact there, then I suspect that simply redesigning your roads with good considerations for pedestrians would be a better use of your budget.
  - dazc 4y ago
    Everyday you can see the affect that speed has where cars are driving far too close together at speeds where a collision will occur before the driver has mentally registered a need to apply the breaks.
    - akira2501 4y ago
      Everyday you see the effects of many different factors. The point is, you should probably rank them before you decide what you're going to spend millions of dollars on addressing first.
    - meerita 4y ago
      Check Germany, has autobahns
dazc 4y ago
The cars are better but not so the drivers of these cars. The laws of physics, meanwhile, stay the same. In my part of the UK there is a growing trend of cars 'flipping over' all by themselves despite the considerable 'skill' of the driver and the 'quality' of the car. Something doesn't add up?
Mikeb85 4y ago
The biggest danger isn't keeping the car on the road, it's people's inability to avoid hitting other objects (cars, people, animals, etc...).
lm28469 4y ago
With our current pollution and energy issues you probably don't want that https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/autodrag-graph-recreationB-1-themed.png https://hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/autodrag-gra...

irrational 4y ago

In 1995 we got a ticket on the highway in nowhere eastern Washington. The officer said we had been clocked from an airplane. So… at least back then it was a real thing.

bombolo 4y ago
Maybe they lied.

jrboyens 4y ago

I earned myself a ticket years ago, driving along the interstate. Dumb kid driving way too fast. Had a radar detector too, so the "confirmation" from the hidden cop under an overpass didn't match the plane's reading. They "split the difference" and still gave me a nice sized ticket that was tough to pay for. My grandfather summed it up pretty solidly: "No matter how fast you go, you can't outrun radio".

function_seven 4y ago
That last phrase I remember as, “You might outrun the motor cop, but you ain’t outrunnin’ the Motorola!”
- spiritplumber 4y ago
  Which is why the last bank robbery I know of in my city involved an old Iveco truck carrying a radio jammer (the local paper said it was some crazy EMP thing at first). I'll see if I can find the article.

netrus 4y ago

At the beginning of the article, I thought the process were ridiculously inefficient. But it turns out they are quite aware of the economics. The approach reminded me of the Panopticon: If you do not have the resources to observe everyone, you make everyone know you could be observing them, right now. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

mschuster91 4y ago

Quite dystopian if you ask me. Is it not enough that there are police officers and speed traps on the ground, now you have to fear to be watched from the skies all day as well?

DJBunnies 4y ago
They can already get probable cause from a helicopter pass.
jrockway 4y ago
Dystopian is the day that Apple sells your location information to the local police force and you just get a speeding ticket in the mail every time you drive 1mph over the speed limit. (Is there a statute of limitations on speeding tickets? They can get you for your entire driving career with a mere SQL query!) Speaking of dystopias, I'm surprised that they don't issue speeding tickets based on the time that EZ-PASS sees your transponder in various locations. They must imagine too much backlash, or tacitly endorse some speeding already. (I've never seen someone get a ticket for going 60 in a 55, though I'm sure it must happen.)
- uni_rule 4y ago
  Considering the defacto speed of 80 on a road that is limited to 65 dominates the whole of New Jersey I think there would be so many people caught in that net they wouldn't be able to properly prosecute it.
- NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago
  Backlash indeed. Americans would flip their shit. No more EZ-PASS!
- midoridensha 4y ago
  As usual, it's all about money. If they used Ez-Pass data (remember, Ez-Pass is a private company) to issue speeding tickets, then no one would get an Ez-Pass and they'd have to go back to toll booths. The system only works because drivers believe that Ez-Pass data is only used for toll collection and nothing more. If they used it to hand out 3mph-over tickets, everyone would stop using it.

throwawaylinux 4y ago

> Andrews starts his stopwatch when he flies over one [marker] and stops it when he hits the next. He knows the helicopter's ground speed. And, since he's flying the same speed or slower than the car below, he can tell if the car is speeding. Seems odd to do that and not just time the car passing the markers.

