It’s No Accident That SigAlert Is a Traffic Watchword

Dear Street Smart:

An out-of-state friend of mine who’s been stationed at Tustin Marine Corps Helicopter Air Station for a few years has been trying to figure out what the “Sig” in “SigAlert” stands for. He’s asked many of us who are longtime Southern California residents and no one seems to know. What does it stand for?

Michael Evans

Santa Ana

It comes from the last name of Loyd Sigmon, who invented the SigAlert in 1955.

Back then, according to old newspaper clips, Sigmon was an executive at radio station KMPC-AM (710) in Los Angeles, which, like other radio stations at the time, was looking for ways to compete with just-blossoming television.

Freeway congestion was rare in those days unless there was a crash, which was big news. So Sigmon got an idea. If he could get the Los Angeles Police Department, which then patrolled the freeways and dealt with accidents, to call the radio station every time a serious one occurred, he might boost the station’s ratings.

But Police Chief William H. Parker balked at the idea, saying that it would require too much of officers’ time.

Sigmon invented a machine to do the job--a receiver-tape recorder that could be activated by a police dispatcher to tap into the department’s radio dispatching center when something happened. After recording the dispatcher’s message to police units, the machine displayed a red light alerting radio engineers that the recording was ready for broadcast.

Parker approved the concept on the condition that the machines be made available to every Los Angeles radio station that wanted them. And on Labor Day 1955, the first alert was broadcast over six local stations when a train’s car overturned out of Union Station. The SigAlert call for medical help brought so many doctors and nurses that they created a traffic jam.

The idea caught on immediately, engendering newspaper and magazine articles throughout the country and prompting Parker to dub the dispatches SigAlerts in honor of their inventor.

At first, SigAlerts dealt with everything from rabid dogs to gas leaks. One even warned a patient that his pharmacist had made a potentially deadly error in a prescription.

Since 1969, when the California Highway Patrol took over monitoring the freeways and issuing SigAlerts, however, they largely have been confined to traffic matters.

Today, the CHP issues an alert whenever, in the opinion of officers at the scene, a freeway accident is likely to hold up traffic for at least 30 minutes.

The term was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 1993.

Interestingly, though, it seems to have caught on only in Southern California; not even our neighbors to the north have picked up the jargon.

“If you used SigAlert up here, I don’t think anybody would know what you were talking about,” said Jim Drago, a spokesman for Caltrans in Sacramento. “We call them traffic jams.”

Dear Street Smart:

Could you answer a nagging question for me? A friend in a defensive-driving class was told by a sheriff’s deputy that it is illegal to ride one’s motorcycle “between the lanes” unless traffic is going less than 5 mph.

Another person was told by a California Highway Patrol officer that it is not illegal, just stupid. Since it is done all the time, I would like to know for sure.

Pat Stephens

Garden Grove

The practice of “splitting” traffic, as it is called, is not addressed in the Vehicle Code and therefore is something of a gray area of law subject to interpretation, CHP spokeswoman Sandy Houston said.

While it is legal to ride a motorcycle between lanes of traffic, it is illegal to drive unsafely, which many CHP officers interpret in this context to mean significantly faster than the flow of traffic.

So while motorcyclists can ride down the middle, they can be cited--depending on the discretion of an officer--for passing cars on either side, which, of course, is the only real reason for riding down the middle in the first place.

“It’s just one of those things that evolved because of traffic congestion,” Houston said. “It’s kind of a commute tool now, just one of those things that occur.”

She urges extreme caution.

“Just pay attention to all the elements on the highway out there and use your best judgment,” Houston said. “If traffic is moving 10 to 15 mph, you don’t want a guy out there on a motorcycle doing 40 to 50 mph; someone could decide to change lanes and not see the motorcycle.”

The motorcyclist usually fares the worst in such situations.

“To me,” Houston said, “it is a dangerous situation. There is much more potential for a collision when you’re splitting traffic than when you’re just in stop-and-go.”

Street Smart appears Mondays in The Times Orange County Edition.