A debate is heating up over whether municipal police departments should be permitted to use radar to track their speed.
Pennsylvania is the only state in the nation that forbids municipal police officers from using radar. The state Senate’s Transportation Committee recently forwarded legislation that could change that.
Advocates for Senate Bill 535 and Senate Bill 559 say expanding the use of radar will increase public safety. Opponents contend the technology will be abused to generate revenue at the expense of unwitting motorists.
“Since every governmental entity is broke, drivers are perceived to be a huge cash cow,” said James Sikorski Jr., Wapwallopen, an advocate for the National Motorists Association, which opposes the bills. “Say it is for safety and many people will fall for it.”
Senator John Blake, D-22, Archbald, who co-sponsored both bills, said speed-related fatalities are a major issue in Pennsylvania. A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report reveals that Pennsylvania had the third highest percentage of speed-related fatalities in the nation in 2013, the latest data available. Of the 1,208 traffic fatalities, 550, or 46 percent, were speed-related.
“If you are driving your kid in a 25-mph zone and someone flies by at 55 or 65 ... think about that,” Sen. Blake said. “The fact is, police have obsolete tools. We need to bring them into the 21st century.”
Scranton Police Chief Carl Graziano said municipal police departments face significant obstacles in enforcing speeding laws. Most local departments track speed by timing vehicles as they pass between two set points marked either by laser beams or lines painted on a road. There are many areas where that methodology cannot be used.
“With the current system you have to have adequate visibility and room to set it up. On some streets that’s not practical,” Graziano said. “With radar, it’s point and shoot. It’s much more efficient to do that.”
Sikorski said several studies show radar is not as accurate as police contend, particularly if there is more than one car in the area.
“Radar produces unreliable and erroneous readings ... and can also clock the wrong car,” he said.
Sikorski also questioned the NHTSA data on speed-related fatalities, saying it is meaningless because the interpretation of “speed-related” is so subjective.
“If I am driving at one mile per hour over the speed limit and you hit me, that could be called a speed-related, even though it had nothing to do with the crash causation,” he said.
Nolan Ritchie, executive director of the Senate Transportation Committee, acknowledged there are concerns that radar will be abused to generate revenue. That key issue derailed several other radar bills introduced in the past few years.
Ritchie said Senate Bill 559 addresses that concern by requiring local departments to report to the state police revenue from tickets. If the increased revenue exceeds five percent of the municipality’s or police department’s budget, the excess money would be turned over to state police to be used for traffic safety purposes.
The Transportation Committee voted 13-1 on May 10 to forward that bill and Senate Bill 535 to the full Senate. Ritchie said he expects aspects of the two bills to be combined into a single piece of legislation.
“We are optimistic we will engage in a lively conversation on the importance of these two bills,” he said.