Speeders Are A Target for Governor Rell This Legislative Season

I suspect that I’m not the only person in Connecticut who has noticed an increased presence of state troopers on Nutmegger highways over the past couple of years.  Where some stretches of highway were once seemingly autobahns (albeit very congested autobahns), now it’s common to see bears working the road, pulling people over.

Why, it was a couple of weeks ago that I noticed that Connecticut troopers had acquired some new toys — unmarked cars that look “normal”, without extra antennas, without distinctive license plates, and with low profile emergency light bars that are nearly impossible to notice until they’re lit.

So, it was with some bemusement that I encountered this article in the Courant over the weekend:

When Gov. M. Jodi Rell unveils her new budget Wednesday, she will call for cutting business taxes and hiring 100 new state troopers over the next five years for increased traffic enforcement.

Declaring war on dangerous drivers, Rell will ask for funding for a pilot program of speed detection cameras along a treacherous stretch of I-95 — enabling the state to capture images of speeders and then mail them tickets. [...]

Rell envisions a traffic enforcement effort that will rely on a system of cameras. A controversial traffic-camera radar system would initially be set up in the Lyme-Old Lyme stretch of the Connecticut Turnpike, close to where three motorists died in November when a tanker-trailer barreled through metal dividers in East Lyme at Exit 75 and crashed head-on into traffic at high speed. Three other drivers were seriously injured in the crash that veteran troopers said was one of the most horrific they had ever seen.

The article, however, makes no reference to Governor Rell’s prior pledge to get speed-enforcement cameras on Avon Mountain as a pilot project.