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An interesting news I read today about a country in South America, which is called Guyana.
The traffic light in Guyana are coming back, many of the lights on their long yellow poles have already been put down, complete with accompanying solar panels by which they will be powered. It sounds like a real progress, isn't it???
But still Guyana residents don't know anything about this project. Will these lights come with "Walk" and "Don't Walk" signals… only time will tell, but for now we may surely say that even these traffic light were to be placed even throughout the whole country, they wouldn't be very effective. Before that, police should educate residents of Guyana, because there children in schools who have never seen working traffic lights. So, police needs to work on pre-education of the population. It also needs to tell more about enforcement of punishment and fines for pedestrians and unlawful drivers.
As for speed cameras, hand-held police radar guns, standard radar guns, or speed trailers that might be helpful and effective for police officers in their work, they remain plans on paper for now.
But anyway, it's a very good step forward, and we'll wait to see what happens next in this country.

Columbia County Police Department received a $30,000 grant to step up its enforcement by providing deputies with radar guns and all thenecessary equipment. Eight deputies descended upon the Poynette exit No. 115 on Interstate 39/90/94. To those who don't know, the speeds out there are pretty unbelievable. This was a random setup operation with hand-held police radar guns, but according to police department officials they will continue doing so through Labor Day.
During a similar operation on February 19, eight deputies issued 85 citations, including 78 for speeding and two for seat belt violations. They made one warrant arrest, one drug arrest, and issued one operating while intoxicated citation and two for driving on a suspended or revoked driver's license. the average speed among the speeding citations was more than 81 mph.
The department has conducted the operation on weekends in the past and will continue to do so,
This entire exercise is about safety and awareness, and of course try to get people to slow down.

In front of the police headquarters in Old Saybrook, close by to the marked police SUV, and police lieutenant standing alongside the Main street, there were several cars speeding by.
The posted speed limit on Main Street is 25 miles per hour, though there were several vehicles cited by a radar gun going 42 miles per hour.

A radar gun is very helpful for police officers; they allow officers to target a specific vehicle, even one that is up to 1,000 feet away, which appears to be going over the speed limit. When the trigger is pulled, the gun emits an infrared light reflects off the vehicle and comes back to the gun counting the number of nanoseconds it took for the light to make that round trip.

As a rule, hand-held police radar guns measure the speed of a vehicle in a field area of approximately 400 feet.

In order to be determined that the vehicle was speeding, a police officer must use three ways: use his/her sight, sound which comes from an audible pitch noise based on the distance the vehicle is from the cruiser, and an actual readout display stating the driver's speed.

Police officers are concerned about the speed in the construction zone in Beltline, AL, and are now enforcing drivers to go 30 mph limit. Drivers, who don't cut their speed to 30 mph in the Beltline, will pay the price for breaking the law.
This speed watch is going to be an 18-month project. And police officers are using hand-held radar guns in order to ensure the safety of construction workers. Hundreds of them get killed on highways every year, so police officers said that they'd rather write 30 to 35 tickets a day for speeding in the area, than allow something like this to happen.
The ticket cost to the speeding driver ranges from $150 to $190, depending on the speed. The fine alone is doubled due to the speeding in the area when workers are present.
Not to use their radar guns, police officers set about 20 signs warning of the construction and speed reductions, and more postings await drivers in the actual work zone.
But the core of the problem is that most people think that they can go 10 miles over the speed limit and not get a ticket. That's not the case here.

Well, nowadays, almost every police officer uses a hand-held police radar gun in order to check drivers' speed. So yesterday when talking to one of my collegues, I realized that some people think that police officer with a radar gun vs drivers is a cat-and-mouse game, others think it's a strategy game, some even think it's a war.
I was shocked and surprised. To my understanding if you don't break the law and follow all the rules on the road, as well as in life, then you're fine and you won't have any problems. But it turned out that other people thnk differently...
Anyways, no matter what you think, it's better to drive the speed limit to make roads safe not only for yourself, but also for others.

According to AP, there is a new program developed that will put Hghway Patrol troopers in the passenger seat of tractor-trailers. The programs is called "The Trucks on Patrol for Safety", its goal is to ensure safety on the roads and make sure there are no speeding drivers.
Each patrol trooper will be equipeed with a radar gun, and the truck will have a temporary five-camera system that will be used in order to record violations.
The seven-week program has already started this Monday in Wichita, KS, and it'll continue in coming weeks across the state.

The Danville Village Council took steps to obtain new radar gun equipment for the village police. According to some police officers the department's hand-held police radar guns are outdated and they need an updated radar system to ensure safety on the roads and monitor speeders. Council authorized Police Chief to spend up to $3,500 to purchase new radar gun equipment.
Council also discussed the idea of borrowing speed trailers from the Ohio State Highway Patrol that will be placed on the main routes in the village, which hopefully will help slow vehicles down.

