Big Brother Is Driving

There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment . . . It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. --George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four

On highways and back roads across the U.S., Canada and Bermuda last week, motorists who took chances with the speed limits were encountering a new operational hazard. It swooped down on them with the swiftness of a hawk and was, oftentimes, as invisible as the Thought Police in Orwell's chiller. The unwitting speed demon saw no police car in his rear-view mirror. But his speed was clocked, just the same, and soon a patrolman was waiting to arrest him.

The unseen traffic cop is a radar meter. Of several brands the most commonly used is a 40-lb. aluminum-sheathed box with two sets of antennas and a price tag of $1,100.* It fits snugly into the rear of a prowl car. As a speeding car approaches, the meter's transmitting antenna sends out high-frequency radio waves that bounce off the car, change frequency and are picked up by the receiving antenna. The difference between the two frequencies tells the speed accurately (within 2 m.p.h.). (In a group of cars, the meter picks out the one that is going fastest.) At the same time, a graphic recorder sets down the speed over a distance of 150 feet in red ink. The operating officers telephone a description of the speeding car to a highway patrol station just ahead, and the trap is sprung.

In 42 states, where radar meters are now being used, there was no argument as to their effectiveness. Judges and juries have found that the meters are competent witnesses and entirely legal. But there was a great deal of argument over the ethics of using the unseen screen. P:In Madison, Wis., the director of the state branch of the American Automobile Association publicly denounced the meters as an affront to law-abiding drivers. P:In Rochester, motorists who put tin foil or steel marbles in their hubcaps in an unsuccessful effort to foul the detectors were charged with attempting to obstruct justice as well as with speeding./- P: In Manchester, Conn., the Chamber of Commerce and auto dealers protested bitterly to the chief of police because he was enforcing speed laws entirely by radar, and wary drivers were detouring around the town, taking their business with them.

Despite the sound & fury, the radar meter was doing good work. Police were unanimous in praising the device. In Gary, Ind., traffic deaths have been cut from 39 by mid-November in 1952 to 17 this year --and police give radar meters full credit. "It's cut down the deaths tremendously," reported Colonel T. B. Birdson, Mississippi's Commissioner of Public Safety. "On the stretch between Clarksdale and the Tennessee state line, it's resulted in a 70% reduction of the death rate."

* Not to be confused with an electrically operated speed meter, which is actuated by rubber contacts stretched over a highway at intervals of 88 feet. When a vehicle crosses the contacts at a speed greater than that set on the meter, its speed is registered on the instrument.

/- The only effective way of foiling the meters is by installing a transmitter in the automobile to jam the radar. But transmitters cost as much as $3,500 and require special FCC operating permits.

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