Photo enforcement van is hostility central
| • | City's decision narrows focus of road cameras |
| • | 5.4 percent found going over speed limit |
By Karen Blakeman
Advertiser Staff Writer
Sean, a traffic camera operator snapping Kailua-bound speeders on the Pali Highway yesterday, lifted his head from the red laser dot he'd been aiming and drew a breath.
Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser
"Did you see that one?" he said, watching through the tinted windows of his minivan as a man in a dark SUV drove past.
A photo enforcement van operator, who is too often a target of rage to reveal his identity, aims a laser and camera at motorists who sped Kailua-bound on the Pali Highway.
"A double bird! No hands on the steering at all."
Sean was parked in his light-colored Toyota minivan at the Kailua-bound entrance to the Pali Lookout, just short of the tunnel. Through his vehicle, Affiliated Computer Services, the state's contractor for the new high-tech speed enforcement, was collecting photographs of speeders with laser evidence of their violations.
Sean also seemed to serve as a lightning rod for road rage, which has been running so high that Honolulu is starting to look like one of those angry Mainland cities.
A town-bound car braked hard and squealed onto the grassy median a few yards beyond where Sean worked. It stayed parked for several minutes, headlights flashing down the mountainside at oncoming traffic.
"He's warning them that we're here," said Michael Schlei, the man in charge of implementing the camera enforcement program for ACS. "I can't believe that someone that interested in slowing people down didn't just come to us and submit an application."
Schlei, who had stopped by to check on Sean's progress, is a Californian who helped ACS start similar programs in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, Denver and Baltimore.
| Traffic cameras | |
| • | How they work |
| • | Q&A |
| • | DOT Web site |
 |
|
He said a certain degree of hostility is common when the program starts. Honolulu isn't setting records for hostility, but it isn't winning congeniality awards, either.
"It's worse than some," said Schlei. He paused a moment, trying to think of favorable comparisons.
"I'd say it's about the same as D.C.," he said. "D.C. hit the roof for the first couple of weeks."
Schlei said that as drivers become more informed about, and accustomed to, the new technology, they become more accepting.
Meanwhile, Sean has seen so many obscene gestures in the weeks since the traffic camera program began that he barely notices them now unless the driver takes a particularly unique approach to self-expression.
Among the memorable moments was the driver who raised his middle finger just as the camera snapped his picture: a nice, clean shot destined to look good on the speeding ticket headed to the man's home. Another day a passenger leaned so far out of a truck window Sean worried the kid would become road kill.
Some drivers who may not have been quick or outgoing enough to express themselves with raised fists or fingers called in opinions to local radio stations.
"We're getting 20 to 30 calls an hour," said Dick Wainwright, an afternoon radio announcer for KSSK-AM, a station that runs a traffic information service for listeners. "Everybody is ticked off, pissed off and venting frustration."
Wainwright said he suspects that exceeding Hawai'i's low highway speeds has served as a small, harmless form of civil disobedience. Once that outlet was taken from them, citizens began to realize that gas was overpriced, traffic lights were never synchronized and the school system had been broken for generations.
"I think it was just the straw that broke the camel's back," Wainwright said.
A common motorists' response, Sean said — one he'd heard advocated by callers to the radio stations — has been to pull in front of the traffic van, raise the hood and pretend to make emergency car repairs while smirking and blocking the camera's line of sight.
It doesn't work, Sean said. He just points the camera elsewhere.
Sometimes the drivers aren't content with gestures, smirks or angry phone calls. Sean said he recently radioed a supervisor to help him control a large angry man who stood in front of the van, swearing and threatening. Other van operators have had motorists throw things at them.
Because tempers can run so high, Sean's supervisors would not allow his identity to be revealed, for fear he might be victimized. Sean is not the man's real name.
But through all the bombast, something concrete has happened on the Pali, and the Likelike, and other spots where ACS has cameras. The traffic has slowed down. Significantly.
"When we first started, we were clocking 30 percent of motorists speeding," Schlei said. "Now we're down to about 5 percent, and that's about where it should be."
Reach Karen Blakeman at 535-2430 or kblakeman@honoluluadvertiser.com.
