For those who don’t know, VASCAR is not only a cheap rip off of the acronym for NASCAR, but it also one of the most cost ineffective methods of catching speeders ever developed.
VASCAR stands for Visual Average Speed Computer and Recorder.
In my state, VASCAR is used by police officers or state troopers flying in a plane above the highway.
The troopers in the plane watch for cars that seem to be speeding far below them.
The trooper in the plane waits for the car to pass a painted line on the highway. As the car passes the line, the trooper starts his stopwatch just like someone timing a running back in the NFL combine. The trooper stops the watch when the car passes another line 1/4 mile down the road. A computer tells the trooper how fast the car had to be going to cover the 1/4 mile distance in that time period.
Forget if you will the inherent inaccuracies of a human timing a car from a plane with a stopwatch. Forget if you will your anger when you think that someone’s driving record, insurance rates and yes, freedom hinge on a tick or two of a stopwatch. Forget all of that for a moment as I tell you the most ridiculous part of VASCAR.
Remember, the trooper in the plane? He’s not flying the plane. He’s looking at the car and pressing buttons. There is another highly qualified trooper flying the plane.
Neither one of these highly qualified, highly paid experts can actually stop the car because they’re in the plane. The two troopers in the plane have to radio down to yet a third trooper on the ground to make the stop and write the speeding ticket.
Three state troopers, one plane, one stopwatch and one car to catch one speeder.
Fast forward if you will to the court date for the speeder. Because of evidentiary rules, two troopers have to show up in court to testify, the trooper with the stopwatch and the trooper with the car who actually wrote the ticket.
Three state troopers, one plane, one stopwatch and one car to catch one speeder and two state troopers to testify in court against the speeder.
Don’t get me wrong, I make my living off of defending people on speeding tickets. But is this worth it? The case I was sitting in on that compelled me to complain about VASCAR was for a ticket going 14 miles per hour over the limit. To top it off, the case was disimssed because of a slip up on the part of the car trooper.
The slip up is not the point of this complaint. Troopers are good folks. But the fact that my state pays for three troopers, a plane and a car to catch a speeder going 14 mph over is obscene.
On any given day in my area, a state trooper standing in the middle of the road could flag down more speeders than VASCAR for a fraction of the cost. It would probably look more like the Discovery Channel when there are hundreds of seals in the water and the toughest part of the hunt for the great white is knowing when to stop before his stomach explodes.
VASCAR is a total waste of both state financial and human resources which could be put to better use or cut out of the budget all together.
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VASCAR can also be used from a car requiring only one trooper which is a bit mor efficent but still has that human error with the time clock.
Mark on September 19th, 2007 at 3:52 pm | Link
For decades, Florida has conducted Aircraft Speed Enforcement missions and they only have one officer in the aircraft. The officer watches the traffic while flying the plane at about 1,000-2000 feet . A few experienced aviators told me it is easy to do this.
Frank Gallagher on July 31st, 2008 at 8:47 am | Link