Travel Tips

The Photo Radar: Coming To An Intersection Near You!

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.

This was because there were too many components involved. First they needed to have the police officer to pull you over. This involves the use of an expensive police car. Then there was no guarantee the officer wouldnt let you go with 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.

Now, introducing the photo radar. It is the latest tactic on the governments part to make money. Oh, in the name of safety of course. In just a few minutes a photo radar can catch many cars speeding on a single road.

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.

There are little more than twenty states or so that use this method of photo radar to hand out speeding tickets, but its presence is on the rise.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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 traffic violation.

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