The honesty of your posting shines thruogh
Aggressive drivers see red twice in Minnesota
By: Anna Cornish
Date: Monday, 25. June 2007
Anna Cornish is a Public Information Officer with the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, Office of Communications.
The Minnesota State Patrol is implementing a new means of apprehending aggressive drivers-shooting them (with a video camera, of course). As it heats up outside, so do drivers' tempers on roadways in Minnesota, USA. This flux in dangerous driving behavior has the Minnesota State Patrol going to great lengths to address the issue of aggressive driving.
"Aggressive driving is a lethal cocktail of dangerous driving behavior-speeding, following too closely, running stop lights and signs, weaving in and out of traffic, and passing on the shoulder," says Minnesota State Patrol Lieutenant Mark Peterson. "Speed alone is cited as a contributing factor in approximately 30 percent of all fatal crashes. Combining this grim statistic with other aggressive driving behavior is not only risky-it's deadly."
The Minnesota State Patrol is targeting areas in the Twin Cities area known for aggressive driving with troops on the ground and in the air. Aircraft are equipped with FLIR Systems Inc U6000 Series Thermal Imagers. These cameras include both a daylight video camera and a thermal imager for use at times of low light or darkness. The pictures and images from the cameras are transmitted to a portable receiver in a police squad car on the ground. During the operation, fixed wing aircraft pilots spot aggressive driving behavior, notify officers on the ground, who in turn apprehend the driver.
The process doesn't end there. After the ground trooper apprehends the driver, the offender is afforded the opportunity to review his/her actions by watching the footage shot from the fixed-wing aircraft above. Patrolling roadways from the air has been a common practice by the Minnesota State Patrol for many years, but not until recently has there been a direct link from an aircraft video camera to a car-based monitor.
Twin cities media will also receive copies of the aggressive driving and eventual arrest footage. The goal of this operation is to end aggressive driving through education, enforcement, and a high prosecution percentage. This new technology provides actual footage of dangerous driving behavior-not of a stranger on a television screen, but by you, in your car. Accountability is a powerful deterrent to intentional hazardous behavior-especially when that behavior is on the six o' clock news.
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Charl,
John,
I think that driving when you are in a hazardous behavior is simply dreadful. we must up our police force and become more connected with our road way systems. It is of dier consequences that we fix what is broken, for police ar ethe doctors of the roads! POLICE MUST BE DOUBLED!!! POLICE MUST HAVE MORE OFFICERS!!!
MF,
DP - wouldn't surprise me if you were one of those aggressive drivers.
After what I saw today in DFW, driving to work, more cities need this system. Maybe one day cars will have built-in safety buffers that don't alow them to tail-gate or weave amongst traffic.
Paul in Minneapolis,
In the three years I live in Minneapolis, I can count on one hand all the motorist that made legal stop at a stop sign... That along the the twin cities ranking #5 for most dangerous drivers of all American cities... Driver's Ed? Really? If I was bring high paying jobs to a city, would I take it to where the quility of life is drowned by a system that everybody has to use? No... The lack of true driver's ed is makeing poeple suffer in more than one way..
DP,
Nice try!
However, the state purposefully designs roadways with "incapacities" for the very reason of requiring public employees to have to "address" the present situation, rather than correct it for long term. It guarantees their future employment by dysfunction!
The same reason many states do NOT require Semis to drive in only one lane, so others can pass. The STATES use the traffic system as a not so hidden tax income dept.! If they increase their income (at your expense)
They then don't have to answer for any tax increase levys! (even though they accomplish this nicely by oppresive traffic taxation!)And then spend the money on social programs!
In my town there is a freeway coming into town. It has three lanes. On the other side of the road, it has only two lanes. What fool believes 30% of the drivers are not coming home in the evening??? This side of the highway is a virtual parking lot whilst the other side is nearly empty. Rather than correcting the issue and adding another lane, they want to confiscate the land (read land grab) for light rail development.
Perhaps we should rethink buying horses!
This kind of thinking promotes urban sprawl, where these folks are immune to On-ramp meter delays of the half hour you'll spend there. So there is a DIRECT INCENTIVE to move out even further, to spend even more gasoline, just to avoid the On-ramp taxes paid.
At least it's only your wallet then, and not your time as well!
Their mal-designed roadways, controlled? intersections, lane use reductions due to HOV lanes cutting off 30% of available roadway capacity only illustrate this point. It is about confiscatory assessing of taxes through roadway rationing. You already pay waaaaay MORE than enough for adequate road capacity.
Why are you not getting it?
Because the largest profit taking entity from the sale of a gallon of gasoline, is NOT the oil Co. It is the multi-level government taxes collected!!!
By rationing roadway capacity, and keeping it aggregeously under-sized per number of licensed vehicles, and blocking your passage on local thoroughfares at every city corner for ten minutes (where there's a handy gas station at every corner)They require you to spend huge dollars you otherwise would not. The secret is out that insufficient road capacity, drives up local government coffers through gas and Police taxation. Ever notice how your gas station receipts do NOT have the gas taxes printed on them???? They are required to show sales taxes...whay then are they not required to show federal, state, local, and excise taxes on your gas receipt???? Hmmmm?
Hopefully you start getting the picture!!!
thomas1,
Spread this to south-east Michigan, the people here need the same lesson.
