| Say Cheese, The Photo Radar Might Be Taking Your Picture! |
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| Written by Steven Swihart |
| Wednesday, 01 September 2010 16:21 |
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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.
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. Now with technology growing at a rapid pace, new and alternative methods have been created. So the government in its great 'wisdom' decided it wasn't collecting enough money with the old system. 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? 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. 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! Since its' beginning, photo radar has been proven to: Save police department's time and money. Improve conviction rates in traffic court. Maximize city resources available for traffic enforcement. Increase individual insurance rates. 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 such a money maker that its popularity is growing fast. 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. Cash strapped cities are finding out that when they install photo radar it gives them immediate money generation. Think about it: Within minutes, photo radar can clock dozens of speeding vehicles -- something that would have taken about 10 real cops to accomplish with traditional speed enforcement! 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. 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. The following day, a few people will gather all of the pictures that were taken and begin to examine them. The first thing they will look for is the license plate. If it is blurry or simply unclear, the picture will be disposed of and the next one will be examined. 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 with the next picture and so on until all available photos have been examined. Photo radar enforcement is on the rise, hopefully this article will give you a heads up about it. DISCLAIMER: This article is provided as information only and is not to be taken as financial advice. Want to find out more about getting your speeding ticket dismissed? Then visit Steven Swihart's site for the best advice on any kind of |