Cruising the sky for speeders
-
Using a helicopter to spot speeders, RCMP traffic services conducted patrols on the Trans-Canada Highway near St. John’s Tuesday. — Photo by Tobias Romaniuk/The Telegram
-
An RCMP helicopter sits at the Foxtrap weigh scales off the Trans-Canada Highway before the highway traffic patrol looks for speeding drivers Tuesday. — Photo by Tobias Romaniuk/The Telegram
-
Using a clipboard, stopwatches, and marks painted on the highway, an officer in the helicopter will calculate the speed of a vehicle then give a description of the vehicle to an officer on the ground using radios. — Photo by Tobias Romaniuk/The Telegram
Using a helicopter to spot speeders, RCMP traffic services conducted patrols on the Trans-Canada Highway near St. John’s Tuesday. — Photo by Tobias Romaniuk/The Telegram
An RCMP helicopter sits at the Foxtrap weigh scales off the Trans-Canada Highway before the highway traffic patrol looks for speeding drivers Tuesday. — Photo by Tobias Romaniuk/The Telegram
Using a clipboard, stopwatches, and marks painted on the highway, an officer in the helicopter will calculate the speed of a vehicle then give a description of the vehicle to an officer on the ground using radios. — Photo by Tobias Romaniuk/The Telegram
- Rate
- Top of the page
Comments
-
- California Pete from NFLD
- - June 27, 2012 at 13:57:04
Let me see. Down here in California it adds up quick 15 MPH over the posted 75 = $ 475.00 Solo in Diamon lane $ 425.00 Total = 900.00 It sure makes you think twice But then the CHP use fixed wing single engine planes and timing marks on the freeway and are in direct communication with the black and white on the ground. Enjoy your ride and have a nice day he tells you after reciving your bill
-
- David
- - June 27, 2012 at 13:07:38
This is nothing more than an extravagant 'job perk', a complete waste of public money so that selected officers can be rewarded with a little novetly and a bit of fun under the thin disguise of "professional training". The RCMP are extremely well paid already for the patheitically bad job this "police force" cdoes, and are lucky to have a job at all. Making it into a public PR news item as they have is a VERY stupid idea, with all the backlash obvious. But then, I wouldn't expect anytihng less from the geniuses at the RCMP.
-
- saelcove
- - June 27, 2012 at 12:09:54
this must be a joke, why bother no one pays fine
-
- Calvin
- - June 27, 2012 at 12:09:23
People, there is a reason they use 500m intervals. At 120km/hr you are travelling 33.3m/sec, so it takes you 15 seconds to travel the 500m. At 140km/hr is 38.8m/sec and it takes 13 seconds to travel 500m, 160km/hr is 44.4m/sec and it takes 11 seconds to travel 500m. Argue with the math if you like, numbers dont lie. So the stop watch will tell the police whether or not someone is speeding. It is then up to the officer on the ground to catch the person speeding on radar, because they cant give someone a ticket on the air patrol alone. It is not about creating revenue, it is about slowing people down during peak traffic times. Like this Canada Day weekend, it would be much better if we didnt have to hear about someone being killed on the highways next Tuesday, and hopefully we are all that lucky. And if luck abandons us, maybe the police patroling the highways will prevent a catastrophe.
-
- lol
- - June 27, 2012 at 11:54:20
waste of money
-
- Denis
- - June 27, 2012 at 11:34:27
Another waste of taxpayers dollars. The sleeping cop on the side of the road works just fine
-
- Chris
- - June 27, 2012 at 11:05:15
Seriously?? What ever it takes to get these clowns off the road. Policing is NOT a revenue neutral activity and I applaud the efforts of these officers. I only wish they would patrol the Outer Ring in the city the same way. Doing the speed limit on that highway is suicide. At 110 km/h you are passed like you are parked.
-
- Alex
- - June 27, 2012 at 10:41:09
Beyond stupid. I can see this making money only in the most ideal circumstances. And even then, there's a cost to the environment for burning all that fuel. Also as W. Bagg has mentioned, there is so much error involved in clocking these cars, I wonder if a ticket issued using this method would even hold up in a court of law.
-
- David
- - June 27, 2012 at 10:32:51
When the media runs stories day after day after dsay of speeders killing themselves or others on Newfoundlad highways, I will consider it a problem. But it simply isn't. Drunk driving is an absolute epidemic here that kills people, does horrendous damage, and leaves the general popualtion feeling unsafe aout being on the roads at any time of day. Sell that stupid helicopter for breathalyzer units. Well, unless "good policing" really comes down to writing tickets and generating money.....
-
- Joe it all
- - June 27, 2012 at 10:29:50
I think that highway cameras recording the speed and licence number would be much better and much more cost effective. Then you would have 24/7 coverage and they would pay for themselves in no time. We need them in more places than just on the TCH!
-
- R U KIDDING ME..
- - June 27, 2012 at 10:27:40
Too few speeders? Have you driven the divided highway lately? between the fast and the furious honda civics with teenage pilots to the middle aged man with a mid life crisis corvette. Don't forget the bikes (crotch rockets) . Many of these guys will kill somone with the speeds they are driving. nice to see enforcement Tale a few licenses while you are out....... cheers
-
- Jason
- - June 27, 2012 at 09:36:03
Way to go again Mr. Harper........ Rather then spend your money on Search and Rescue, Coast Guard, and Fisheries.........send the Cowboys in the air spending thousands of dollars an hour just to give out a few $100.00 speeding tickets!!! and in other news........fisherman calls for help and gets a "not for profit" call center in Italy.......shame!!!
-
- SR
- - June 27, 2012 at 09:58:38
It's more than a few speeding tickets. It is dangerous driving. How trivial is it when one of them hits your car at 160. You won't know because you won't know what hit you. $100 is a lot cheaper that the cost of cleaning up an accident. I don't know how some of them pass the road test.
-
- Kent
- - June 27, 2012 at 10:30:50
It 's not about collecting money from speeding tickets. Rather, it is about catching fools who put other people's lives at risk while speeding.
-
- Buddy Dudeman
- - June 27, 2012 at 09:18:08
Has the price of helicopter fuel gone down, too?
-
- W Bagg
- - June 27, 2012 at 09:15:50
I always wondered how they accounted for parallax in the situation, unless the helicopter is directly above both markers, this plays an effect on the determined speed. Without crunching the numbers, 1-20km/hr would be hard to account for. Unless they are only looking for people doing 135 km/hr plus.
-
- David Wilson
- - June 27, 2012 at 10:17:59
W BRAGG, your comment makes no sense. Speeder at marker (start stop watch) speeder at next marker (stop stop watch). Distance divided by time is the speed. A 20 km/hr variation is 3 seconds therefore parallax is not a factor.
-
- Speedos impractical
- - June 27, 2012 at 08:57:25
Whats that about 4 G a hour. Seems we have too many cops chasing to few speeders. Only NL would this make sense. Thats a crime.
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
If you want to use California as an analogy, here's something else: that state is bankrupt. How about Montana and Texas? Make all the uninformed smug comments about "Rednecks" all you want ---- and that IS rich, coming from this place!! ---- but people have a lot more deep, genuine pride in those places than people do here. Their policy is: If you get caught, we'll write you a great big ticket. But there's lots of near-empty roads here, and if you want to kill yourself in a car, there's really nothing we can do to stop you.