SALISBURY TWP., Pa. — The famous phrase “Gentlemen, start your engines!” may bring to mind the roar of race cars at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
But South Pike Avenue is far from the Brickyard, and on Wednesday, some drivers with a heavy foot were less than thrilled to encounter unexpected speed enforcement equipment — despite advance advertisement and its clear visibility from the road.
The device in question was ENRADD, short for Electronic Non-Radar Device, a system used by municipal police to monitor vehicle speed.
It calculates how fast a car is traveling by measuring the time it takes to pass between two infrared beams set across the roadway.
"We sit here the most because this is where the majority of the speeding takes place, like severe speeding, not a couple miles an hour over the limit."Sgt. Bryan Losagio
That speed data was wirelessly transmitted to the patrol car of Sgt. Bryan Losagio, who quickly relayed the vehicle's speed and description to officers stationed further down the road, ready to take action.
“We sit here the most because this is where the majority of the speeding takes place," Losagio said. "Like severe speeding, not a couple miles an hour over the limit.”
Despite a humorous approach to the enforcement — dubbed the ‘Pike Avenue 500’ on the department’s ever popular Facebook page — the necessity of monitoring the one-mile corridor immediately became clear.
“A white Mercedes SUV. Fifty-seven. Five seven,” Losagio relayed to his colleagues.
Moments later, the driver of a blue Toyota SUV left the previous offender in the dust with speeds topping 70 mph.
Right behind it came a green Honda SUV at 63 mph.
The only problem? South Pike Avenue is a key thoroughfare connecting the township to Allentown and surrounding areas.
It has a posted speed limit of 40 mph.
'You've got to be fair'
Losagio knows that drivers familiar with SPD’s roadway enforcement often have their own theories about how and why speeding tickets are issued.
But police aren’t writing tickets to generate revenue, Losagio said, nor are they targeting your V8 engine, your fuel injection system, or the make and model of your car.
“People that say that, they just don't understand,” Losagio said. “A basic ticket, let’s say it’s a stop sign ticket, it’s about $180. The fine portion of that $180 is only $25 and the department gets half of the fine.
"So we’d make $12.50 on an almost $200 ticket.”
And during Thursday’s enforcement, speeds over 40 mph weren’t an automatic ticket-worthy offense — despite what many believe.
“At 55 mph, we'll start writing [tickets] on this roadway. Other roadways we’ll actually give up to 20 mph over, depending on what roadway it is, because you’ve got to be fair," Losagio said, highlighting key differences between South Pike Ave and other roadways.
"I mean, the speed limit sign you’ve got to obey. But you also have to use common sense.
“Here, we have a lot of cross streets. We have bus stops. It's three lanes, and this is a high- crash-rate roadway, so 55 and above is what we're going to write.”
“Once you turn that on, you watch. If it’s every three minutes, there’s another one going by, either the suspended plate for no insurance, a dead tag, unregistered. It’s unbelievable."Sgt. Bryan Losagio on the number of what ALPRs, or automatic license plate readers, are making officers aware of
The officers also are there to enforce more than the speed limit.
The prevalence of uninsured and unlicensed drivers has become a major issue, Losagio said, and part of the duties of SPD’s officers — beyond deterring aggressive driving-related crashes — is data collection and roadway enforcement that otherwise would be unattainable in conjunction with regular patrol duties.
As do many other departments, Salisbury police now use automatic license plate readers installed at various points in the township.
“Once you turn that on, you watch," Losagio said. "If it’s every three minutes, there’s another one going by, either the suspended plate for no insurance, a dead tag, unregistered.
"It’s unbelievable.”
'Three-stage process'
Automatic license plate readers, or ALPRs, let police instantly scan, identify and cross-check license plates in real time.
Before the systems were in place, officers had to manually read and enter plate numbers — a slow and outdated process.
“You’d have to sit there and type in every plate that went by, which just isn’t practical,” Losagio said.
Now, the technology helps law enforcement quickly flag stolen vehicles, locate cars linked to missing persons, or potentially identify suspects wanted for criminal activity.
It’s the same reason why the ENRADD setup should be replaced by RADAR or LiDAR, Losagio said.
“The concept of [ENRADD] is great," he said. "But what people don't realize is, when I set that up, if you look how close it is to the shoulder of the road, that's where my head is.
"I’m down on one knee trying to set up as cars are going by me at 60 miles an hour."
Sometimes, the ENRADD devices get run over or stolen.
“Generally, I won’t even go out and chase because if somebody hits it or steals it, you’re not going to be able to watch what happened to catch them,” Losagio said.
Under current law, the devices have a 60-day calibration requirement — one that Losagio and Salisbury police take seriously.
“Every 60 days, they go through a company that calibrates them, and then they do a self-test once we set them up, and then we take it a step farther," he said.
"I'll sit here, because all of our speedometers are calibrated, and I’ll have a guy go up and down the hill, and it has to be dead on.
“So it passed the company inspection, did the self-test and then it passed my test, because I know it's on. So as long as that does that, then we're confident it's working.
"It's a three-stage process.”
'A lot of improvement needed'
Currently, Pennsylvania’s vehicle code limits local police to the use of speed-timing devices for speed enforcement, and the use of RADAR is currently limited to the state police.
Annually, state lawmakers have proposed legislation that would let local police departments use RADAR or LiDAR, said to be almost the safest, most accurate and most economical speed-timing devices.
“There’s been improvement (in roadway safety), but there’s a lot of improvement needed."Sgt. Bryan Losagio
Losagio and many others say police need the tools at their disposal to keep communities safe.
“There’s been improvement [in roadway safety], but there’s a lot of improvement needed,” he said.
He pointed to key areas of success in the township where enforcement has changed driver behavior, including roads such as Cedar Crest Boulevard and Flexer Avenue.
The latter is a corridor that sees heavy traffic, connected to College Drive and East Texas Boulevard on one end, and crossing Lindbergh Avenue on the other.
“That’s a roadway that really improved," Losago said. "It’s a 25 miles per hour zone, but we went out there and it was nothing to get drivers at 15 to 25 over.
"And we were out there for about two years, every couple weeks. And now, if you go out there, it's very hard to get one even at 15 over like, people know we're sitting there.”
With every success story, he said, he knows there’s still a long way to go in deterring aggressive driving and cutting down crashes and fatalities.
“If it’s a 100-yard football field, we're at the 15-yard line,” he said. “We’ve still got a lot of work to do."
