Lasers Trump Radar

<p>The laser speed detectors that CHP officers will point at Highway 101 motorists through Marin County starting today may not face their greatest test this weekend if the Bay Bridge closure clogs the freeway with slow-moving detoured vehicles.</p><p>But for motorists with room to barrel down the highway, the CHP warns the laser technology they have used for a decade to deter speeders on bridges and byways will now help catch scofflaws on Highway 101 and Interstate 580.</p><p>LIDAR, for Light Detection and Ranging system (pronounced "lie-dar"), is more accurate than conventional radar units, CHP officers said.</p><p>"We can actually pinpoint a certain vehicle in a group of vehicles and get their speed," said Officer Mary Ziegenbein, who is assigned to the Marin-area CHP office. "We're going to start issuing a whole bunch of speeding tickets to let motorists know what the speed limit is coming through Marin."</p><p>Instead of using radio waves as radar guns do, LIDAR generates pulses of light -- reaching out to 1,000 feet -- to measures a vehicle's speed.</p><p>LIDAR was introduced in Sonoma County a year ago.</p><p>"It's a tool that we use daily and on every shift," CHP Officer Barbara Upham said. "It's just another tool that we're using to reduce the number of people who are injured or killed on our roadways."</p><p>In 2001, Santa Rosa police received a $53,000 grant from the state Office of Traffic Safety to purchase four $4,200 LIDAR units, which have grown increasingly common across law enforcement agencies.</p><p>Six units are part of the CHP's arsenal in Sonoma County, and "about 75 percent of our officers are trained to use LIDAR," Upham said. "We're working for 100 percent."</p><p>Six in 10 fatal traffic crashes in California result from unsafe speed, according to the CHP.</p><p>CHP officers in Marin County and San Francisco have used LIDAR on the Golden Gate Bridge and Doyle Drive for years, and also deployed radar and LIDAR for enforcement on nonfreeway roads. Now, both tools will be deployed on freeways through Labor Day and beyond, Ziegenbein said.</p><p>"It's going to continue indefinitely," she said. "We just want motorists to slow down, to be aware of the speed limit."</p><p>News Researcher Teresa Meikle contributed to this report. You can reach Staff Writer Katy Hillenmeyer at 521-5274 or katy.hillenmeyer@pressdemocrat</p><p>.com.</p>