Patrolled By Aircraft - Certain lengths of highway that are known to be trouble spots for speeding are targeted by the State Police Aerial Reconnaissance Enforcement (SPARE) (other states will have their own names for similar programs) and marked with start and finish lines at a set distance from each other. Two officers—a pilot and a spotter—cruise over these stretches in a small fixed-wing aircraft.
The chairs and equipment are quickly pulled out and rearranged, and a boy -- conscious and without any obvious major injuries -- is strapped to a stretcher across the floor of the helicopter. I wedge myself back behind the pilot's seat and within 25 minutes from when the call came in, we've delivered him to the roof of the John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek.
Patrolled By Aircraft
When you’re traveling for the holidays later this month, you might notice some signs on the highway that read “speed limit enforced by aircraft.” If you’re like me, those signs conjure images of the cops scrambling a team of jet fighters to take a driver with a lead foot off the road. In reality, it’s a little less exciting. Here’s how it works in Pennsylvania (where I live and always obey the speed limit), according to the state police.
Paw Patrol - Air Patroller Plane
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After it's over and we're back at the CHP's air enforcement office at Napa County Airport, I ask about a sign on the wall: "Speed enforced by drone." It was a joke made by a Marin resident and gifted to the office. But don't worry, said Andrews: "I don't believe that's ever going to happen."
"In the Bay Area, the only place I've ever dealt with it is out on 280," said John Stanko, a traffic defense attorney in the Bay Area for the last 20 years. He's defended a few clients who were ticketed by aircraft in that area, and said it's most common in rural areas.
very time Aaron Perry-Zucker drives down I-5 between San Francisco and Los Angeles, he sees the signs: "Speed enforced by aircraft." But he's never seen an aircraft issue a ticket, and he can't imagine how that even would work.
Fighting Back
Radar, which uses Doppler waves, sends that signal out across all lanes of traffic -- feeding back whatever are the fastest and slowest speeds on the road. But it's the relatively new precision of Lidar, or Light Detection and Ranging, utilizing laser technology, that has truly been a game changer.
The officers in the air don't actually land and issue tickets. That might cause a traffic accident. Instead, they radio down to another officer in a more ground-friendly vehicle, who then pulls over the offender. Typically, that officer is waiting and ready to go at a predetermined location. Both officers' names are on the ticket and both must appear in court.
"We're patrolling the whole Bay Area," Andrews said in the helicopter. "We're available 24 hours a day, seven days a week." The CHP aircraft can respond to incidents that local police or agencies don't have the resources for.
Andrews starts his stopwatch when he flies over one and stops it when he hits the next. He knows the helicopter's ground speed. And, since he's flying the same speed or slower than the car below, he can tell if the car is speeding.
Patrolling From Above
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Again, both the air and ground officers have to appear in court if you choose to take the issue to court. Stanko also objects to the calculation of speed using a stopwatch from the helicopter and believes it's more challenging for officers to identify a driver from the air, or to prove that they have the right person once the officer on the ground writes the ticket.
"We don't necessarily set up as many specific speed enforcement details as we did 10 or 15 years ago, predominantly because of the advent of Lidar," said Andrews. (Lidar lets officers use lasers to pinpoint the speed of a vehicle.) "But there are still circumstances where we are definitely valuable, where traditional ground enforcement may not work."
We've all seen the signs along the freeway warning us of eyes in the sky looking for speeders. A Bay Curious listener wanted to find out if someone really was up there ready to hand out tickets.
But How Common Is It Really?
Suddenly we're descending into a parking lot in Richmond as the paramedic leans out the open helicopter door to guide Andrews into the painted asphalt circle that serves as a landing pad -- while I try not to throw up and make things worse.
To find out how it all works, I climbed into one of the two helicopters that serve the CHP Golden Gate Division, which oversees all nine Bay Area counties. The air enforcement office also has two small airplanes at its headquarters at Napa County Airport -- but that's it for the fleet.
"It's very easy to see. It stands out when someone's going considerably faster," he said. Pilots once used binoculars to spot the cars, but now the aircraft are equipped with high-definition cameras. Despite the technology, they still rely first and foremost on their eyes.
On most freeways in the state, Caltrans has measured and painted perpendicular white lines every mile on the side of the road. You can see them from the helicopter window, or if you look closely when you drive by. Those are used to calculate speed.
The California Highway Patrol used to rely heavily on this system of helicopters and small airplanes to monitor traffic, but these days aircraft enforcement has gone out of style. Budget cuts have rolled back the number of CHP aircraft and their total flying time. The small planes used to go on speed patrol once or twice a day. Now, they simply monitor speed while on general patrol for other things.
When a vehicle crosses the start line, the spotter uses a specially-designed stopwatch (some police departments also use VASCAR systems) to clock the car’s speed through the enforcement zone. If they determine that a vehicle is speeding, the officers in the plane radio another officer on the ground, who pulls the vehicle over and issues a ticket.
CHP press officer Daniel Hill said they once ticketed a motorcyclist who was caught racing through the streets. He got all the way home and was then surprised when an officer knocked on his door 20 minutes later. Helicopters had been watching him from the air and captured him on camera.
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But then a call comes in over the radio. It involves codes and numbers and the stilted shorthand of emergency personnel and law enforcement, but I do catch a few details: 10-year-old male down, possible hit-and-run, juvenile on bike hit by a car, med-evac requested, someone is en route.
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