Photo Radar is Here!

Gus Philpott
Woodstock Advocate
September 15, 2008

On August 8, 2008, Gov. Blagojevich announced that photo radar will be used on Illinois highways! He didn't call it that when he announced the joint State Police and IDOT program to nab speeders, but Photo Speed Enforcement (PSE) is good enough for me.

Lest you think this will generate only a small but tidy sum of money for State coffers, the State of Illinois expects to be able to hire 500 new troopers over the next three years with the revenues generated. Heck, they could do that with fines of the speeders on the Northwest Tollway alone!

The program will target motorists who drive at excessively high and dangerous speeds. There are lots of those out there. About three years ago I rode with the Special Enforcement Team (SET) on I-90 in near IL 59. On that day there had air support. A trooper in a plane overhead clocked speeders and radioed to the troopers on the ground.

In three hours they never had time to stop anyone driving under 88MPH in the 55MPH zone! As soon as each trooper in the team of five finished writing one ticket, the "bear-in-the-air" had another one for him traveling at least 88MPH.

This is no Big Brother scare tactic. If you drive at the speed limit, you won't have a thing to worry about. At least, not from the speed camera. You might have to worry about being rear-ended, but not about a speeding ticket in the mail.