Billboard cameras not tagging speeders
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State police⢠The CIA⢠Little green men from outer spaceâ¢
Sadly, the real use of the cameras that people have spotted on local billboards is pretty mundane - they're for calculating advertising rates.
That hasn't stopped the Internet rumor mill from churning out reports that state police are taking pictures of speeders along Route 30 in Adamsburg and South Greensburg and then issuing tickets by mail.
Small dish-shaped radio antennas are perched on four billboards near the Millersdale Road underpass in Adamsburg and on three billboards at the Route 119 underpass in South Greensburg. Wires lead from the dishes to cameras, then to telephone connections below.
'I have information from a reliable source,' reads one e-mail message making the rounds. 'The cameras and speed indicators will record your speed and your license plate number... Look next time (you) ride by!'
The 'reliable source' isn't, said Trooper Jeanne Martin, spokeswoman for state police Troop A, based in Greensburg.
'We don't monitor traffic like that,' she said. 'There would be no reason for us to monitor traffic. If there's going to be radar, you're going to see a trooper using it.'
Some states use automatic cameras to trap people who run red lights. Other states and Canadian provinces use 'photo radar,' whereby police snap photos of speeders and then issue citations by mail.
Such systems are not legal in Pennsylvania, though laws to authorize their use have been proposed.
Nevertheless, people have called Troop A headquarters to report that 'friends' had received tickets by mail from the Pennsylvania State Police. 'We're not doing anything of the sort,' Martin said.
Each time troopers ask to see these 'tickets,' she said, the caller is unable to produce them.
A spokesman for the company that owns the billboards, Lamar Advertising Co. of Baton Rouge, La., said the equipment has been in place for several months.
'It has nothing to do with the state police or PennDOT or anyone else,' said Don Brown in Lamar's Pittsburgh office. 'It's strictly a private company trying to develop a product.'
Billboard companies set advertising rates by promising that a certain number of people will pass a location each day, he said. 'We've done this with a combination of hand counts and whatever information we can get from the state or city or whoever,' Brown said.
That information is verified by the Traffic Audit Bureau of New York, to which most billboard companies subscribe.
Last year, Brown said, a technology start-up company developed equipment designed to do automatic traffic counts using digital cameras. It asked Lamar for permission to place equipment on billboards around Pittsburgh, he said.
The technology is not yet perfected, and the company has been reluctant to publicize the details, Brown said. 'These devices may be one step above what we were doing before,' he said.
The state does use cameras to monitor traffic and weather in several locations. One was supposed to be activated on the Route 30 overpass near Norwin Middle School East in Irwin. Those cameras can be accessed from PennDOT's Web page, www.dot.state.pa.us.
The Pennsylvania Turnpike is experimenting with similar cameras.
But not the state police, 'in any way, shape or form,' Martin said. She is, however, curious about the so-called tickets and would like to see one, 'if you can track down the paperwork,' she said.
