Helping identify speeders(Volunteers needed to help scare them)

Baltimore Sun ^ | November 23, 2005 | Ruth L. Tisdale

[sickoflibs]

To combat the high volume of speeders through residential areas, Howard County police are sharing some of the responsibility for identifying those speeders with the people they believe know those areas best: the residents. Through the department's Speed Monitoring and Radar Team (SMART) program, citizens are getting the opportunity to wield radar guns and record tag numbers in an effort to slow speeders and make their neighborhoods safer.

Howard County police officials began the program in 1998, after seeing the success of the SMART program in Montgomery County.

Community action "It is a community response to a community program so that they can address the problem before the police are involved," said Howard County police Officer Brandon Justice who taught the program two years ago. According to an analysis released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in June, 32 percent of all traffic-related fatalities were caused by speeding, and fatalities on local roads and in rural communities have significantly increased.

The purpose of the SMART program "is to use peer pressure to solve the problem," Justice said. "If you are driving down the road and you see your neighbor holding a [radar] unit you are less likely to go over the speed limit."

Justice said that participating residents stand near speed-limit signs with the radar guns.

"It takes about an hour and a half to learn how to use the radar unit," Justice said. "We have set classes where people can come and learn how to use it and what they should do."

Letters written Participants turn in tag numbers of speeders to police, who write letters to car owners alerting them to the violation

[Kenny Bunk]

"any idiot speeding through a residential area should be considered fair game, with no bag limits."

Agree. My favorite speed control is that gizmo that tells you how fast you are going. I find it really helps one pay attention, especially since on many routes the speed limits vary from 25mph to 55mph between town boundaries!

Disagree with (low) speed limits on interstates. Hate left lane slow clymers, thinking of installing a behind-the-grill paintball gun for them. Check out driving in Germany. Everyone seems quite polite and moderate driving through towns, but once you're on the autobahn, you can really get where you're going. And that left lane is for people with good equipment and the skill to use it.

Most improved Euro-Drivers: Italy. Was just flabbergasted by the change. Stopping for red lights and stop signs, yielding the right-of-way, letting pedestrians cross, setting a leisurely pace through residential areas ... they must be putting something in the water! Of course, all bets are off in Naples, which is still an overly picturesque and intensely dangerous(but exciting) demolition derby.

[RTINSC]

No such a luxury was afforded to the citizens under Soviet rule. Please inform yourself about life in Soviet Russia before bandying the cliches about. "

Instituting peer pressure is a manipulation, a technique that promotes a certain action or outcome by attacking one's emotion. It has nothing to do with democracy. The use of peer pressure to enforce law can lead to abuse. Better to employ trained police than pitting citizens against one another, the favorite technique employed by the Stasi and KBG. Raise the amount of fines if it is an economic problem funding your police.

[RTINSC]

Footnote: Montgomery County MD is the most liberal county in Maryland, followed by Howard County. Let me know when your county adopts "peer pressure" as a law enforcement strategy.

[Time4Atlas2Shrug]

Again, please inform yourself about Soviet tactics before espousing the similarities in law enforcement techniques. In Soviet Russia, citizens were killed or sent to gulags if they did not provide requested information about their comrades to the Cheka, the NKVD, and the KGB. Your analogy resembles the Left's tactic of calling the president a Nazi.

In the case of Howard County, government is not using the citizens - the citizens are incensed and want something done about the speeding through residential areas, so they are participating in their government to reduce the problem. If given the chance to participate in such a program in my community, there would be droves of people willing to take care of business. It is an example of citizens taking charge of their own safety as the police cannot be everywhere. That is why I own a gun - to prevent harm from coming to my family when law enforcement cannot do so.

As far as funding the police, I never said it was a problem, merely that people debate whether or not to fund the department.

And as for the liberal demographic - conservatives are more supportive of "law and order", because without it, chaos would reign. Perhaps the resources are spread thin in Howard County due to a liberal ideology of funding teachers and social initiatives as a priority over the police. It is usually the leftists who bemoan the "oppression" by the police (ironically expecting govt. to take over all other aspects of our lives). It would explain a lot.

[RTINSC]

I am all for people participating in community programs that aid law enforcement. Neigborhood Watch programs come to mind. Giving untrained citizens radar guns, 2 hours of training, and setting them loose to be "traffic cops" or conduct law enforcement activities goes too far for me. The notion of using neighbors to create peer pressure to enforce laws is absurd. FYI, informants under Stasi and KGB were more often rewarded than penalized for their snitching.

[Rhiannon]

Are you seriously saying if someone does 30-35 mph in a residential neighborhood that they should be shot? I do not advocate reckless driving. You drive to the conditions. It is just conditions allow driving at higher speeds that are posted. If there are kids in the streets playing you should slow down. I have to in my neighborhood. However when these kids get to teen and 18 years old. They like to smoke their tires, which annoy me considerably. Should I shoot them? Call the police for someone being annoying? These teens do grow out of it.

[Rhiannon]

You can drive over the yellow line if you want to.. But since you are then a hazard to oncoming traffic you might get in an accident and have to pay for the damages you caused. You can be responsible for your actions. I will not try to stop you.