Radar guns and their efficiency have always been an extremely debated topic, because no one is ever sure how accurate they are.
As you know, there are many types of radar guns, and all work on a similar principle. A radar gun launches a beam of electromagnetic waves at a moving object. On hitting the object the waves are reflected back toward a detector on the gun, which then calculates the speed of the object by analyzing the nature of the reflected beam.
The controversy surrounding radar guns hides in their measurement reliability. There are some different sources of error, which can easily affect the showing. I can name at least three of them, but I'm sure there much more.
1. Gun calibration
2. Angle of your moving car vs the police car with a radar gun in it
3. Point of measurement
Of course you need to make sure that you're driving the speed limit, but when suddenly stopped by a police oficer with a hand-held police radar gun, don't panic, remember this lesson, and try to find out the truth.

Recently I read the statistics about driving on the streets of San Francisco, CA. Well, statistically, they are now much safer than used to be in 2000, though traffic fatalities spiked in 2006. According to a recent San Francisco Police Department year-end summary, unsafe speed is the number one reason for traffic, pedestrian injuries, and death. So, the police department needs about 20 new radar guns in order to keep safety on the roads. The number of collisions caused by speeding on the roads of San Francisco has gone down 28.43 percent since 2000, and fell 12.34 percent from 2005 to 2006. But the number of collisions for which police can’t determine a cause rose by 57.69 percent from 2005 to 2006.
So, when thinking about getting more hand-held police radar guns, all of us understand that it can only resolve a part of this huge problem. It means that the rest of it should be regulated by our morale and consciousness. We need to understand and realize that each one of us, even individually is capable of making this world better...

On the eastbound side of the State Road 50 by the sign that welcomes drivers to Titusville was set up a speed zone called Florida Today. With the speed limit of 55mph it saw drivers blowing past the sign with the speed of more that 70 mph.
So, the result is the following: in two hours more than 100 speeding drivers going at lest 10 mph over the speed limit were clocked with the help of calibrated radar gun. Of them: 33 drivers were going around 70 mph, two cars about 80 mph, and the fastest speed was 83 mph.
The speed patrol team was trained on how to use hand-held police radar gun, which at the same time was also tested for accuracy.
In order to highlight and fight the problem of speeding in Brevard County, similar operations were performed on Route 3 on Merritt Island, State Road 528 (the Beachline), Interstate 95, Palm Bay Road, Pineda Causeway, A1A in Cocoa Beach and Melbourne Beach as well as U.S. 1 in Rockledge.

An unheard even took place in Indianapolis yesterday. Wednesday, April 11, from 13th to 25th streets, 50 to 60 people stood at street corners holding signs imploring drivers to slow down. The message those people tried drivers to hear is to reduce their speed while driving through residential neighborhoods. This request could be surely appreciated by residents of any other major streets. "Slow down", "Please drive 35 in our neighborhood", "We live here. Slow down" - these are the signs that people wrote.
This protest was a planned action of three neighborhoods that decided to remind drivers that their street is not a highway.
The neighbors also got help from police who came out with hand-held police radar guns and traffic ticket books.
On Monday alone, police officers stationed there handed out 42 speeding tickets. Even police officers said that they haven't experienced anything like this before. The speed limit there is 35 mph, but most of the speeding tickets went to drivers traveling 15 mph and more over the speed limit.
The situation reached its point that this year drivers usie city streets as alternate routes because of the I-70 construction project. Police department said that along the Delaware Street a speed trailer should be set up. It'll be done in order to show people how fast they go, because the goal of this operation and people's protest isn't to issue more speeding tickets, but to ensure neighborhood safety. It should be an educational process, not law enforcement. People have to understand that they must go the speed limit.

Yesterday I read an article that made me laugh at first, but then I realized that Marine Patrol is as well important as the regular police department on our roads. The article said that for the summer the New Hampshire Marine Patrol was working on implementing speed limits in two zones of Lake Winnipesaukee.
Boaters will face a 45 mph limit by day and 25 mph limit by night in two large zones near Rattlesnake and Bear Islands. But for now it is unknown if tickets will be issued and what is more important, how officers will be able to properly notify boaters if they are in a speed limit zone. Currently, there are no speed limits on the state lakes.
The difficulty is that the majority of the traffic goes one way or the other, which separates speed zones from other areas of the lake where traffic is going in all directions. So, in other locations it would be much harder to run a radar guns and collect data.
The marine patrol department currently has three radar guns, and now it is in the process of training officers to properly use them. If you are wondering what kind of radar guns marine patrol will use, and if there exist marine radar guns, then I'll tell you that marine patrol department said to be using standard hand-held police radar guns. They said, that these radar guns won't work as well as on highways, but they'll still do their job.

