GPD has new weapons against speeders

Those speeding in Greenwich beware! “OurGreenwich.com” has learned that the Greenwich Police Department is equipping nearly all of its patrol cars with new, state-of-the-art radar, courtesy of a grant. And speeders need to be on the lookout not just for those marked and unmarked Crown Vics. GPD is now the proud owner of a couple of new incognito cars, a Chevy SUV and a mean-looking Dodge Charger.

In public surveys conducted by GPD over the past three years, speeding and traffic concerns have consistently ranked first among the topics Greenwich citizens care about. The police in Greenwich make approximately 10,000 traffic stops a year and issue on average 7,000 to 7,500 motor vehicle violations per year. Greenwich Police Chief, David Ridberg, says he would like to attempt to increase traffic enforcement, but that the public must understand that with limited resources it would mean reduced services in other areas.

The new radar, which will be recalibrated after each day of use, is extraordinarily capable. It can pick a speeding car out of a pack of vehicles. The patrol car does not need to be standing still to determine the speed of another vehicle. So the police cruiser behind you, or driving towards you, could be clocking your speed. In fact, it can even register the speed of a vehicle BEHIND the police car.

Will this new equipment translate into a financial windfall for our town by tagging a bunch of out-of-towners with speeding tickets? Nope. First, the town doesn’t make more than a pittance on tickets issued by GPD – the state takes the lion’s share of fines.

Secondly, and more interestingly, traffic studies show that most speeders are local. It is you, and your neighbors (and sometimes me) who are speeding. Think about it – it is quite logical. Locals know the roads better than strangers, and thus are more likely to feel comfortable speeding on a road traveled daily.

We commute much of the time on “auto-pilot,” paying more attention to our mental “to do” list than to the posted speed — unless, there is one of those “radar trailers” measuring our velocity. Then, our instinct might be to “floor it” to see the sign flash red. What the radar trailers have taught me is that some streets in our town have speed limits which are unrealistically low.

I once heard that the speed limits in our town were formulated by a back-country patriarch in the 1930s having his chauffer, over the course of several Sundays, drive him on each road in town while the town-elder made notations as to what he thought the appropriate safe speed should be. As apocryphal as that story may be, it sure does feel like some roads in our town are seventy-odd years behind the times.

That story provides insight into the topic of speeding. Maybe it is no longer “high society” which dictates the rules, but it is society in general which sets the norm by either condoning or condemning speeding. As Chief Ridberg is fond of saying “Speeding is a societal problem and until society deems it inappropriate behavior we, the police, will never be able to change people’s driving behavior.”