Driver of photo-radar van arrested for DUI

 

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Juvenal, Satires. But Plato grumbled about it earlier.

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Nuvi 2460, 680, DATUM Tymserve 2100, Trimble Thunderbolt, Ham radio, Macintosh, Linux, Windows

Alius Custodes

The article did note that the motorist who phoned in the complaint identified himself as a retired police officer.

[insert "Juvenal Court" joke here]

What is a photo-radar van?

What is a photo-radar van?

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Garmin nüvi 750

It's a rolling speed trap

It's a van or SUV operated by a law enforcement agency that contains radar and synchronized camera equipment. At least in Arizona, the pictures and data they capture are legally admissible to prove a speeding citation. And since they can be moved anywhere, it's kind of hard to identify their locations via POIs.

Another "use" of the Radar Van

Here in Illinois, I've seen them parked in construction sites, and get you. They really don't like you going over the "construction zone speed limit"

Now - if I were a construction zone worker - I'd really appreciate it. And it's not all about money.

"Though the vans are manned by State Police troopers, a private company, ACS State and Local Solutions, provides the vans for a fee and receives a bonus of $15 per ticket issued"

I remember several years ago - Illinois State Patrol cars would be parked and unoccupied for days on end at a random location along the interstate or tollway system. Then, out of the blue, one day they'd be manned and issuing tickets.

Don't know about you, but I'm watching my speed whether the car seems empty or not. grin

And, you're correct - I didn't comment on the DUI portion of this article.

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And now, back to your regularly scheduled forum - already in progress . . .

Wow

Talk about your all time backfire!

I can't imagine this will bode well for the van approach, but then again....

I wonder how long it will be before he'll be back at his job. DUI's in some states does not mean that law enforcement will lose their jobs. Just seems ironic to me.

He was just delivering the van

Car Nut wrote:

Talk about your all time backfire!

I can't imagine this will bode well for the van approach, but then again....

I wonder how long it will be before he'll be back at his job. DUI's in some states does not mean that law enforcement will lose their jobs. Just seems ironic to me.

He wasn't a police officer and he was fired...

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It is terrible to speak well and be wrong. -Sophocles snɥɔnıɥdoɐ aka ʎɹɐƃ

They tell you where they're at ....

chunky_charlie wrote:

What is a photo-radar van?

This website explains it pretty well, along with the $162.25 fine for one mph over the posted speed limit.
http://www.cityofmesa.org/police/traffic/photo_enforce.aspx

But they also tell you where they're at ... create your own POI.

Mesa Police Department Traffic Section Red Light Enforcement & Intersection Speed Camera locations:
http://www.cityofmesa.org/police/traffic/redlight_cameras.as...

Mesa Police Department Traffic Section Speed Van Locations
http://www.cityofmesa.org/police/traffic/speed_radar.aspx

RT

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"Internet: As Yogi Berra would say, "Don't believe 90% of what you read, and verify the other half."

One additional city

If anyone is interested in the locations of the Scottsdale vans, visit http://www.scottsdaleaz.gov/photoradar.asp and click on the Photo Van Locations link to download a PDF. I don't know about the practicality of creating POIs, though; often the vans are in one place for only a couple of hours.

Weekly

Felix Krull wrote:

...... I don't know about the practicality of creating POIs, though; often the vans are in one place for only a couple of hours.

Mesa say they go daily posted for a week, the ones now showing are for the week of "September 8 - 14, 2008". Just update it weekly.

RT

--
"Internet: As Yogi Berra would say, "Don't believe 90% of what you read, and verify the other half."

Hourly

The Scottsdale document shows the hours the vans will be in position along with the locations. I didn't do a thorough search, but the ones I looked at all seemed to have an interval of only three hours fifteen minutes. Just looking at today's listings, there are 24 entries. Seems like an awful lot of POI work, especially if you can't OCR the PDF info; then you'd have to input them manually.

I guess Mesa's setup is just easier to work with.

Not quite

retiredtechnician wrote:
chunky_charlie wrote:

What is a photo-radar van?

This website explains it pretty well, along with the $162.25 fine for one mph over the posted speed limit.
http://www.cityofmesa.org/police/traffic/photo_enforce.aspx

Well, that's the fine chart, but the article also makes it clear that the cameras do not record a speed violation unless you're going 11 mph over the limit.

No OCR needed...

I grabbed the Scottsdale PDF -- it's just encoded as text, so you can extract it with a handy tool like pdftotext (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pdftotext).