In one of our Radar Guns Blog postings, there was an article called Police Radar in Tunnel.
We discussed there about Dubai police acquiring radar guns for traffic speed enforcement. Well, now a little update would be interesting for you: Dubai police will not need those radars,
they will use cell phones instead! Any violation on the road will be reported by a cell phone. So, if a person speeds or runs the red light the police will not even bother to turn their lights and sirens. A violator will just get a ticket by mail and wonder why s/he got the fine. Dubai government will use psychological trics, i.e. a driver will be always alert on the road. And anti-radar guns will not help. We'll see, maybe other countries will use that experience and implement those technics.

Recently we've been talking a lot about hand-held police radar guns, police officers and even volunteers. But today I've learned that there is also a "meth gun", which looks like a standard radar gun. The only difference is that a meth gun is made to help police find traces of dope. All people see it as an investigative aid, mass-produced devices will test not only for meth, but also for cocaine, marijuana, heroin and even peroxide-based explosives.

In United Kingdom North Shropshire residents very soon will go out on the streets with a new radar gun to help take action against speeding drivers. Radar gun equipment, including hand-held police radar guns, has already been bought for them by the police department. Already this Saturday about 15 volunteers will be trained how to use radar guns and record the speed of vehicles. Speeders could easily face a $158 fine and three points on their license or even be prosecuted in court.
This program was launched the speed traffic was announced to be the number one concern and priority problem in county.

Starting in April Orlando police begins cracking down on speeding drivers. This operation will be performed with the help of standard radar guns and hand-held police radar guns. The goal of it is to decrease the number of crashes and traffic fatalities on a busy Semoran road, that is well known as a big trouble area of speeding, problems of lane changes, and aggressive drivers. The operation is called "Operation Safe Semoran", and will continue through the end of April. At the end of the month police will review the numbers and report if there are any differences made.

Bad drivers are a big problem for people of Waterford. On March 11, a driver lost control on Third Street, in the town of Waterford, and crashed into a home, destroying its porch. Everyone on that street with the houses located extremely close to the curb is now trying to improve traffic safety in their neighborhood, including the state Department of Transportation, which is responsible for maintaining the road.
But state officials together with the town of Waterford authorities said they're sympathetic, but there is only so much they can do. Recently there were three accidents in Waterford when a vehicle crashed into the same home on Third Street. The speed limit on that portion of road is 30 mph headed north out of Waterford and changes to 40 just past that unfortunate home. Drivers increase their speed as they go around the bend there. Later on there were police officers with standard radar guns as well as hand-held police radar guns stationed on that part of the road, but they didn't write any tickets.
The idea of this story is that if you're driving, put down your cell phone, slow down, and be careful.

With the advent of a radar gun, they became a huge convenience for police officers. Radar guns determine the motorists' speed very effectively. Can you imagine that in a split of a second they can tell how fast the car is moving.
But still radar guns are machines, and they also may be mistaken. Furthermore, radar guns are supposed to go through maintenance every certain period of time. Radar guns can be also hand-held police radar guns. As for other speed measuring devices, they might look like speed trailers, not only radar guns.
But no matter what, radar guns became very useful and helpful instruments in our society.

Yesterday I read an article in a newspaper about a man, who was stopped by a police officer for speeding. The situation was that the person was driving along in his car, and suddenly the car in front of him stopped and light suddenly flashed on. It turned out that the guy was following an unmarked police car! Can you imagine that! And there is even a more interesting fact, how could the police officer measure the speed of that guy driving with the radar gun if the officer was driving in front of him. May be there is the technology that we don't even know about. Or may be there are police radar guns that can measure the speed in any situation? For now, this question will stay unanswered, but may be later we'll be able to find out…

Yesterday I read a story and decided to share it with you. The story is about the guy, who lives in the center of a town, where the speed limit is 30 miles per hour. But he thinks that everyone is speeding there, though there are a lot of hidden driveways. So, he was very happy every time when he saw a police officer with a hand-held police radar gun pulling someone over.
One day he was walking his dog and was watching the cars going by, he noticed that almost all of them were going the speed limit, or even below it, but all the police cars were flying by. And they weren't going to a call, because the lights were not on. First he got confused, and then angry, that he had decided to by a radar gun to measure their speed. The idea was that he doesn't think that police officers are better than anyone of us that may be if he starts measuring their speed with a hand-held radar gun; this will change something in our society. May be he's right, may be not, but there is definitely something to think about…