travisjungroth 4y ago
Timing a car between markers isn't admissible evidence of speeding under California law. https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/defense/vehicle-code/40801/ https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/defense/vehicle-code/40801/
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  That explains it, thank you. I guess the reason for not using GPS or other instruments for ground speed is also legislation?
  - travisjungroth 4y ago
    That one doesn't make any sense to me. The helicopter would certainly have ground speed via GPS. I don't get how you couldn't use that. A car can use its speedometer. I remember seeing a laser pod on the wing of a CHP airplane and talking to them about it, but it was a long time ago and I couldn't confirm it more than finding pictures that show the pod (but maybe it's a camera). Based on my experiences involving journalism and aviation, it is extremely possible that the author incorrectly described what the pilot was doing.

kmonsen 4y ago

In norway they have this system identifying cars several different points along major roads. The longest stretch is about 15 miles. Then they take the average speed you need and ticket based on that. https://www.vegvesen.no/fag/fokusomrader/trafikksikkerhet/automatisk-trafikkontroll/strekningsvis-atk/fylkesvis-oversikt/ https://www.vegvesen.no/fag/fokusomrader/trafikksikkerhet/au... (In Norwegian)

fingerlocks 4y ago
Average? Great great place to stop for gas so you can drive as you fast as you want
- gggggg5 4y ago
  If you're going to go through that kind of trouble, you might as well just register your car in a different country and ignore the cameras.
  - aeno 4y ago
    At least if your car is registered in a European Union country, you will still get a ticket. It takes some days, but eventually it will appear in your mailbox at home. You could get away with simply not paying, as collection would be too much of a hassle. But they'll note your plates and the next time you're back into Norway and your plate gets scanned, they might visit you right on the spot to collect your debts.
    - gggggg5 4y ago
      The magic solution to this is to have the car owned by some legal entity which is not the driver. Fines might arrive, but you can wipe your ass with them. There might be fines associated with the plates, but fines are the responsibility of the driver and not the owner. Even if the cops were able to ID as you the driver in those previous incidents, they would not be able to seize the car (not that this would generally be possible without an extensive legal process anyway). And FWIW in the case of Norway, you will never get stopped for having unpaid fines.

perryizgr8 4y ago

Speed limits don't make sense tbh. They should notify drivers of the design speed for a section of the road, but it shouldn't be treated as a hard limit. Whether a driver is a danger to others or not is a subjective call, we should let police officers make that call, without defining strict criteria. Sometimes a car going at 110 in a 100 is perfectly safe, and another going 50 is extremely dangerous.

SparkyMcUnicorn 4y ago
For someone doing 50 in a 100mph zone in the US, you can get a ticket for that currently. In most states the minimum speed limit is usually between 10-15mph under, unless otherwise posted.
atoav 4y ago
I live in Germany and regularly travel to neighbouring countries by car. The lack of speed limits on some sections of the German Autobahn makes traveling through that country seriously exhausting. While you just keep on keeping on on non-German highways driving on a German Autobahn section without tempo limit can feel like entering a war. The typical makeup of a three-lane section of German Autobahn is: - Right: trucks, very slow vehicles - Middle: people who go at reasonable speeds (~130 to 160 km/h depending on the terrain) - Left: people who disregard the physics of air resistance and blast without limits This is the ideal, but not what you will encounter on the road. Whenever a truck overtakes another you have to beeak down or use the leftmost lane and make sure the cars that approach from behind with a potential delta of 100+ km/h don't crush you to death. Generally this leads to many stressful and dangerous situations. Speed limits make sense because they make driving safer by deceeasing the possible speed delta between vehicles who share a road.
- gggggg5 4y ago
  >Left: people who disregard the physics of air resistance and blast without limits Left: some guy in a X5 driving steady 150km/h, not reacting to getting flashed and immediately accelerating if you try to pass on the right. Somehow, as soon as you get out of Germany this stops happening. In France and Benelux you get to comfortably cruise at 250km/h and everyone just moves out of the way. German autobahns are not exhausting because of the lack of speed limits, they're exhausting because of the Germans.

everly 4y ago

One time (early 2000s) my dad was driving across a remote and desolate stretch of Utah, on a motorcycle, doing speeds well into the 3 digit miles per hour. Approaching civilization, he had slowed to a reasonable speed of his own accord and was surprised to be pulled over by a highway patrolman, who proceeded to greet him by name and revealed that a helicopter had been trailing him and retrieved his registration detail from above. The officer was relatively friendly about the whole thing but he received a costly ticket.

