The Photo Radar: Coming To An Intersection Near You!

The way cops hand out speeding tickets has its limits. A police officer can pull over only one car at a time. As far as the governments view this is too expensive and slow.

With the rapid development of technology, clever ways have been developed to make the process speedier.

The old system of traffic enforcement simply wasn’t doing the job of making the kinds of money our government wants to make.

There were just too many elements that was involved with an actual police officer pulling you over to hand out a citation. The first thing was having to hire the officer himself to pull you over. Next he had to pull you over with his police vehicle which is expensive in itself. And then what he let you off with just a warning?

Lastly, during the time it takes to administer a traffic stop about a dozen other cars go by speeding… more money down the drain! But that was then, this is now!

So the photo radar was introduced to take handing out tickets to a whole new level. They can do the job of many officers.

Talk about customer service, there’s no longer a need to have an officer pull you over. A photo radar, or traffic camera, simply takes a picture and mails it to you!

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.

However, the popularity of photo radar is growing by leaps and bounds.

Cities are starting to latch on to the photo radar band wagon because of the revenue generating potential. Its relatively simple for a city to have one installed and the photo radar pays for itself quickly.

In areas that are financially strapped, photo radar gives them an immediate answer to their money misery.

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 a photo radar work you may ask? Think of it as a radar gun and a high quality camera rolled up into one. It gets programmed to take a photo of your license plate at a certain speed.

For example, if a certain street’s speed limit is 25 mph, the radar gun might be set to activate when any vehicle travels over 30 mph.

So when the photo radar unit detects a car passing it at a speed over the predetermined speed it will take a picture of your plate. This picture is stored and the process keeps going on 24/7. Courtesy of big brother, bundreds of drivers can be ticketed 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 a legible license plate is found, the examiner will then look up the license plate number with the bureau of motor vehicles. The BMV will send back the name and address of the person the car is registered to. If the name comes back as a male, the examiner will then look to see if a male is sitting behind the wheel of the car. If there is, BINGO! The examiner will then send the registered owner of the car a speeding ticket in the mail.

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. This article, The Photo Radar: Coming To An Intersection Near You! is available for free reprint.