Speeding Drivers Get a High-Tech Warning

Torrance police last week began using a high-tech gift to give speeding motorists a digital warning to ease up on the accelerator.

The $6,500 device--a large, digital sign attached to a radar that tells drivers how fast they are going as they roll past--is being set up beside Torrance streets where rushed commuters have irritated homeowners and endangered pedestrians.

Police will experiment with the sign in school zones and along popular residential shortcuts, Lt. Dennis Frandsen said. Currently, police do not intend to use the device to write citations.

“It’s a friendly way of saying, ‘You need to slow down,’ ” Frandsen said. “If in a particular location it does not have the desired effect, we may put an officer . . . down the block and get them again on a regular radar.”

Among the areas being considered for the sign’s use are Madison Street, where speeding drivers endanger schoolchildren; 182nd Street in front of North High School, where drivers frequently travel at twice the posted limit, and Via Valmonte, used by commuters as a shortcut around busy Hawthorne Boulevard to the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

The sign was donated to the city by American Honda, which is completing work on its national headquarters near Torrance’s old downtown district. The company donated the device “to show that we care about traffic safety,” spokesman Harold Vann said.