Sic Semper Speeders
(copyright 2001)

The Commonwealth of Virginia has decided to combine traffic video surveillance with mail order ticketing. The National Park Service has asked Congress' permission for similar unsolicited bulk mailings as a way to control speed on the George Washington Parkway, a glorious roadway that runs along the Virginia bank of the Potomac River from above the city to Mount Vernon.* Next door in Maryland, the control freaks at the DOT sent time-stamped stills of motorists stuck in traffic -- to their home addresses and with a suggestion that they'd have saved time by train. Road signs and paid government advertisements encourage ratting on other drivers. Everywhere, you "aggressive drivers," you are being watched.

Are we ready for this?

The first speed traps came in 1902, one of which was literally a trap: armed with a stopwatch, a Chicago area sheriff ordered a rope pulled across the road to halt offenders of his town's eight mile per hour limit. In Brooklyn, New York, undercover cops rode bicycles incognito along Pelham Avenue, nabbing motorists who wanted a little wind in their hair outside of town. Other than finally equipping the cops with machines the equal to the scorchers and moving the stopwatch to a thousand feet above, speed enforcement never got much more sophisticated than that -- until the development of portable radar. Testicular cancer aside, this was a good thing for the road tax collectors.

Assisted principally by the apostles of speed, Cincinnati Microwave, motorists retaliated against radar surveillance with the principle that forewarned is forearmed. The fight was on, and according to rules accepted by all (except Connecticut, Virginia, and the District of Columbia, which forbade a citizens awareness of microwave bombardment). The chase was further spurned by the speed prohibition. Nobody, outside the insurance lobby, ever dedicated to your premium, was fooled, neither the police nor the motorists. Getting caught speeding was like the closing of a 1920's roadhouse (add "blues" to the word for the greatest driving song ever, courtesy Jim Morrison): the party was over for the night and one or two drunks got hauled away for show. Everybody knew about the place before just as everyone knew the raid was eventually to come -- just as surely as everybody showed up the following night.

In theory, it is a well regulated society on the road. The practical side of road law is somewhat different, as any forthright traffic cop will admit. The question and its answer lie in the fudge: how much over the limit and how long are the skid marks? The one is measured by the traffic enforcers while the other is assessed by the courts. Ugly, but effective. Abuses line both sides of the equation, from corrupt officials to seriously criminal motorists. But human judgment, as in all aspects of our law, measured abuse and accounted for circumstance, consequence, and proclivity.

Now technology now breaks the balance. It'll do you no good to face your accuser when your indictment is made up of video tape or your own onboard computer --  that last is not far away, folks. The nannies have scared up a problem, the accountants at city hall have found a need, and the industrial-military complex has offered a solution to your deep, irreversible destiny as a red light runner. Thank you, Lockheed Martin, we're so glad you've got spare time and all, but go build spy equipment to use on terrorists or someone, not on your fellow citizens.

Just as things have come around to the side of reasonableness with raised highway speed limits, governments have decided to employ a dubious and insulting technique that's one hundred years old. Like today, the idea was born of an unruly mix of technology and hysteria. Unlike today, it was ridiculed when proposed a century ago. In 2001, you have no say. In 1902, one E.J. Hodgson, it was reported, "invented a speed register for automobiles, the use of which, if required by city governments, may solve the problem of keeping the 'devils' within the bounds as to speed." The contraption was an oversized "speed register" which was to be mounted on the side of a motor car so that pedestrians and policemen could know at a glance its speed. Thankfully, Hodgson's contraption was not "in voluntary demand among automobilists generally," a journalist noted.

Here we go again. From within lower quarters of DMV bunkers across the nation, your speed, your decision as to the relevance of a yellow light, and your fine weaving through ugly traffic shall be announced to those who care to profit from such things -- and don't hate anybody while you do it, or you've moved into Federal Code. Monitors intended to display traffic and weather conditions are already admissible as evidence in court over accident disputes or prosecutions. Video surveillance is a given, and the precedent is being reinforced daily. Here's a dirty little secret: in Virginia owners of commercial vehicles are not required to pay photo-enforcement fines, as, the state admits, it's too much trouble to prove who was driving; companies are merely asked to kindly collect from the offender on behalf of the state.

Now a straight-faced Michigan DOT proposes an odometer tax, verifiable by GPS tracking of state-supplied transmitters placed under your hood. "Just an idea," said a spokesman.

Welcome to the surveillance society. Your tickets in the mail.

-Bromley, June 2001

* Gotta give credit to the Park Service, though. Their rationale to add this exception to the 4th amendment is that since the Parkway is meant for pleasure driving, and since it has become a commuter roadway, the police must more efficiently control vehicle speeds in order to maintain its use as a parkway. Got it? (Actually, the Park Service is merely trying to justify its outgrown jurisdiction over the roadway).