Logically, the way to monitor the most traffic on any roadway is for the patrol car to be stopped. On a limited access road, stopping in the median allows monitoring both sides and the number of vehicles monitored is the absolute maximum possible. Since this is true, driving along a highway is a relative waste of time, as cars on the opposite side of limited access roads can't be readily reached, and the numbers of cars monitored driving in the same direction would be limited by the speed differential.
Fred, I find your comment disappointing. I'm hopeful that you are or were a cop to hang your comments out there with such an expert tone.
You appear to be from New Hampshire, so I'll assume your knowledge is based on what you see there. I looked it up and New Hampshire's square mileage is 9,279 miles. While my three offices don't patrol the whole state of Oregon, our square mileage out here is 97,073 miles. I also found that the New Hampshire State Police has nearly 400 state troopers. We have just over 500. You can do the math there. In our area of responsibility here around Portland, we do this with an average of 5 troopers at any given moment of the day. As you can imagine, in a metropolitan area, we're quite busy. One location in our area of responsibility, MP 289 on Interstate 5, about 10 miles south of Portland, sees nearly 15,000 vehicles pass through it on any given weekday.
I'm afraid monitoring traffic from a stopped vehicle is not the most logical way to do the job here, at least not all the time. In the area in which my troopers patrol, we have a 397 mile mix of interstate freeways and rural state highways, from the city limits of Portland to the top of Mt. Hood in the Mt. Hood National Forest. (As an aside, this also includes 43 miles of the popular Columbia River Gorge) I'd be willing to bet it's not uncommon for one of my troopers to drive the the same distance as the perimeter of New Hampshire during a normal shift out here.
It's actually pretty uncommon for us to have a section of limited access road where we can sit in the median and respond to incidents on either side. We have concrete barriers, steel cables, rivers, forests and any number of other obstacles that limit crossing the median here. I lived on the east coast as a boy and I've been through New Hampshire a few times. It's much more flat than our territory out here and consequently, it is a different job at times for a state trooper or deputy sheriff. Maybe not for a city cop, but that's not where my experience is.
There is certainly a time and place to sit and work stationary LIDAR, but at the wrong time, it has the same effect as a crash or broken down motorist. Traffic bogs down and crashes occur as brake lights illuminate suddenly when the make-up artist observes the patrol car on the shoulder. Given the state of Oregon's latest economic forecast, our suffering budgets and impending mileage restrictions with patrol cars, we soon may not have a choice...but that's another story.
To your statement that the police would have to drive faster and faster to catch the highest of speeders, that comment is just plain ridiculous. No offense, but it is. If I put myself on the same level as that statement, one would argue that they would eventually overtake us and we'd see them anyway....but that's also assuming we're actually really most concerned about speeders. We're not.
When one of my troops or I am driving on an interstate freeway at a rate faster than other traffic, I actually do find the drivers I want to. I find the driver that doesn't have a seatbelt on or the one with a toddler jumping around unrestrained in the backseat. I get to stop them and hopefully save their life. I find the drunk sucking down a beer can while driving and take him off the road. I find the guy with his lips curled around a marijuana pipe. I find the guy that won't look at me when I look at him because he's got 10 kilos of cocaine hidden in his car or because he's got a warrant for beating up his wife.
To the dog licking the nuts comment, as I said earlier, there are indeed those that do "just because they can," but those officers are seriously in the minority out here. We have far, far fewer police officers than the east coast with much more turf to cover. Our people are professional and time is precious.
If you make it out here someday, give me a shout and we'll go work. As I said earlier, your eyes just might be opened to the reality of this job and the necessities that come with it. Don't take my comments as some self-righteous rant. It just is what it is and I respectfully disagree with your view of my job.
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