ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Videotape Plan Needs Adjusting

Which do you hate more: the car-pool-lane scofflaw, whizzing by alone in his vehicle while you’re stuck in traffic? Or getting caught when you try to get away with it yourself?

Technology can now help nab motorists who are riding in a car-pool lane with fewer than the required number of occupants. Such a plan was tested recently on the Costa Mesa Freeway to the general excitement of the California Highway Patrol. CHP officers are the ones, after all, who must escort car-pool-lane violators across several freeway lanes to cite them. That’s dangerous and causes even further delays for those who are law-abiding.

But it will be a while before a videotaping program can find its way into general use on Orange County freeways. Legal questions remain. For example, what if the camera didn’t catch sight of a passenger who is asleep or otherwise out of view? Will the photos be clear enough to identify the driver of the car, who may not necessarily be the registered owner? (It’s the owner who will get the citation in the mail, after all.) And what about privacy rights?

These photographic traffic-control systems, combined with a radar speed reading, have been in use for some time by law enforcement agencies in Pasadena as well as other parts of the nation, such as Texas and Arizona. In Paradise Valley, Ariz., police authorities report that speed citations have dropped dramatically and accident rates have plummeted 40% in two years. Drivers there rarely challenge the black-and-white evidence, and photographs that are not clear are simply tossed out by police and never become an issue. There have been no court rulings there against photo-radar.

Some of those who object to being on camera as they negotiate the freeways probably already have gotten used to being videotaped in bank lines, at convenience and grocery stores and even in department store dressing rooms. There is a Big Brother aspect to these seemingly pervasive observation systems that is discomfiting. But it is likely that in the near future we will be seeing signs along our freeways reading: SCOFFLAWS BE WARNED: WE’RE WATCHING YOU.