Here's a snippet of what I extracted (pdftotext -layout photovanlocations.pdf):

LOCATION
Friday CODE LOCATION SPEED LANES TIME DISTRICT

t006 6400 BLK E THOMAS RD E/B 40 3 16:00-19:15 1
s104 3200 BLK N SCOTTSDALE RD S/B 35 3 20:15-23:30 1
o006 6600 BLK E OSBORN RD W/B 25 1 Alternative 1
s009 6800 BLK E SHEA BLVD W/B 40 3 06:30-9:45 2
z037 6200 BLK N 82ND ST N/B 25 2 10:45-14:00 2
v012 9500 BLK VIA LINDA W/B 40 2 Alternative 2

05-Sep-08
m500 7400 BLK E MOUNTAIN VIEW RD E/B 40 2 16:00-19:15 2
s009 6800 BLK E SHEA BLVD W/B 40 3 20:15-23:30 2
v011 9000 BLK VIA LINDA E/B 40 2 Alternative 2
l502 8900 LEGEND TRAIL W.B 35 2 06:30-9:45 3
x033 13000 BLK N 84TH ST S/B 30 1 10:45-14:00 3
x039 13100 BLK N 94TH ST N/B 40 1 Alternative 3
s045 28600 BLK N SCOTTSDALE RD N/B 50 2 16:00-19:15 3
h521 8400 HAPPY VALLEY RD E/B 40 1 20:15-23:30 3
c519 8200 BLK CACTUS RD W/B 45 2 Alternative 3
d006 3600 BLK N DRINKWATER BLVD N/B 35 3 16:00-19:15 D
x507 4600 N. 68 ST S/B 35 1 20:15-23:30 D
c502 7000 BLK E CHAPARRAL RD E/B 25 1 Alternative D

Static or Moving

Maybe a crazy question.....

Are the vans sitting still or patrolling a specific area while moving?

My guess is that the vans are sitting still when monitoring traffic, however, I'm sure I've heard others say in other threads that the vans can operate while on the move.

Thanks.

Interesting quote

Found this quote in the link about the fines and the explanation of the process:

"The Mesa Police Department deploys mobile speed vans throughout the City. Each van is staffed by an employee of our photo safety vendor."

I believe my state is soon too outlaw the red light cameras due to this similar fact where the police are not directly reporting the ticket (instead, using a 3rd party to make the claim of speeding or running a red light).

Makes sense in particularly dangerous areas due to proven speed offenses. Don't condone speeding in many situations, but being from Atlanta.....well.....our interstates average about 20-25mph over the posted limit of 55mph. Tickets will generally not be issued for speeds under 80mph. This has been the norm for many many years.

Neat post. Thanks for the info.

They have started to use

They have started to use these vans in Virginia now.

Not so crazy

Car Nut wrote:

Maybe a crazy question.....

Are the vans sitting still or patrolling a specific area while moving?

Not a crazy question at all if you haven't encountered them. The vans are stationary while they are "on duty". It's just that they can be driven to different locations as desired.

Third Parties

Car Nut wrote:

Found this quote in the link about the fines and the explanation of the process:

"The Mesa Police Department deploys mobile speed vans throughout the City. Each van is staffed by an employee of our photo safety vendor."

I believe my state is soon too outlaw the red light cameras due to this similar fact where the police are not directly reporting the ticket (instead, using a 3rd party to make the claim of speeding or running a red light).

It was an employee of the vendor who got charged with the DUI. In Arizona, at least, the "third party" argument appears to be a non-starter. As I understand it, and I'm not a lawyer, a law enforcement officer makes the formal complaint based upon the evidence presented by the cameras.

Wow...

That's all I have to say. As much as technology helps yah, it can certainly work against you. I guess in this case its still helping.

Update?

Any update on what happened to this guy?

radar van

In our town here they have an actual police car with the photo equipment in it and they park it on the corner of 59 and Bartlett Rd all the time.

They had these in Hawaii a

They had these in Hawaii a while back, but got rid of them; too much public disapproval. Here's an article on it if anyone cares:

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2002/Apr/14/ln/ln0...

I've seen that one!

lupo wrote:

In our town here they have an actual police car with the photo equipment in it and they park it on the corner of 59 and Bartlett Rd all the time.

Isn't that the one that's "unmanned" and just sitting/parked there a lot? I don't get over there too often, so am not positive if it's that one, or one in another location that I'm thinking of...

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A different twist ...

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"Internet: As Yogi Berra would say, "Don't believe 90% of what you read, and verify the other half."

Funny

retiredtechnician wrote:

Here's a different twist to the Scottsdale camera van:

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2008/08/28/20080828ab...

http://www.azcentral.com/community/scottsdale/articles/2008/...

RT

Now that's funny stuff.

Photo Car

Dundee had a photo radar Mercedes parked at Dundee and 72 yesterday! Must be bringing in alot of $$$ to be fronting a car like that.