4gotunameagain 4y ago
The ticket didn't even pay for the helicopter fuel and the cost of manpower, while zero people were non consensually endangered. How could we rephrase speeding laws so they make sense, instead of this black and white stupidity ?
- bell-cot 4y ago
  In a country where the first responders, hospitals, etc. are obligated to provide expensive services and care for victims of motor vehicle accidents - regardless of their ability to pay - there is the moral and public policy issue of "My high-speed fun, somebody else's high taxes and medical bills".
  - tristor 4y ago
    Yet, all the research seems to indicate that speeding reduces the occurrence of accidents, it just increases their severity when they do occur (more fatalities). The primary cause of accidents is inattentiveness (usually someone on their phone) and after that alcohol-related accidents. Speeding is not a primary cause, only a proximate cause of the accident, something else caused the accident, speed is only blamed because it exacerbates the result.
    - bell-cot 4y ago
      I'd guess that the research you mention was focused on fairly narrow ranges of speed, road conditions, speeds of the other motorists, etc. Vs. user everly related that his father was doing well over 100MPH. Even ignoring all other factors, the duration of inattentiveness needed to cause an accident, at extreme speeds, is far lower than at legal speeds.

uni_rule 4y ago

Allegedly due to the cost of it and the fact that it is now a bit of an archaic practice relative to radar guns the planes are kept in flight the bare minimum amount of time needed to legally keep the signs up because the idea is still pretty damn intimidating.

MengerSponge 4y ago
Ever since I was a kid I've imagined the "enforcement" is done with a strafing pass. Kind of like Judge Dredd piloting an A-10.

travisjungroth 4y ago

I flew out of Sonoma Skypark, near Napa County Airport mentioned in the article. A few times the CHP Cessna 206s landed there. Here's an article on them: https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/article/chips-in-the-sky/ https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/article/chips-in-the-sky/

throwawaysalome 4y ago

[flagged]

bourbonjuggler 4y ago

Virginia still has all of their highway signs to let you know that it's enforced by aircraft. A report came out in 2018 that stated they were no longer using that method of enforcement primarily due to the cost of the program.

alexjplant 4y ago
Wasn't it Virginia that was also hauling people off to jail for doing anything in excess of 20 mph over the limit?
- mikestew 4y ago
  Just about any state in the U. S. could haul you off for 20mph over the limit. I'm not going to look up every state, but I'm aware of several where 20 over is "reckless driving", which can put you in the back of the patrol car while your vehicle gets towed away.
  - alexjplant 4y ago
    According to a journalist [1] > Reckless driving is not a traffic citation, it’s a criminal charge, and a Class One misdemeanor at that. That means it’s the highest level of misdemeanor you can be charged with in Virginia, right below a felony. The maximum penalty for a reckless driving conviction is a $2,500 fine, a six month driver’s license suspension, and up to a year in jail. > See what I mean when I told you it’s serious? They hand it out like it’s Halloween candy, too. You drive 20 mph over the limit, it’s reckless driving. They even charge you with it for failing to properly signal, or when you’re found to be at fault in a car wreck. I’ve heard of some cases where people get 30 days in jail if they speed over 100 mph. > Other Class One misdemeanors in Virginia include animal cruelty, sexual battery, and aiming a firearm at someone. Ordinarily I'd editorialize but in this case I don't see the need. [1] https://jalopnik.com/never-speed-in-virginia-lessons-from-my-three-days-in-1613604053 https://jalopnik.com/never-speed-in-virginia-lessons-from-my...
    - mikestew 4y ago

throw1234651234 4y ago

It's interesting that no one on a tech board mentioned that a drone can now do this 24 hours a day, for basically free, and it would take a very short time to write an AI that watches an object crossing two markers on the road and puts time stamps on them. I am actually glad this isn't there, even though I don't speed, but it's ironic to see people talking about cost. Example articles below. There are at least 10s of systems that can do this from different cheap airborne carriers and watch a huge swath of land (36 square miles from one host), track movement, and record it all at high resolution 24/7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Stare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS

bradknowles 4y ago
Many years ago, there was a court case here in the US over a fine for excessive average speed over a distance. In the end, the case was decided on behalf of the driver, because the police couldn't prove that the car had not been picked up by a helicopter and moved at high speed through the air, and then put back down on the ground near the other end. I think some laws are going to have to be passed here in the US to make it feasible to use average speed systems. Which I think is actually a good thing. IMO, the police, or whatever system is issuing tickets, should have a minimum necessary amount of information they can prove in court, before they can issue those kinds of tickets.

