Pasadena Tests Radar Photo Unit : Speeders Needn’t Smile for This Candid Camera

In a land where cars can at times seem sacred, there is something almost heretical about the Swiss-built Zelleweger Ulster photographic Doppler radar unit.

“There is a tradition here of the sanctity of the car,” lamented Pasadena Police Cmdr. Gary A. Bennett as he stood next to the $42,500 device Friday on a busy stretch of Oak Knoll Avenue in Pasadena.

Dozens of drivers rushed past him, oblivious to the fact that their days of freewheeling could soon come to a screeching halt.

In an effort to control the city’s increasingly serious speeding problem, the Pasadena Police Department held a one-day test of the unusual high-speed radar unit and may permanently adopt it.

The device is a camera-equipped radar unit that can clock those exceeding the speed limit and, at the same time, photograph the car license and the driver’s face. The information is later printed out as a notice that is sent to the registered owner of the car.

The U.S. distributors of the machine, Traffic Monitoring Technologies, headquartered in Friends-wood, Tex., claim it is capable of photographing up to 260 speeders an hour--far eclipsing what a mere human can manage.

“A good officer can do about 10 an hour, and that’s really moving,” Bennett said. “It can generate a lot more enforcement than we can.”

The test Friday was the first time the machine has been used in California, and Bennett said the Pasadena department expects to begin a full 30-day test of the device within the next few months. If it adopts the program, Pasadena would be the fourth city in the nation to use the machine.

“We’ve used very traditional ways of handling traffic in the past. Now it’s time for something innovative,” Bennett said.

Bennett conceded that use of the photo radar device could stumble on the same problems that led to its demise in La Marque and parts of Galveston County, Tex..

For example, many disgruntled drivers ignored violation notices because they were not stopped by an officer and cited in person. The registered owners of cars were angry if they were not driving and received speeding notices. And residents complained that their cities were becoming known as revenue-hungry speed traps.

“It may not be a panacea,” Bennett said, “but it is certainly worth trying.”

The photo radar unit, which can determine the speed of a vehicle traveling between 15 and 155 m.p.h., is usually mounted at the rear of an innocuous-looking station wagon and pointed toward the road, said Gary Ezell, vice president of marketing for Traffic Monitoring Technologies.

800 Photos Per Roll

A police officer dials in a speed limit, and the radar automatically photographs anything traveling faster than that, Ezell said. The vehicle’s speed, license number, the date and the driver’s face appear on the photograph, which is usually snapped within a range of 50 feet. The unit is capable of taking 800 photographs before it needs more film.

In Friday’s test, police parked the car housing the photo radar unit on a section of Oak Knoll where residents have frequently complained about speeding.

The north-south street is a heavily traveled route lined with some of Pasadena’s most palatial mansions where commuters easily pick up speed on the wide, two-lane thoroughfare.

In a period of half an hour, during which 130 cars passed the unit, the machine photographed 22 drivers traveling over the 30 m.p.h. speed limit. The machine was set to photograph violators traveling more than 38 m.p.h., and despite a crowd of reporters, police officers and city officials, it had no problem detecting speeders. Because it was a test, no citations will be issued.

Manuel Fustes, president of Traffic Monitoring Technologies, said that in the other cities where it has been used, the “placebo effect” takes hold as word of the device gets around.

‘They Slow Down’

“That’s when anytime someone sees a car on the side of the road, they slow down,” he said.

Justice of the Peace Jim Woltz of Galveston County said the photo radar unit has the added benefit of nearly eliminating the steady stream of excuses and court challenges by speeding drivers.

“A photograph is pretty darned good evidence,” he said. “I’d ask people if they wanted to set a court date, but after seeing the photo, they’d say, ‘What the heck for.’ ”

The machine is being used in more than 30 countries, including Switzerland, Germany and Brazil, and will soon begin operation in Paradise Valley, Ariz. The only other U.S. experiments were in Texas, where angry motorists helped run it out of town.

‘Bit of Unhappiness’

“You could say there was a good bit of unhappiness,” said Jack Nash, former mayor of La Marque. “When you get a ticket from an officer, at least you know you’ve been had.”

Nash conceded that the machine slowed traffic, but said there were major problems in enforcing a photo radar violation. Galveston County Constable Paul Bess said that during 18 months of sporadic testing, a large portion of the speeders threw away their notices.

The problem was that under Texas law--and according to the California Highway Patrol, California’s too--a photo radar violation notice is not a ticket, which must be signed by the violator.

“They are not tickets. They are not citations,” Bess said. “If a person took that letter and threw it away, what do you do?

“If you got a letter in the mail a month after you drove down some highway saying that you were going 68 and send $60, what would you do? A lot paid, but a lot ignored it.”

Problems Foreseen

Pasadena Assistant City Prosecutor Chris Smith said he thinks the enforcement problems would make the use of the machine costly and time consuming.

“I don’t see where this is going to save us anything,” he said. “It would certainly make my job more involved.”

But Ezell said the device’s success rate is comparable to that of regularly issued traffic citations.

“It’s like any other law. If you don’t enforce it, people aren’t going to pay attention,” he said, adding that despite the problems Galveston County may soon begin using the system countywide.

La Marque Police Chief Larry Crow said he was uneasy about the device because violation notices were sent to the registered car owner, when, in fact, someone else may have been driving the vehicle at the time of the violation.

‘Big Brother’ Situation

“In some circles, this was seen as a Big Brother type of thing,” said La Marque City Manager Gary Jackson.

In Texas, car owners were not obligated to pay the speeding fine, but they could be summoned to court to identify the alleged violator and arrested if they ignored the summons, Woltz said.

Bennett said that despite the problems, he believes that the photo radar unit can work well for Pasadena. He said the city could even increase the machine’s effectiveness by setting up dummy units after the “placebo effect” had taken hold.

He said that a few station wagons equipped only with strobe lights would have the same effect on traffic as a genuine photo radar unit. But he doubts that residents would stand for that.

“I’m not so serious about getting everyone paranoid,” Bennett said.