Cheryl W.
Lynn
Virginia Transportation Research Council
Charlottesville, VA
August 1992
In October 1989, the Virginia Department of State Police was awarded a grant by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to study the possible use of photo-radar on the Capital Beltway. The Virginia Transportation Research Council was enlisted to conduct the evaluation with the help of both the Maryland and Virginia State Police. This site visit report summarized one part of this effort.
There were
two locations in the U.S. where photo-radar was used for speed enforcement
-- Pasadena, California and Paradise Valley, Arizona. These programs had
been ongoing for several years. Site visits to these two cities were made
between February 26 and March 5, 1990. Since photo-radar has long been
used in Europe, four European manufacturers of photo-radar were visited
-- Gatsometer in Overveen, The Netherlands, Multanova in Uster, Switzerland,
Traffipax in Benrath, Germany, and Trafikanalys in Gavle, Sweden.
The trip
reports for the European and American site visits are different in nature.
In the U.S., interviews concentrated on the users' experiences and their
methods of deploying photo-radar although the manufacturers' representatives
were present. The interviews sough to discover how photo-radar applications
in Pasadena and Paradise Valley could be applied to other American cities,
and what had been learned about photo-radar program development, court
liaison, and constitutionality. In Europe, however, representatives of
police agencies generally declined to be interviewed. The European site
visits centered on methods of manufacturing, testing, and quality control,
and demonstrations of the equipment's capabilities.
The manufacturers
provided the study team with detailed information on their equipment,
and demonstrated the photo-radar units and their accompanying peripherals
(computer interfaces, software, photograph enhancement capabilities, speed
display signs to inform drivers of their speeds, slave cameras for front
and rear plate photography, and nighttime operation enhancements).
This report
is not an evaluation of photo-radar use. For information on the accuracy,
operational feasibility, and impact of photo-radar use, please refer to
the companion document, "Automated Speed Enforcement Pilot Project
for the Capital Beltway: Feasibility of Photo-Radar."
key words: photo-radar, speed enforcement
Last Modified: March 20, 2007
Maintained by: traffic@nmsu.edu
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