Lack of Vigilance Has Put Big Brother in the Driver’s Seat

OK. That tears it.

It took a vigilant reader smacking him across the chops to do it, but Street Smart has finally woken up. He suggests you do the same.

The Evil Empire is upon us.

The Soviets? They were pikers. The Trilateral Commission? Rank amateurs.

The entire Hollywood thought-control machine? Spoiled rich kids in a sandbox full of shiny plastic toys, too obsessed with cell phones, tummy tucks and divorce to drive an entire nation to actually believe an elephant can fly.

Nah, those guys are weak as snails and dumb as lug nuts compared to the grim, shadowy power that is now reaching long, bony fingers into the lives of Ventura County motorists and ripping away their rights.

Don’t say you haven’t seen the signs.

Come on. Unmarked patrol cars cruising the Conejo Grade? Road-repair zones populated by sweaty guys in hard hats doing absolutely nothing but drawing a government wage? Surveillance cameras atop the street posts?

HellOOOOO.

Until now, Street Smart has just been bucketing along obliviously, answering all your questions about stop signs and speed humps and--for the love of Tucker--carpool lanes.

But it’s time for us to all snap to our senses. Unless we band together and fight, they will take control, and all our automotive privacy will slip away from us like a truckload of greased anvils.

Arise. Unite. Defy.

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Dear Street Smart:

I recently received an Intercity Travel Survey questionnaire in the mail from Caltrans, which apparently got my address by spotting my car on the freeway.

This is really an invasion of my privacy. It’s not like a marketing survey where somebody bought my name, or like somebody stopped me on the street and said, ‘Can you answer a few questions?’ Somebody photographed my car to get my license number.

What does it matter what my socioeconomic range is? If they wanted to know whether I travel this road frequently, what hours of the day I travel it, I could understand that.

But whether I’m a man or a woman, whether two, three or 10 people are in my car, where I went, how long it took me and what our family income is is really none of their business and has nothing to do with the reason why they’re doing this survey. I was really offended by it.

Can you get Caltrans to explain itself?

Paula Schutzer

Thousand Oaks

Dear Reader:

OK, no hyperbole, and no jokes for just a minute.

Street Smart is totally serious here.

Caltrans’ Travel Survey is not only appalling, it is just plain wrong.

Bad enough that you have to jump up from your dinner or bath to answer a phone call from some huckster peddling rubber siding, mentholated horse-wash or--good grief--NEWSPAPERS.

Now the government is actively spying on your comings and goings. Demanding personal information from you. And spending your tax dollars to do it.

Street Smart is no more an anti-government nut than the next ink-stained wretch. He believes the government is run by mostly conscientious human beings who guide the affairs of our lives and sometimes get too drunk on bleeding the system that we--more or less--empower them to run.

But we expect that somewhere in the midst of their budget squabbles, political eye-poking and creative accounting, the civil servants will uphold our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

We’ll be fair here and present their side: Caltrans spokesman Jim Drago says the department needs to know whether motorists could be persuaded to take the train--avoiding traffic, pollution and anxiety--before it goes spending millions of your dollars on train service.

Here’s how it works: Caltrans pays a Washington state surveillance company called ATD Northwest to install--for two days--a set of videotape cameras and recorders that watch several busy freeways along potential train corridors. The cameras grab your license number, ATD transcribes the numbers onto a computer tape for Caltrans, and Caltrans hands it over to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

The DMV uses the license numbers to pull your name and address for Caltrans, which then sends out the questionnaires through a Sacramento mailing company. The company gets each questionnaire back in an envelope that you sealed, it sticks a blank label over your name and address designed to destroy it if anyone pulls it off, and forwards it--still sealed--to Caltrans, which culls data from the now-anonymous questionnaire.

Drago has fielded countless complaints, including one from a man whose wife found out about his mistress because the questionnaire pinpointed him traveling at a certain time in a certain car on a certain road where he was not supposed to be.

“We don’t care if you’re going to the No-Tell Motel, what we’re asking is, would you ride the train?” Drago says. “This is the one opportunity that people have for a chance to try and influence the spending of potentially millions of dollars of their money. . . . You’re not forced to answer the questions, if you don’t want to, it’s your choice.”

But Street Smart notes that while it may not be your choice to have your car spied on and your privacy invaded, Caltrans says, “Tough.” There must be less intrusive ways of getting the data the department needs.

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Dear Street Smart:

I see in the paper that Thousand Oaks is thinking of using private citizens to man radar guns and finger speeders.

On the one hand, with all of the traffic violators out there, it sounds like a reasonable solution. On the other hand, it also sounds like a good way to get a punch in the nose.

Besides that, as I understand from the article, the speeder will receive four separate warnings. Oh yeah, that’ll work!

I live in Ventura, which is one of the cities that rarely enforces traffic laws. As someone else wrote, have an accident, and you will see at least four police cars.

But I have a question that may relate to our police head count problem. Who gets the ticket money in their budget. The county, the city or the police department?

Dick Willhardt

Ventura

Dear Reader:

The short answer to your question is the county gets the money first, then disburses it to the cities after skimming off its own state-mandated share.

But your letter poses a thornier question: What the Ford does Thousand Oaks think it is doing?

First of all, radar guns are NOT thoroughly accurate. There is a case on the books somewhere of an officer who clocked a tree busting the speed limit.

Secondly--and we are not joking here--certain models of radar guns have been known to cause testicular cancer in Connecticut state troopers who rested them in their laps between clocking sessions. Is that really the sort of tort liability the city wants to take on?

And more importantly, what’s next in a city that already lets citizens patrol in used squad cars, ticket illegal parkers and peer into empty houses--high-speed chases by civilians? Candy rewards for kids who turn their parents in for making illegal left turns? Hot lines for snitching on scofflaws? (Oh wait, that already exists.)

Maybe it’s all just a sad statement on the death of personal responsibility and the willy-nilly scramblings of government to answer people’s complaints about it.

But then again, maybe we should all blame ourselves for the way the government’s going. After all, the government was designed to be of, by and for the people. That’s us. Look in the mirror. Do you see a spy?

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Peeved? Baffled? Miffed? Or merely perplexed? Street Smart answers your most probing questions about the joys and horrors of driving around Ventura County. Write to: Street Smart, c/o Mack Reed, Los Angeles Times, 2659 Townsgate Road, No. 240, Westlake Village 91361. Include a simple sketch if needed to help explain. E-mail us at Mack.Reed@latimes.com or call our Sound Off line, 653-7546. In any case, include your full name, address, and day and evening phone numbers. Street Smart cannot answer anonymous queries, and might edit your letter.