idkyall 4y ago

>Drones capable of monitoring traffic would be even less cost-effective than helicopters, he said, and a drone wouldn't be able to med-evac anyone. Certainly the med-evac point is valid, but I bet you could come up with a basic traffic monitoring system using an off the shelf Drone today for a fraction of the cost of a helicopter, fuel, and pilot.

greedo 4y ago
A helicopter operated by law enforcement will not be staffed or equipped for providing medical services or evac. Life-Flight helicopters are equipped with a huge amount of medical gear and staffed by medical personnel.
- mikestew 4y ago
  You might want to...reread TFA. Perhaps you missed the last few paragraphs the first time around.
  - Pigalowda 4y ago
    “The chairs and equipment are quickly pulled out and rearranged, and a boy -- conscious and without any obvious major injuries -- is strapped to a stretcher across the floor of the helicopter. I wedge myself back behind the pilot's seat and within 25 minutes from when the call came in, we've delivered him to the roof of the John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek.” An absolutely outrageous misuse of resources for a patient who did not need air evac. These flights aren’t cheap and the patient and family are billed. This isn’t one of those ignore and it will go away kind of medical bills either - it will be a charge from the city for $10,000+ and will absolutely go to collections. There isn’t a trained air medic on board nor is there appropriate medical equipment to handle a patient who needs emergency life saving care and rapid delivery to a trauma 1 hospital. In other words, a patient who qualifies for emergency air evacuation. Strapping a stable and visibly uninjured patient to a gurney and flying to the hospital isn’t helpful, it’s idiotic. We already have enough bullshit trauma 1 activations. There’s no need for more, much less ones delivered by bored traffic pilots.

dver 4y ago

I received an airplane ticket in California back in early 90's. It was the case then, I don't know now, that if there were multiple officers involved in the citation that they both had to show up in court, or the ticket was dismissed. I had heard through a family member that the pilots never showed in court. So I did and it was quickly dismissed.

sprite 4y ago
I wish I would have thought of this when I got one in Florida 10 years or so ago.
brewdad 4y ago
My buddy got a ticket like this in PA in the 90s. Speed calculated by an airplane with a stopwatch and markings on the road. Came around a curve and a state trooper was in the right lane pointing out which cars needed to pull over. About 8 motorcycle cops were ready with their ticket books. We lived 400 miles away and were definitely going above 90mph, so he ended up paying the ticket rather than traveling back to fight it.

GrumpyNl 4y ago

I did get a ticket like that in the eighties, i still have it. It was with a rented corvette at 9 o clock in the morning. I had to go straight to court to pay the fine. I was on my way back from San Jose to Los Angeles. One of the weirdest experiences in my life.

glangdale 4y ago

I always thought it was an odd turn of phrase; at most, you might have your speed detected by aircraft. "Enforced" always conjured up a picture of speed demons being strafed from above until they slowed down; maybe it's just me?

philwelch 4y ago
Yeah, there’s a very old meme that’s a photo of one of those signs with an attack helicopter lurking behind it.

bitwize 4y ago

Speeding on the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the longest contiguous bridge in the world, can have dire consequences for you and other motorists, especially in bad weather. So yes, they have Speed Enforced by Aircraft signs up, and sometimes you can see the police planes as you cross.

chaboud 4y ago

This is a classic application of the mean value theorem. Because your position is a differentiable function, you must, at some point, have been going your average speed over a window of time, and you can be ticketed accordingly. It's interesting to me that Fastrak transponders (electronic toll tags in the Bay Area) in express lanes aren't used to automatically generate tickets given the same understanding.

