Eyes in the Sky Put Brakes on Speeders

California Highway Patrol pilot Roland Barry barely made his first pass over Interstate 15 looking for speeders when the CB radio crackled, “Bear in the air.”

The truckers spotted the black-and-white plane right away, but car drivers racing across the California desert appeared oblivious to the single-engine aircraft circling 1,000 feet overhead.

Barry was up there to prove that those signs that say “Patrolled by Aircraft” are for real. The CHP air force of 14 planes and nine helicopters patrols remote highways for stranded motorists, aids in police pursuits and surveillance, lands and takes off from freeways for medical emergencies, and, of course, nabs speeders.

In Los Angeles, motorists who spend time checking their rearview mirror for the CHP don’t have to worry about looking up, too. The CHP chopper based at Burbank Airport is largely used to help spot traffic problems.

But if you travel on the open roads across the desert or through the Central Valley, watch out.

On a recent day in the skies above the Mojave Desert, it took CHP pilot Barry only seconds to spot a speeder.

He first flies above the freeway in the opposite direction of traffic, then focuses on cars driving faster than the flow of traffic--especially those weaving in and out.

He aligns his single-engine Cessna over his target--a black sedan--and then paces the car. Using a stopwatch mounted on a panel in front of him, he clocks the time it takes the plane to travel from one mile marker painted on the highway to the next.

(California law considers it an illegal speed trap if the speeding vehicle itself is timed. So the plane paces the car and the plane’s speed is computed.)

Using a chart, Barry converts the seconds into miles per hour and radios the speed to a waiting CHP officer on the ground, who tickets the driver. In this case, the black sedan traveled from one mile marker to another in 38 seconds--or about 94 mph.

CHP pilots usually need help from ground units to enforce the speed limit, but not always.

“When there aren’t any units to get the guy stopped, I’ll fly over and put my shadow right over him. They kind of wonder, ‘Why all of a sudden did it get dark?’ ” Barry said. “It says ‘Highway Patrol’ right across the wing. Sometimes, that’s the only way I can get somebody to slow down.”

Sgt. John Alexander, aerial supervisor for the CHP Border Division’s air operations, based in Thermal, said that a pilot can help give out an average of 10 tickets an hour but added that at times he has generated up to 30 tickets an hour.

The planes help the officers avoid high-speed pursuits.

“When a vehicle is traveling 90 to 100 mph, which is not really uncommon, the officer, to overtake and stop that vehicle, would have to go 120 mph in and out of traffic,” Barry said. And, he added, it can sometimes take miles for a CHP patrol car to nab a speeder.

Barry said he clocked one motorcyclist traveling across the desert at 155 mph--so fast it was off the speed chart he uses to convert air speed to miles per hour.

CHP pilots say they spend most of their time patrolling for stranded motorists on remote highways--those far from an emergency call box that are not regularly patrolled by cars, where a mechanical breakdown can cost a motorist his or her life after a few hours in sweltering desert temperatures.

“We want people to know that we’re out there to help them, not just give them a speeding ticket,” said Barry, who works out of the CHP’s Inland Division covering 44,000 square miles from the Riverside-San Bernardino area to the Arizona and Nevada borders and including Death Valley and Mt. Whitney.

A plane can cover up to 10 times the territory of an officer in a car, said Alexander.

Officers say that motorists looking for shortcuts across the desert will follow dirt roads they see on road maps and end up lost.

“We find a lot of people stranded out in the middle of nowhere,” said Sgt. Bruce Bonnett, aerial supervisor of the CHP Inland Division. “People will get out in the damnedest places and get stuck.”

The airplanes are equipped with sirens (to get motorists’ attention) and loudspeakers (to bellow out instructions such as, “If you need assistance, raise your hands over your head”).

Planes have landed on the highway or next to it for medical emergencies. Pilots say they have gotten on the citizens’ band radio and even asked big-rig operators to help stop traffic for a landing. The pilots are trained as emergency medical technicians.

The CHP has been using planes since 1963. Today, the patrol has 64 pilots and 52 flight officers, who serve as observers. The pilots and flight officers are uniformed CHP officers who have worked at least two years in patrol cars.

And just because the highway isn’t marked “patrolled by aircraft,” don’t think you won’t run into an airborne traffic cop.

“A lot of people have the misconception that the highway has to be marked ‘patrolled by aircraft.’ That’s not the case,” said Alexander. “In fact, if you’re going to mark it ‘patrolled by aircraft,’ it has to be patrolled on a regular basis.”

Officers say they are writing fewer tickets since speed limits were raised.

“When the speed limit was 65 [on rural highways], people were driving 75,” said Alexander. “Now with the speed limit at 70, I don’t think they’re going much faster. I think people are comfortable at 75.”

Drivers are often surprised when they are suddenly stopped.

“They see the ground units and they slow down. It’s like somebody threw an anchor out there. And then the ground officer pulls them over, and there’s disbelief: ‘How did you know I was speeding?’ ”

Denis Neema, a Bay Area software engineer who was caught speeding by an airplane on I-5 near Coalinga, said, “I was looking out for police cars, but I had never thought I could get caught by an airplane.”

Neema said that he is now more alert to the airborne traffic cops.

“I have since bought a car with a large moon roof, and yes, I tend to look up at the sky quite a bit.”