How true is 'Speed Enforced by Aircraft' Sign? (2016)

One time (early 2000s) my dad was driving across a remote and desolate stretch of Utah, on a motorcycle, doing speeds well into the 3 digit miles per hour.<p>Approaching civilization, he had slowed to a reasonable speed of his own accord and was surprised to be pulled over by a highway patrolman, who proceeded to greet him by name and revealed that a helicopter had been trailing him and retrieved his registration detail from above. The officer was relatively friendly about the whole thing but he received a costly ticket.

I received an airplane ticket in California back in early 90&#x27;s.<p>It was the case then, I don&#x27;t know now, that if there were multiple officers involved in the citation that they both had to show up in court, or the ticket was dismissed.<p>I had heard through a family member that the pilots never showed in court. So I did and it was quickly dismissed.

I earned myself a ticket years ago, driving along the interstate. Dumb kid driving way too fast. Had a radar detector too, so the &quot;confirmation&quot; from the hidden cop under an overpass didn&#x27;t match the plane&#x27;s reading. They &quot;split the difference&quot; and still gave me a nice sized ticket that was tough to pay for.<p>My grandfather summed it up pretty solidly: &quot;No matter how fast you go, you can&#x27;t outrun radio&quot;.

First time travelling to California ages ago, I had to try how fast this rental car went on a Hwy in the desert (close to Death Valley) with not a soul around. Downhill it went quite well. Then towards me on the right just a few meters about ground an airplane was coming towards me. WTH? It took me a while to realize that this must have been law enforcement. I went mostly by the rules afterwards and didn&#x27;t receive a ticket.<p>Another time, many years later, I got carried away a bit on my m&#x2F;c near Mojave. It didn&#x27;t take long for a cruiser to follow me and flash his lights. After stopping the cop called in his mic (&quot;I got him&quot;), presumably to a helicopter in the air. Don&#x27;t recall, whether I got a ticket then (over the years I got more stern warnings than tickets).<p>Not long ago, going on Hwy 25 there&#x27;s a long straight stretch between two hills where it&#x27;s really tempting to go flat out as there is (or used to be) very little if any traffic. Shortly thereafter a single engine air plane was approaching me left of the road at very low altitude. I was actually wondering whether it would clear the trees in its path, until I realized that he meant for me to slow down ;-}<p>Now I have a Prius and no such worries.

At the beginning of the article, I thought the process were ridiculously inefficient. But it turns out they are quite aware of the economics. The approach reminded me of the Panopticon: If you do not have the resources to observe everyone, you make everyone know you could be observing them, right now.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Panopticon" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Panopticon</a>

It&#x27;s interesting that no one on a tech board mentioned that a drone can now do this 24 hours a day, for basically free, and it would take a very short time to write an AI that watches an object crossing two markers on the road and puts time stamps on them.<p>I am actually glad this isn&#x27;t there, even though I don&#x27;t speed, but it&#x27;s ironic to see people talking about cost.<p>Example articles below. There are at least 10s of systems that can do this from different cheap airborne carriers and watch a huge swath of land (36 square miles from one host), track movement, and record it all at high resolution 24&#x2F;7:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Gorgon_Stare" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Gorgon_Stare</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;ARGUS-IS" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;ARGUS-IS</a>

In norway they have this system identifying cars several different points along major roads. The longest stretch is about 15 miles. Then they take the average speed you need and ticket based on that.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vegvesen.no&#x2F;fag&#x2F;fokusomrader&#x2F;trafikksikkerhet&#x2F;automatisk-trafikkontroll&#x2F;strekningsvis-atk&#x2F;fylkesvis-oversikt&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.vegvesen.no&#x2F;fag&#x2F;fokusomrader&#x2F;trafikksikkerhet&#x2F;au...</a> (In Norwegian)

&gt; Andrews starts his stopwatch when he flies over one [marker] and stops it when he hits the next. He knows the helicopter&#x27;s ground speed. And, since he&#x27;s flying the same speed or slower than the car below, he can tell if the car is speeding.<p>Seems odd to do that and not just time the car passing the markers.

This is a classic application of the mean value theorem. Because your position is a differentiable function, you must, at some point, have been going your average speed over a window of time, and you can be ticketed accordingly.<p>It&#x27;s interesting to me that Fastrak transponders (electronic toll tags in the Bay Area) in express lanes aren&#x27;t used to automatically generate tickets given the same understanding.