zwkrt 4y ago
If tickets were regularly given out in this way I think it would lead to even worse driving behavior. Sometimes I find myself going 10mph over the speed limit because that is the rate that traffic is going. If I knew that there was some MVT ticketing checkpoint coming up, I might be inclined to suddenly slow way down, stop, pull over, or otherwise freak out.
- this_steve_j 4y ago
  The data could be used to generate and mail warning tickets to the registered owner of the vehicle, in cases of egregious/reckless mean or a pattern of high speed trips. Whatever that magic “bad” number is could be derived from crunching one or more of their massive data sets on tolls, driver history, violations, traffic volume, crashes with injuries, etc. It could be combined with data from a radar camera at the toll reader to verify the license plate for the transponder account, and identify the owner who is nominally responsible. In some cases where a family/friend is using someone else’s car to drive at highly excessive speeds over multiple trips, the vehicle owner is not aware and may like very much to know! I don’t see how using transponder data in that way is any more or less Orwellian than speed cameras or redlight cameras. In my US city these levy actual, cumulative $100+ fines on the car’s owner. These are “non-moving” violations, so the only impact on driving privileges is from failure to pay the fine.
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  That's exactly what this sort of enforcement avoids: You're averaging across multiple transponders, so unlike a cop with a LIDAR gun taking a single reading (where people do already suddenly slow down) you'd need to consistently not speed across every single one you pass. In some areas there are several transponders less than a mile apart, so unless you plan on slamming your brakes every few thousand feet you're better off just not speeding - I'm someone who chronically speeds, but I'm also for blanket highway speed enforcement. Right now speeding seems to be about what you can get away with in a really frustrating way: If can learn the right speed traps, or you can chat a cop the right way, or your car even looks a certain way, you can get away with some ridiculous things. Blanket enforcement wouldn't necessarily be regressive either: Regardless of how many tickets you can afford, eventually points stack up and you lose your license

hbarka 4y ago

It was probably truer many years ago, like getting pulled over for dark window tint was true then but largely ignored now. The laws haven’t changed. We just have a new cohort generation of law enforcement officers with different interests, like we have baby boomers, genZ, genX, millennial cops.

LinuxBender 4y ago

I've never received a ticket from an aircraft but we did have CHP in an airplane in the late 70's and early 80's in California. He had a CB radio and would respond to the truckers calling out looking for cops. Winnebago-Bob would reply they are clear. The truckers would speed and several highway patrol would pull all of them over. A bunch of us put a stop to it because his speed trap was on the bottom of a hill on 101 and was risking a jack-knife accident. We all complained to the California Highway Patrol Commissioner and it stopped.

guenthert 4y ago

First time travelling to California ages ago, I had to try how fast this rental car went on a Hwy in the desert (close to Death Valley) with not a soul around. Downhill it went quite well. Then towards me on the right just a few meters about ground an airplane was coming towards me. WTH? It took me a while to realize that this must have been law enforcement. I went mostly by the rules afterwards and didn't receive a ticket. Another time, many years later, I got carried away a bit on my m/c near Mojave. It didn't take long for a cruiser to follow me and flash his lights. After stopping the cop called in his mic ("I got him"), presumably to a helicopter in the air. Don't recall, whether I got a ticket then (over the years I got more stern warnings than tickets). Not long ago, going on Hwy 25 there's a long straight stretch between two hills where it's really tempting to go flat out as there is (or used to be) very little if any traffic. Shortly thereafter a single engine air plane was approaching me left of the road at very low altitude. I was actually wondering whether it would clear the trees in its path, until I realized that he meant for me to slow down ;-} Now I have a Prius and no such worries.

ShakataGaNai 4y ago

Well the CHP still has fixed wings registered to them. Ex N137HP https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberResult?nNumberTxt=137HP https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberResul... You can track them on ADSBExchange: https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a095ef https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=a095ef And they were in the air yesterday with flight paths along major freeways in the SF Bay Area: https://imgur.com/a/u5hbfAK https://imgur.com/a/u5hbfAK Does that mean conclusively they are doing speed checks? No, but they have the capability. Does the CHP have a lot of these planes? Not that I can find records of, probably few and far between for a state as populous as California... but the treat is real.

aae42 4y ago

My wife swears these are fake because she's never seen anyone pulled over by a plane I love her so much