CHP Takes to the Air to Bag Errant Trucks

As the black-and- white California Highway Patrol plane circled, the Citizen Band radio traffic rose in an anxious buzz from the big trucks running along California 58 southeast of here.

“You got a bear in the air down by the scale house there,” a voice warned.

“Take your rifle and shoot him down,” someone suggested.

“Is it bear season?” chimed in a third.

“It’s always bear season,” came the reply.

Actually, it has been truck season in the San Joaquin Valley for the last month under “Operation Skywatch.” The CHP is hunting scofflaws--mostly on heavily travelled Interstate 5 and California 99--from the air in coordination with ground patrol units.

And the CHP has added a new twist to its usual air-ground enforcement efforts: Truckers are being urged to use their CB radios to report fellow drivers to spotter planes. In effect, the CHP--along with the California Trucking Assn., which joined in sponsoring the program--is attempting to turn the ubiquitous CB radio into an enforcement tool, rather than a means of avoiding traffic citations.

Prompted by a 33% increase in truck-at-fault accidents on California 99 during the first seven months of this year, Chief John Anderson, commander of the CHP’s Central Division, initiated Skywatch and aimed it at the main causes of truck collisions: unsafe speed, lane changes and improper turns. The problem in the valley reflects a three-year upward trend in truck accidents statewide.

During the first three weeks of the operation, according to CHP spokesman Ted W. Eichman, the operation resulted in 574 citations, 540 of them for truckers. Speeding was the most common violation with 403 tickets, followed by 47 for following too closely.

Skywatch, covering six counties from Bakersfield to Modesto (Kern, Tulare, Fresno, Madera, Merced and Stanislaus), uses two four-passenger Cessna aircraft and six CHP special enforcement ground units based in five valley cities.

The CHP makes no secret of where spotter planes will be on a given day. Quite the opposite: Skywatch advertises its daily operations in the hope of deterring truck drivers from breaking traffic laws.

Posters and large calendars, distributed to truck stops, rest areas, restaurants and truck repair depots, list where the Skywatch teams will be operating on weekdays through the end of January. Drivers are invited to use the CB channel corresponding to the day’s date to report traffic violators.

So far, only a few truckers have contacted the Skywatch plane directly, according to Eichman. On the whole, he said professional drivers are “a little bit shy” about tattling on one another. “They’re not used to it, and the word fink has a negative connotation,” he said.

Despite an apparent reluctance to inform directly, Eichman said some truckers have found an indirect method.

“They’re real coy,” he said. “Rather than calling Skywatch, they talk to each other and say something like: ‘Hey, did you see that blue Kenworth tractor going about 75? Yeah, he’s moving along about Lerdo Highway now.’ They know we’re listening.”

When CHP pilot Dan O’Bar and Bob Brown, a flight officer, maneuvered their spotter plane over California 58 one afternoon recently, no one showed any signs of cooperation, either directly or indirectly.

The Skywatch team had taken off from Meadows Field in Bakersfield a few minutes earlier, climbed through a thick layer of valley-wide fog into the bright sunshine at about 3,500 feet and headed for a hole in the gray blanket close to the foothills.

Flying near the highway, Brown spotted an 18-wheeler barreling down in the fast lane, rapidly passing motorists on the left. As the big rig approached a mile marker painted on the highway, Brown told the pilot to slow the plane to keep pace with the truck, then pressed a stop watch mounted on a panel in front of him as both the truck and plane passed the white mark on the ground.

Brown punched another stop watch as the truck and plane passed the next mile marker and timed the seconds it took to travel the mile. Using a chart, he converted the seconds into miles per hour and radioed the truck’s speed, along with its description, to a CHP patrol car parked beside the highway.

“Affirming . . . the green one,” the ground patrolman said as the truck passed his position.

A black-and-white patrol car broke from somewhere below, streaking along the highway like a predator on a run.

“There he goes!” a voice cried over the CB. “He’s going down! He’s right behind you, George.”

Everyone with a tuned-in CB soon learns the outcome of the short pursuit.

“Smokey’s got him a large car there,” a voice reported.

“Where’s that damn air watch plane at?’ someone asked.

“There’s none up there,” offered another.

“Hell there ain’t,” came the response. “He just gave me a ticket for 68.”

Spotting Violators

On another pass over the patrol area, Brown explained that it is easy to spot drivers who are not going with the flow of traffic. And after that it is simply a matter of accurate timing over a known distance to determine their speed.

In late afternoon on the day of Skywatch’s operation on California 58, Earl Parkhurst, about 60 and a professional driver for 42 years, stood beside his truck and trailer parked on the same stretch of highway where several truckers had been cited earlier.

His feelings about the CHP operation were mixed.

“I don’t think it’s a good, safe idea,” Parkhurst said. “A man is not going to keep his mind on his work if he’s watching up there.”

Would he report a fellow trucker?

“Yes and no,” he said.

He indicated that he would not report a driver who was simply exceeding the speed limit by a few miles an hour, because 55 m.p.h. is a “lazy speed” for an 18-wheeler, but said drivers with a don’t-give-a-damn attitude should be reported.

Unhesitating Endorsement

Ron Weese, 42, a Pacific Northwest resident who drives for Border State Transport out of Burlington, Wash., unhesitantly endorsed the Skywatch program as a good idea that should be spread nationwide.

“There are drunk drivers out there,” he said. “They’re out there driving at excessive speed. I’d report them in a minute if I saw them drinking.”

Carroll Fuller, safety director of Arrow Transportation Co., a Portland, Ore., firm that hauls hazardous chemicals on the West Coast, has issued a memo urging the company’s 275 drivers to support the Skywatch operation. Arrow is a member of the California Trucking Assn.

“Over the years, we have always encouraged our drivers to report drunk drivers with CB radio, and from time to time, they have,” Fuller said in a telephone interview. “I don’t think they’d report 60 or 65 miles an hour because a lot of drivers in California go that fast. But, weaving around, following to close and reckless driving, they’ll report that.

‘Play by the Rules’

“I have no patience with a driver who doesn’t play by the rules.”

At California Trucking Assn. headquarters in Sacramento, Larry Patterson said the Skywatch program is “going very well, especially the deterrent effect,” as gauged by the banter on CB radio.

“There has just been a few calls made up to the airplane itself, which is the support we need,” Patterson said. “It’s a slow process to get the word out to the drivers. . . . It’s going to be an educational process,” adding that he hopes that the program is made permanent.