[Rhiannon]

Good response You drive the spped you feel is right and I will do the same. Atlas shrug can drive on the left like the British and scare everyone.

[Jigsaw John]

If people can drive safely at 70 mph.Then they should be allowed to.

Driving safely at 70mph is easy. The hard part occurs when something unexpected happens. Most drivers cannot make a split second, evasive high speed maneuver and remain in control their vehicle.

[Rhiannon]

That is why you drive to conditions. On a interstate quality road 70 mph is fine . Unlikely to have pedestrians jump out in front or traffic coming from a side street. In busy neighborhoods you drive to conditions . That doesn't mean flying down at 80 mph on a winding residential neighborhood street.

[Jigsaw John]

That is why you drive to conditions.

Oh, you mean clear, dry, wide open road right? 70 or 80 mph, no problem.

What happens when the average guy blows a front tire at 80? Or when the guy in the number 4 decides he wants to be in the number one where the average guy is doing 78 mph?

Drive to conditions means nothing, as those conditions can change in a split second.

[thefactor]

do you have kids? would you drive 70 through a residential neighborhood? cops cannot issue a ticket unless they actually witness the infraction. if there is an accident and i, as a cop, get to the scene after it has occured, even if the driver says he was going 100 mph i may not issue him a summonse.

i see this as kind of a neighborhood watch.

[Rhiannon]

I have those situations happen and people spin out and avoid all those cars while driving at interstate speeds on interstate roads. I have had bikes and people pull out in front and people make left turns from right lanes. I do try to read the behavior cues and react according. Remarkably I have avoided hitting people in those situations. However accidents is usually being in the wrong place at wrong time. All drivers do something stupid once in a while. Generally it is when no one else is around to have an accident. I am trying to say I do not consider myself stunt drive expert. However competent aware drivers usually don't have accidents whether they speed or not.

[Jigsaw John]

However competent aware drivers usually don't have accidents whether they speed or not.

Agree, however, the more speed, the more the chances of something happening too quickly to react, or just losing complete control while executing an evasive maneuver. Speed really does kill.

[cgbg]

I have had only one accident in my life when I was moving. It happened so quickly that my real-time recollection was totally inaccurate.

Another car crossed two lanes of traffic and cut in front of me during rush hour. I just wasn't expecting someone to do something that crazy.

The problem is that if you drive the same route day after day without an issue you get over-confident about the "normal" conditions and are not prepared for the unexpected.

Obviously the faster you are driving the less opportunity you have to react.

My reaction time was this:

"Oh, s***".

I didn't have time to complete the second word, so we are talking less than a second here.

Don't be overconfident, folks.

The unexpected and crazy could happen anywhere at any time.

[rolling_stone]

hmm, next thing you know they will want vigilante citizens to report illegal aliens /sarcasm

[Cuttnhorse]

Have you thought of driving the speed limit?

[R. Scott]

Over such stupid thing as speeding. If speed is a factor in an accident then ok fine the guilty person.

Speeding in a residential neighborhood is a stupid thing to do. People – from small kids to adults – act as if the street is their front yard. Here the speed limit in residential neighborhoods is 25. I stick to it – and at times much slower, particularly during the first warm days of Spring and when schools let out for the Summer. December 25 and the few days following are also hazardous. Kids play in the street with new bikes, scooters, balls etc.

[Time4Atlas2Shrug]

"You drive the spped you feel is right and I will do the same. Atlas shrug can drive on the left like the British and scare everyone."

I like that... the speed you "feel" is right!! LOL.

Perhaps we should all drive like jerks and only when we kill another should we be responsible for our actions - not before. This is leftist logic at its best.

I'm sure you would have no problem with a motorist that "felt" his speed was fine if that person's lack of judgment resulted in the death of your loved one, right? Anarchy is not ideal.

[sickoflibs]

"My favorites are the ones where they are saying that their speeding is someone else's fault (city, road designers, other drivers, etc). Sounds like liberal logic, doesn't it?"

I don't want drivers speeding through my neighborhood either but HC has turned the main roads into parking lots where housing development has far outpacing the road development. Add to that the real speed traps on the main roads (in the areas where the traffic clears) and I find myself taking neighborhood back road as 'highway alternatives'. There are no traffic jams on these roads or cops. As far as these locals using speed guns, it is a joke. The police can only issue a warning from one of these(being that they did not witness it) , and it gets dark before 5pm anyway.

If you don't like your road being used as a highway I suggest you show up at the next county zoning meeting and organize to stop any more housing development unless the county shows how they will handle the additional traffic and school children (schools) without raising taxes(the usual method.) Hint: they can make the developer (ie new homeowners) pay.

The method now is to cram more and more people into a tiny area and then the new people cry out for more taxes to pay for the roads and schools over and over, the county steals the land from the locals for the new roads and schools. It works great for them because once they create the problem the only solution is more government spending. So up go my property and income taxes again and I can't get to work to pay them because my main roads are a parking lot with speed traps, unless I get you mad by wizzing through your neighborhood.