Allegedly due to the cost of it and the fact that it is now a bit of an archaic practice relative to radar guns the planes are kept in flight the bare minimum amount of time needed to legally keep the signs up because the idea is still pretty damn intimidating.

I always thought it was an odd turn of phrase; at most, you might have your speed detected by aircraft. &quot;Enforced&quot; always conjured up a picture of speed demons being strafed from above until they slowed down; maybe it&#x27;s just me?

I flew out of Sonoma Skypark, near Napa County Airport mentioned in the article. A few times the CHP Cessna 206s landed there. Here&#x27;s an article on them: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.planeandpilotmag.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;chips-in-the-sky&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.planeandpilotmag.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;chips-in-the-sky&#x2F;</a>

Virginia still has all of their highway signs to let you know that it&#x27;s enforced by aircraft. A report came out in 2018 that stated they were no longer using that method of enforcement primarily due to the cost of the program.

I&#x27;ve never received a ticket from an aircraft but we did have CHP in an airplane in the late 70&#x27;s and early 80&#x27;s in California. He had a CB radio and would respond to the truckers calling out looking for cops. <i>Winnebago-Bob</i> would reply they are clear. The truckers would speed and several highway patrol would pull all of them over. A bunch of us put a stop to it because his speed trap was on the bottom of a hill on 101 and was risking a jack-knife accident. We all complained to the California Highway Patrol Commissioner and it stopped.

In 1995 we got a ticket on the highway in nowhere eastern Washington. The officer said we had been clocked from an airplane. So… at least back then it was a real thing.

Well the CHP still has fixed wings registered to them. Ex N137HP <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;registry.faa.gov&#x2F;AircraftInquiry&#x2F;Search&#x2F;NNumberResult?nNumberTxt=137HP" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;registry.faa.gov&#x2F;AircraftInquiry&#x2F;Search&#x2F;NNumberResul...</a><p>You can track them on ADSBExchange: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;globe.adsbexchange.com&#x2F;?icao=a095ef" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;globe.adsbexchange.com&#x2F;?icao=a095ef</a><p>And they were in the air yesterday with flight paths along major freeways in the SF Bay Area: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;u5hbfAK" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;u5hbfAK</a><p>Does that mean conclusively they are doing speed checks? No, but they have the capability. Does the CHP have a lot of these planes? Not that I can find records of, probably few and far between for a state as populous as California... but the treat is real.

&gt;Drones capable of monitoring traffic would be even less cost-effective than helicopters, he said, and a drone wouldn&#x27;t be able to med-evac anyone.<p>Certainly the med-evac point is valid, but I bet you could come up with a basic traffic monitoring system using an off the shelf Drone today for a fraction of the cost of a helicopter, fuel, and pilot.

Quite dystopian if you ask me. Is it not enough that there are police officers and speed traps on the ground, now you have to fear to be watched from the skies all day as well?

The solution to speed problems is to increase the speed limits on roads. Cars today are way better than 20 years ago and can handle 80mph with easy.

Speeding on the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the longest contiguous bridge in the world, can have dire consequences for you and other motorists, especially in bad weather. So yes, they have Speed Enforced by Aircraft signs up, and sometimes you can see the police planes as you cross.

I did get a ticket like that in the eighties, i still have it. It was with a rented corvette at 9 o clock in the morning. I had to go straight to court to pay the fine. I was on my way back from San Jose to Los Angeles. One of the weirdest experiences in my life.

My wife swears these are fake because she&#x27;s never seen anyone pulled over by a plane<p>I love her so much

It was probably truer many years ago, like getting pulled over for dark window tint was true then but largely ignored now. The laws haven’t changed. We just have a new cohort generation of law enforcement officers with different interests, like we have baby boomers, genZ, genX, millennial cops.

Speed limits don&#x27;t make sense tbh. They should notify drivers of the design speed for a section of the road, but it shouldn&#x27;t be treated as a hard limit. Whether a driver is a danger to others or not is a subjective call, we should let police officers make that call, without defining strict criteria. Sometimes a car going at 110 in a 100 is perfectly safe, and another going 50 is extremely dangerous.